The Challenges

[ENTERPRISE]

Hello all, 

 

So life has been a little hectic my end as of late. This is due to our current developer and server admin essentially going MIA at the worst possible time which left us a little crippled so far as the Homepage. I have spent the last few days interviewing new candidates for various positions. My plan moving forward is to have a completely compartmentalized team that will still collaborate with each other, however they will all have separate distinct roles. Moving forward we will have:

 

1. A full time AWS admin to oversee all technical needs from an infrastructure point of view. We will actually be revising our structure to make it super easy for developers to create our custom plugins and software. Right now it is not optimal due to how the prior admin laid it out.

2. A dedicated Wordpress specialist dev who will take care of Wordpress which covers our homepage and review articles. 

3. A dedicated Invision dev that will do all of our forum customizations and plugins. 

 

Moving forward this should be a great solution all round and will ensure much faster progress and stability for both the forums and our review sections. This is something that should have come sooner, but the prior dev/server admin going MIA is the straw that broke the camels back as they say. So I will apologise for any delay on some items or any small technical hitches we get down the road, hopefully we can keep this to a minimal. However I am excited to have a full team of people working with us and we should get things done somewhat quicker round here. 

 

Thanks,

E

[iamjanco]

Sorry to hear that E.

 

If you don't mind my asking, were they "volunteers" or paid folk? I used to manage a larger AWS/Wordpress/Magento combo for one of my longer term clients, so I understand how daunting the task can be sometimes.

Edited May 24, 2021 by iamjanco

[ENTERPRISE]

5 hours ago, iamjanco said:

Sorry to hear that E.

 

If you don't mind my asking, were they "volunteers" or paid folk? I used to manage a larger AWS/Wordpress/Magento combo for one of my longer term clients, so I understand how daunting the task can be sometimes.

 

Looks like you understand the hardships that come with these tasks. They were paid, so it was not like they were donating time, that I could not be too annoyed about. Just the fact that this was not the first disappearing act, figured I would give a second chance but they blew it and its time to cut the losses and move forward.

[damric]

I have ideas, and my ideas are free.

 

1) If you need more capital to get this going, perhaps we could hold some monthly fundraiser event. Raffles, contests, ect. People like prizes, even if they are cheap, or no cost prizes (like forum perks).

 

2) I have been thinking about this one for weeks, maybe months. RGB. There is a lack of a good technical help forum on this subject anywhere on the web right now. I personally hate dealing with RGB, but more clients want all the bling in builds. It's a royal pain in my ass to find matching connector types, compatible software, controllers, ect, and since there is little documentation available, I have a very high failure rate. If you could find an expert on that subject matter, open a sub-forum, and have said expert write some guides and continually update them, you could corner the market and possibly draw in many subscriptions.

 

That's it. Those are my only two ideas for 2021.

[ENTERPRISE]

3 hours ago, damric said:

I have ideas, and my ideas are free.

 

1) If you need more capital to get this going, perhaps we could hold some monthly fundraiser event. Raffles, contests, ect. People like prizes, even if they are cheap, or no cost prizes (like forum perks).

 

2) I have been thinking about this one for weeks, maybe months. RGB. There is a lack of a good technical help forum on this subject anywhere on the web right now. I personally hate dealing with RGB, but more clients want all the bling in builds. It's a royal pain in my ass to find matching connector types, compatible software, controllers, ect, and since there is little documentation available, I have a very high failure rate. If you could find an expert on that subject matter, open a sub-forum, and have said expert write some guides and continually update them, you could corner the market and possibly draw in many subscriptions.

 

That's it. Those are my only two ideas for 2021.

 

Great ideas. In all honesty while the additional cost is obviously unwanted, it is in my mind a worthwhile cost to ensure a feature rich experience. Fingers crossed in the future there will be other ways in which people can contribute to the site, such as merchandise

[UltraMega]

5 hours ago, damric said:

I have ideas, and my ideas are free.

 

1) If you need more capital to get this going, perhaps we could hold some monthly fundraiser event. Raffles, contests, ect. People like prizes, even if they are cheap, or no cost prizes (like forum perks).

