Advancing the site and its features

[mal7921]

As many people will be aware, the AMN site is based around the Joomla! platform and built using a theme, which has been edited and customised specifically for this site, however there is a newer version of Joomla! and this theme will never be modified to run on it which brings a question of the sites future direction.

Should it become necessary, do we abandon the current look and feel for something more modern with potentially newer features (Such as mobile phone access) or do we continue as we are until the current Joomla! platform is no longer supported?

The need to upgrade currently is not a pressing one, but will become necessary as time moves on. No platform is totally secure and one day a security hole will be found which will not be patched as the platform will be considered too old to support. Thankfully that day is some time off, but do we wait that long or plan to upgrade at some point in time?

While Donovan's original idea's still stand here, we will have to move on one day, the question being is that day sooner or later?

Any opinions, either here or by PM or email are welcome.

[atarisince1989]

I have two opposite thoughts

1) We keep as it is, as (sadly) there is not too much activity in this site. I think most of the time we are 3-4 people participating in the forum, and occasionally somebody puts a song.

2) Security is a big concern for me. I have experienced in the past one of my websites been hacked and completelly deleted in a daily basis after I restored backups, because there was a security hole in the PHPNuke software I was using then. I cannot express with words how frustrated and angry you feel, when hours and hours of work are blowed up by somebody just having a laugh. Somebody that doesn't even know you and don't have anything personal against you.

So, my conclusion would be, we change it to meet security but we don't need to spend 1000 hours on doing it. What do you think?

[NCGM]

Yep keep it as it is for now but improve the security. I'm not sure why this site has not taken off more, as there does seem to be a dedicated base of people around the world doing retro music etc. I'm currently wading through life struggles at the moment, but the Atari and music writing are always at the forefront of my mind, so it is only a matter of time before I can sit down and resume my Cubase stuff again. I'm likely to do a few videos of my Falcon and Cubase in action when I do, as I feel this is surprisingly missing from YouTube and the like. I'll invest in a cheapish chinese video camcorder nearer the time.


NCGM