With a new year comes a new push from me to refresh and improve this website. It's been a challenge for the past several years to keep the site relevant and useful as other mediums like Facebook take over and I find myself with less time and other priorities. I've been debating with myself for a long time about what to do to make the site "work" in the current era where small sites are going extinct and most people are moving over to just Facebook and Youtube to share and manage content, and I think I'm ready to push forward with some new things.
I'm going to re-organize the site so that there are three sections: the forum, a
functional wiki, and a photo sharing plugin. The blog will be discontinued since I hardly ever get around to updating it. We'll probably have a section in the wiki area for important updates, and of course we'll share announcements and news on Facebook and in the forums as always.
Junior's posts on Facebook with all the historical photos has shown where a site like this can still be useful. All those great photos get lost in the void after a few months and it's hard to search for them as they get deeper in the pile. One of the main features we've been missing here is a good way for people like Junior to archive and display photos and nostalgia like that in a way that is easily browse-able. I've tried to tackle this before in a few different ways including writing my own scripts and using some of the features of this forum, but now I'm willing to just fork over some cash and buy something a little more professional and turn-key. Something like this plugin:
https://codecanyon.net/item/user-gallery-wordpress-plugin/16122370?s_rank=3 Or something similar, I haven't finalized my choice just yet.
The current SDC "Wiki" hasn't been an actual wiki in a long time, but I'm planning on finding and customizing a plugin for that as well. It also started off as something I tried to code myself and tie into the forum features. Some of the content is very old and was originally written when I was in early high school, but I doubt anyone reads it much anyway. Some fresh content curated by more knowledgeable SDC veterans would make it relevant again.
Finally there's the forum, which has always held it's own pretty well. After 10+ years, a hosting transfer, and an "upgrade" to a completely new version of the software it is showing it's age in some funny ways with odd errors here and there, but there's not a lot I can do about most of that except install a fresh copy. I'd rather keep our ten years of forum archives around, so I plan to put up with it as long as we can. I will get around to taking another pass at smoothing over the look and feel of the forums though. Still need to add that new messages badge as well.
Hopefully all this will result in the site being cleaner, more relevant, and more usable so that more people venture off of Facebook and take part. If anyone has any ideas or knows any good plugins let me know. I'm going to try to get this stuff setup over the next couple weeks before I get distracted again.