 

2) I have been thinking about this one for weeks, maybe months. RGB. There is a lack of a good technical help forum on this subject anywhere on the web right now. I personally hate dealing with RGB, but more clients want all the bling in builds. It's a royal pain in my ass to find matching connector types, compatible software, controllers, ect, and since there is little documentation available, I have a very high failure rate. If you could find an expert on that subject matter, open a sub-forum, and have said expert write some guides and continually update them, you could corner the market and possibly draw in many subscriptions.

 

That's it. Those are my only two ideas for 2021.

 

It's my understanding that RGB is basically built into most motherboards now and there are two type, first and second gen. Gen 1 is 4 pin, gen 2 is 3 pin with a gap. All other types are considered defunct now. Both of my B550 systems have gen 1 and 2 ports.

 

There's also a lot of RGB strips now that are just for general decoration and not for computers and it's hard to separate them when looking for computer rgb strips.

1 hour ago, ENTERPRISE said:

 

Great ideas. In all honesty while the additional cost is obviously unwanted, it is in my mind a worthwhile cost to ensure a feature rich experience. Fingers crossed in the future there will be other ways in which people can contribute to the site, such as merchandise

 

I'm not web coder, but if you need some help with anything on a more basic level, I've got nothing but time and I'd be happy to help if I can. 

Edited May 24, 2021 by UltraMega

[ENTERPRISE]

6 minutes ago, UltraMega said:

 

It's my understanding that RGB is basically built into most motherboards now and there are two type, first and second gen. Gen 1 is 4 pin, gen 2 is 3 pin with a gap. All other types are considered defunct now. Both of my B550 systems have gen 1 and 2 ports.

 

There's also a lot of RGB strips. Ow that are just for general decoration and not for computers and it's hard to separate them when looking for computer rgb strips.

 

I'm not web coder, but if you need some help with anything on a more basic level, I've got nothing but time and I'd be happy to help if I can. 

Thanks bud, appreciate that

[ENTERPRISE]

Well just as a small update. We now have our full staff of admins, I will be spending the next few days getting them all up to speed to ensure everyone is on the same page and operations can continue smoothly. After this has been completed, we will begin our customization and plugin work. Unfortunately all progress looks to be lost with the last developer as I have not heard from him. It is unfortunate as well as a waste of time and money. However sometimes you have to cut your losses to move forward.

[UltraMega]

7 hours ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Well just as a small update. We now have our full staff of admins, I will be spending the next few days getting them all up to speed to ensure everyone is on the same page and operations can continue smoothly. After this has been completed, we will begin our customization and plugin work. Unfortunately all progress looks to be lost with the last developer as I have not heard from him. It is unfortunate as well as a waste of time and money. However sometimes you have to cut your losses to move forward.

Good luck with the new web dev team. Sucks that you got shafted but I'm sure in some ways it was a learning experience for things to avoid. Looking forward to seeing things progress! 

Edited May 31, 2021 by UltraMega

[ENTERPRISE]

3 hours ago, UltraMega said:

Good luck with the new web dev team. Sucks that you got shafted but I'm sure in some ways it was a learning experience for things to avoid. Looking forward to seeing things progress! 

Fingers crossed. Fortunately there is a directory of developers for this platform. I have already put the feelers out for quotation for the first batch of priority features for the site.

[ENTERPRISE]

Just thought I would swing by with an update. 

 

So far the new team have been working out well. Our server admin has done a cracking job thus far and our WordPress admin (Review site) has also been doing a great job. Some tweaks and updates will be coming to our review site soon

 

So far as the forums, our admin is ready and in place, however we are just getting the dev server environment up and running. As soon as access is possible , they have a list of items to complete so we can hit the ground running.

 

Further to this we have had our first phase of features re-developed and as soon as we can test them I can give an ETA for release. FYI, the first phase covers.

 

Dark Theme

Social Badges

Custom User Status

 

Once phase 1 is live, development of the second phase will begin and then the third. The third phase item will be a big ticket item as this will be our Rig Creator feature and our Content Embed Wizard.

 

All in all, all the ducks are in a row and within reason, getting there as soon as possible. 

 

Thanks all,

E

[BWG]

1 hour ago, ENTERPRISE said:

Dark Theme