TMC 2

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TMC 2

Postby phil » Sun Mar 25, 2007 7:42 pm

OK, the long-awaited TMC 2 is about to happen.

It'll look a little different. Some of that is down to the newer versions of software, and some of that is down to the new graphical theme. Hint: it's not blue. :lol: We know you can't please all of the people all of the time, so not everyone will like it I guess.

It'll still be Postnuke and PNphpBB2 based. We looked at migrating to other forum packages and portal frameworks, but nothing out there that we would be happy to use allowed us to migrate what we already have without loss. TMC has been running for 3.5 years, so losing all of that content would be a disaster.

In the first instance the forum and the FAQ will be cut over. The legacy content will also be cut over. It brings us traffic and a lot of the articles continue to be useful. However this cutover may happen a day or three later.

Subsequently we have a bunch of new features for the immediate future:
  • Member-created content (articles, reviews and the like)
  • News aggregator. We've always had the news block on the front page, but it won't display more than one feed at once. In future the news will go on its own portal page, wich opens things up big time
  • A wiki for members to share useful information and techniques
  • Possibly a picture gallery, although I'm unsure about the need for that stand-alone (i.e. outside the content). Maybe pictorials of the UKBC and the like could go up there unless members want to keep such things on their own sites - which always has been and continues to be a problem. We live in an increasingly federated world I guess.
So the purpose of this message is to let people know what's coming. Any comments are always welcome.

Best

Phil
On behalf of the TMC Team
Last edited by phil on Mon Mar 26, 2007 12:03 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Postby Sarion » Sun Mar 25, 2007 8:19 pm

Wow, cool, I`m very much looking forward to seeing the results! Thanks, Phil and the rest of the Team! :-)
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Postby HughF » Sun Mar 25, 2007 8:41 pm

The Wiki sounds particularly helpful for accumulating and correcting info quickly. Thanks Phil.

Cheers,

Hugh
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Postby phil » Sun Mar 25, 2007 8:51 pm

Yes that was my view too Hugh.
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La Spaziale Lusso grinder (espresso),
Macap MC4 shop grinder (brewed coffee)
Three Thor tampers
Two Hottops, first since Feb 2003
No partridge, no pear tree either
Conas, Zassenhaus hand grinder....
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Postby Bertie_Doe » Sun Mar 25, 2007 9:20 pm

Sounds like you've been burning the midnight oil Phil, but what does 'cut over' mean. TIA.
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Postby Fatboy_007 » Sun Mar 25, 2007 9:31 pm

Everyone loves a Wiki, it has to be said!
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Postby simonp » Sun Mar 25, 2007 10:55 pm

Good news, and well done to all involved :D
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PS

Postby phil » Mon Mar 26, 2007 12:19 am

One of the features of the new TMC will be the "Bad Behaviour" module used as a spambot defense in blog packages such as Wordpress.

We will therefore (on an experimental basis) be re-opening "Open House".

:D
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La Spaziale Lusso grinder (espresso),
Macap MC4 shop grinder (brewed coffee)
Three Thor tampers
Two Hottops, first since Feb 2003
No partridge, no pear tree either
Conas, Zassenhaus hand grinder....
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Postby lukas » Mon Mar 26, 2007 12:32 am

Great news. Thanks for your hard work for keeping this site happening! I know what a PITA that can be ...
Lukas

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Postby Beanie » Mon Mar 26, 2007 12:39 am

Fab news, Phil :D So looking forward to it :D I love TMC :D

cumberpach wrote:Sounds like you've been burning the midnight oil Phil, but what does 'cut over' mean. TIA.
QC

My guess would be "migrated"?
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Postby phil » Mon Mar 26, 2007 1:01 am

Indeed Marcie, indeed.

Midnight oil: big time. I needed to get this done for a whole bunch of reasons.
  1. To get TMC to return that the place I always intended it to be in (and where it was for the first couple of years), a general coffee site, not just a frickin' forum
  2. You may have noted that we often have rather a large number of guests? Well I believe that TMC is quite popular outside the immediate circle of its membership, but that number of guests hugely exceeds the actual member and real (human) guest traffic. That's cos they're Google bots, mostly.
Google has been conducting a huge love-in with TMC (around 100GB of bandwidth per month) and this has been costing me a packet. It's nice to be loved, but that amount of attention hugely exceeds the amount necessary to index all of the new content on the site.

In my view I had three choices:
  1. Keep paying: not likely - these costs are keeping me well away from adding to my server farm (smallholding? :lol:) - something I should have added to last year sometime. TMC Internet is hugely overdue for server no 2 and I know our VOIP clients are suffering as a result.
  2. Just keep Google out altogether with a "noindex" option. That way we'd rapidly fall off the radar and cease to be a worthwhile resource. Not an option.
  3. Start generating Google sitemaps. I could easily write the software myself if I had the time, but in fact there is already a Postnuke Google sitemap generator in existence, written by the excellent Mark West - but that requires a Postnuke version higher than 0.760 and we're currently on 0.726.

So the shameful admission I have to make is that I needed to take TMC forward, not just because it was ceasing to be the site I (and Raf) always wanted it to be, but also because I needed to get Google off my back as it's costing me silly money to no good purpose.

Hopefully, irrespective of the reasons, TMC 2 will be worth the effort. After all if our favourite Canadian loves it, who am I to argue? :D

Warmest regards to you all, and thank you for your support of TMC.

All the best
La Spaziale Spazio 2 group semi-auto

La Spaziale Lusso grinder (espresso),
Macap MC4 shop grinder (brewed coffee)
Three Thor tampers
Two Hottops, first since Feb 2003
No partridge, no pear tree either
Conas, Zassenhaus hand grinder....
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Postby GeorgeW » Mon Mar 26, 2007 10:32 am

While I didn't understand a word of your explanation, many thanks for all of your hard work on this forum Phil.
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Postby leecb » Mon Mar 26, 2007 4:04 pm

Looking forward to many more hours of useful infomation and inane rambling in equal measure.
Many thanks for your continued time and energy Phil. We all appreciate your efforts, as you can probably tell by the amount of time we all spend here. :lol:
This week I are mainly ready to get back to making muffins!"

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Postby Beanie » Mon Mar 26, 2007 4:10 pm

Sorry Phil, I'm with Mr George in the "huh?" room... but remain grateful for all the work you do for TMC and TMC 2 especially the ones we don't see :D
This week, I'm mainly recovering :DAll I've got is my Aerobie AeroPress | 70's Aurora/Brugnetti HX Spring Lever | Mazzer Mini E & SJ (on loan) | Hottop | Nestor Martin (Toto) Gas Roaster | Eva Solo | Moka Pots
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Postby Gouezeri » Mon Mar 26, 2007 5:10 pm

Oh well Phil, your post made perfect sense to me!

The long and short of it for everybody else is that TMC2 needed to happen quickly in order to reduce the physical and financial cost of its popularity (particularly by google). That is the reality.

Now, we know not everybody likes change, and for some people the site will maybe not have changed enough. However, this is just a first step that we are employing as quickly as possible, but which will provide us with a whole new host of possibilities (which will hopefully follow in time).

If anybody has any practical suggestions, they will of course be more than welcome. The same goes with critical comments; but they must be productive. If you don't like something, tell us how you think it might be done better, and if there is generally a consensus, we'll see what we can do... But if you just want to whinge about the colour scheme, or fonts etc. (Phil's had enough of me doing that over the past week!!!) then I can think of a couple of other coffee sites that just love whingers :twisted:
D
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