TFL upgrade coming (very) soon
As I've mentioned previously [1], I've been working for the past few months to upgrade TFL to a new version of the content management system it runs on, Drupal [2]. I'm also redesigning the interface a bit, mainly so it works better on tablets and phones.
The new version of the site is close, really close, to being ready. The gap in projects I carved out for my recent vacation is quickly closing too, so I'd like to make the switch to the new version of the site soon and work out the remaining kinks once we're on the new system. It'd be a shame for this opportunity to make the switch pass and the upgrade not happen for another 6-8 months.
The new version of the site can now be found at: http://upgrade.thefreshloaf.com [3]
This is a new server with more horsepower and better caching than the existing system. I'll crank it up even higher before the new site goes live, so we should have fewer performance problems and less lag than we do now.
As before, if you want to log in and tinker around with test version of the new site, be my guest. I'll be refreshing the database there again before the new site goes live for real, so anything you post there today will be disappear soon.
Some of the site features like the email features are disabled because I don't want to accidentally spam folks while I'm working on the new site. But it should be pretty much functional.
For the switch over, I'm thinking... next week? Maybe Tuesday? I'm going to continue tuning things the next few days, but the sooner we make the move the better, IMO.
Of course I'll be backing everything up before the move so should anything go awry we can roll back to where we are before the switch, but I hope and expect it'll be a big step forward, that it'll work better for all of us and be easier for new folks to learn how to use, than the current site.
Please give a shout, folks, share your feedback on the new site and let me know if you see any reason I shouldn't try to move this forward next week. Otherwise, I'll try to do the flip and then make myself as available as I can to help folks learn the ins and outs of the new system or fix any issues that we didn't discover until after the switch.
If I can do the switch on Tuesday, my hope would be that by the end of the week most (if not all) of the functionality would be restored and everyone could blog and chat as normal. Fingers crossed, knock on wood, and all that. :)
Cheers,
-Floyd