Hi everyone,
It’s a lot earlier than I expected but I’m starting to plan the 4th generation of the ausmicro.com website. Most of the reason for the move ahead is because the current one just doesn’t work as it should. The recent hack and ongoing problems with the gallery are just two examples of how bad things are.
I’m looking very seriously at buying a commercial forum package, it will do most of the things we have right now, and I won’t have to write all the customisations we do now.
The thing is if I buy a cmmercial product (VBulletin, and VBGallery) and couple it with a few ‘free’ extras we can have a very nice new system wihtout many of our current bugs. The cost of these two products is USD200 all up and I’m going to be asking that the money be raised through the continuation of the Subscriber/Donor system.
So Just what will the new system look like?
VBulletin is currently being used on a new website I’m running (http://www.canberra-ragtops.org) and while this doesn’t have the VBGallery installed it does have Members Galleries much like what we have here. It’s also used on http://www.ozmazdaclub.com, http://www.astinagt.com and http://www.minizracer.com to name just a few. These sites ultilise many different ‘skins’ over the same basic core code.
We already have some existing Donors/Subscribers offering to support the upgrade, but we will need more, and it’s now the turn of the general members to show their support!
A.