Site Move & Upgrade: Feb 13

[z929669]

Deployment Successful, thanks to the work of the team and TechAngel85 for updating the newest versions of the LE and SE guides. We hope you like the upgrade. Note that BB code is no longer supported, but the WYSIWYG editor here is much better. Image handling is more intuitive.

 

Finally. We are pleased to announce the planned release of "STEP 3.0" on Saturday, February 13, 2021 to upgrade software, features and services.

As we had announced nearly 4 years ago now, we will be moving the site to a new server with updated software and features. Our new URL (unavailable until Feb 13): https://stepmodifications.org

This upgrade will require a rather extensive downtime of up to 6 hours if things go as planned. Future maintenance downtime will no longer be required for more than a few minutes.

Notable Wiki Upgrades
To date, the STEP wiki has primarily been used for serving up our Skyrim modding and tool guides in addition to user-created guides and content. This infrastructure has been supported using Mediawiki and Semantic Mediawiki. This software has served its purposes pretty well. The latest Mediawiki software opens up more possibilities, enhancements, and features:

• Mediawiki - v1.21 --> v1.35 (LTS)
• Extension: Semantic Mediawiki - v1.18 --> v3.2
• Extension: CSS - we will no longer be supporting custom styling, so content creators will need to use other solutions that the new software will provide within the constraints of site themes. Please PM z929669 or TechAngel85 for more info.
• All other extensions upgraded

Forums Upgrade
These forums currently run on Invision Power Board v3.4.6. We will be upgrading to version 4.5.4, which offers some significant enhancements:

• Enhanced security
• HTML posting support via CKeditor (BB code will be deprecated)
• Much better admin support and user features

Overall Upgrades
New Guides:

• New Skyrim SE v1.0.0 guide
• New Skyrim LE v3.0.0 guide - Unless a significant proportion of the community feels otherwise, this will be the final release of STEP's Skyrim LE guide. It will be supported perpetually.

The updated platform has the capacity to support guide creation and maintenance of multiple moddable games. This includes:

• Forum support for each supported game
• User-select-able, site-wide themes (Light, Dark, and Classic)
• Semantic Mediawiki-powered infrastructure for building STEP guides
• Significant improvements to mod inclusion into guides and guide flow using collapsible mod tables allows guide users to follow an entire guide without ever needing to navigate away from the page (except to obtain mod packages from providers)
• Games supported at launch:
  • Beyond Skyrim
  • Fallout 3
  • Fallout 4
  • Fallout New Vegas
  • Morrowind
  • Morroblivion
  • Oblivion
  • Skyblivion
  • Skyrim LE
  • Skyrim SE
  • Skyrim VR
  • Skywind
  • No Mans Sky

We WILL NOT have guides for all of these games at the outset. Nor will we have all relevant modding content, tools, and ancillary guides specific to each. Nevertheless, we WILL have the infrastructure to support guide creators/maintainers and related content. Those interested in creating and maintaining an official STEP guide for your favorite supported game, please PM z929669 or TechAngel85.

[arudresa]

yay! congrats guys! Looking forward to see and try the new site

[Mercury71]

Very exciting. :)

[Stefan]

Good luck!

[TechAngel85]

Just so users are aware...certain live changes to the forums are happening as "pre-work" to the site migration.

 

Think of this as your "preview" to the new forum structure. Much of this pre-work helps to reduce total downtime during the migration.

[Simondererste]

Wish you all good luck and i'm excited to see the results. Thanks for all your work you do.

[z929669]

Wish you all good luck and i'm excited to see the results. Thanks for all your work you do.

Call it a labor of love, I guess. Thanks for the support and hope you like it

 

[z929669]

OP updated