Site Upgrades - Summer 2025

[Scotty]

Posting this in the main forum as it affects everyone and not everyone reads all the various other forums! Take a read and feel free to ask any questions you may have in the thread below. 

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I will be upgrading the site to a new major version of the forum software during the summer. The look and feel of the site will not change too much, but some features may be added or deleted based on the capability of the new software.  I will also take the opportunity to merge or migrate certain portions of the site based on feedback from a few people.  

 

Here is one major change that will definitely affect everyone .... 

You will no longer be able to login with your display name (username); you must use your email address.

This is a security feature and in preparation for this change we would encourage all users to make sure your email address in your account is up to date and valid.  You can check/change this within your profile here: https://caleythistleonline.com/settings/. Not sure when we make that switch, but you can already login using your email so you may want to get into that habit and if necessary change it to a current one and/or reset passwords etc. 

Other changes in the software that I don't think affect too many people or may not be that major to most users include:  

• Status updates have been removed in v5.
• Open tagging has been replaced with a new system in v5.
• Facebook & Twitter social promotion has been removed in v5. (mainly used by our admins)
• Forums: Q&A mode has been removed in v5.

From a design perspective, we hope to retain most things but may prune older posts and content as the database is pretty huge and can cause things to slow down here and there. The older posts would still be visible, and searchable, but images or links may no longer work once archived. This preparatory work will start before we migrate to the new version as we don't want to migrate a whole bunch of stuff we will no longer use.

We have confirmed with both the Supporters Trust and the Travel Club that they will have their own mini-sites (labelled as Clubs in the new version of the software). This will allow those groups to manage and maintain their own area, have a separate forum area, gallery, blog, event calendar etc but all be accessible and searchable by users from the main forum listings and 'unread content' search. We are open to any other niche forums being converted to clubs and/or adding new areas - for example, might we benefit from having a separate area for supporting the women's team? Open to ideas and or development/growth in that area. Send me a note if you think of something that might be worthwhile considering. 

Our stats program (https://stats.caleythistleonline.com) is getting old and while it will continue to be maintained and available on the site for the foreseeable future, we really need to get it updated to PHP8 compatibility. This will either cost us a fair bit of cash to get the original developer to do it (£750 - £1000) or we are always on the lookout for someone in our user list who has the skills to do it. I can dabble and tweak, and know just about enough to get into trouble with things, but I don't have the ability to do a full conversion. If you know anyone who would like to sponsor this upgrade (and would receive advertisements/accreditation on the stats site and pages) or someone who has the skills to donate their time to update this resource let me know. Once updated, we are happy to maintain it on a weekly basis and would even be happy to once again share it with the club as we did before (This was one of the ties that was severed by Rae/Crook a few years ago).  

Other than those tweaks, I don't think there will be a huge amount of change. 

 

[Scotty]

First round of tweaks and tidy-ups have now started. Most of these are invisible to users but the most visible is that we have now converted the Supporters Trust forum to a 'club'. This will allow them to host not only a separate sub-forum, but also have a blog, files for download, an event calendar and even custom pages, all in one enclosed space. 

• The club area on here is 'free' to join but that is separate to the actual trust which still takes membership from their own site / links.
• It is also (currently) shown as an 'open' club which means that: "everyone can see the club and its posts, but only members can participate. Everyone can join". The club moderators will choose if it stays that way or changes to a different type. Currently @DoofersDad is set as the owner.  

 

You can access this area either from the CLUBS link in the menu at the top or depending on how you view the forums from various other places. 

[Scotty]

We have now enabled a club area for the ICT Travel Club. Talking to @Hearach recently, it is thought they will use this to publicise the buses you can book onto and to provide info for travelling ICT fans. 

After upgrading the software soon, all calendar events added by both the Trust and the Travel Club will make their way to the main calendar listings and also any new posts in either should show up in whichever version of 'unread' posts you use to display content when accessing the site.   

A few more tweaks to come in the next week or two before I think we are ready to migrate to the new version of the software. 

[Scotty]

As you will have seen, we have now established separate areas for the Supporters Trust and the Travel Club who have started to make use of them to publicise events and add content. These are self-contained areas within the site and the management and moderation of them is under their control. Topics will appear in the main list of topics and calendar events will appear in the calendar sidebar. 

We have also added the fixture list for 2025-26 to the calendar and it will also be available in the traditional stats program.  We are still looking for a sponsor for that part of the site to enable us to pay for an upgrade to the program, or for someone with mad PHP/SQL skills to deconstruct and reverse engineer the program we are using. Its classed as 'abandonware' from the original author and only one person (we know of) has taken it up and kept it modern. Easy option is to pay him for the updates, but the cost is high  For now it will trundle along as it is. 

I am now starting the next stage of updates and as part of that some areas of the site may become unavailable at times, menus may change, and some unused parts of the site, or infrequently posted in forums may be merged into others. If you spot something not working for an extended period, or looking weird beyond a few minutes or hours, let me know. I want to streamline everything and remove any clutter and noise before we perform the actual software upgrade. 

All being well I hope to do the software upgrade at some point (later) next week or perhaps the week after.