If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll probably have seen my recent tweet about FFCC’s vBulletin License expiring.

This post is going to expand on that.

I’ll not be renewing or upgrading to vBulletin 4 on this particular license. I have no reason too. The vBulletin 4 product is not up to par with the standards I’m requiring to be run on that site, and I simply do not have the time to learn everything about it. Therefore, I had to sit and make a decision on what I’m going to do about FFCC’s Forum.

I’ve been on the fence about the [FFCC] board for several months now. I’ve flip flopped from converting to IPB (even being offered a license by Mike), to upgrading to vB4, and everywhere in between.

When vBulletin 4 Gold was released, a lot of bugs were fixed and I was confident that the product was finally, despite going through a bass ackwards beta process, looking up… I was wrong.

Then, the license expired, and it finally clicked on the direction I want to go in regards to FFCC.

FFCC will continue to run vBulletin 3.8.4, however I’ll be maintaining the software myself. If there is a bug in the software, it will be fixed by me, rather than the developers. I’ll also be rewriting several components, as well as plugins I’m currently using, to not only provide tighter integration, but because taking the products out of the plugin system and adding them to the core will make them more efficient.

Since my license is expired, I can no longer upgrade, therefore I can freely modify the actual source code without worrying about losing those modifications. Which also means I can expand on the current feature set… such as Reputation which is the first feature to receive my touch.

I’ve begun work on rewriting Reputation to allow users to give out reputations for any content, rather than just posts. So far, I’ve successfully implemented my concept for Posts, using the content type flag as a way to perform permission checks as well as a way to determine what data needs to be selected before performing the actual rep giving. The code for repping posts that comes with vBulletin has simply been ported to work with my new system, and any functions (functions_reputation.php) pertaining to Reputation have been reworked to simply pass on to the new system, so I don’t have to find everywhere these functions are being implemented.

I’m looking forward to expanding it further, then putting it live on my board.

In closing I just want to say, that I do not blame the current development staff for vB4′s state, nor do I blame the Support Staff.

Kevin, Darren, Edwin, Andrew, Freddie, Michael, Andy, David, and Sophie are all very talented at what they do. And Steve, Wayne, Colin, eva, Jake, Trevor, and Zachery are equally as talented. And I hope that, one day, I’ll be able to look into upgrading to the vB4 series again… but right now, I just can’t do that. Whether it’s due to the shareholders, or the Management, I just can’t support something that is shipped as a “Production Deployment Ready” product way before it should be labelled as such.

Love and care is required first and foremost when working in Software Development, and the direction that vBulletin is currently heading tells me that the powers, that are in charge of its direction, do not possess either… and I really hope that, in the future, they prove me wrong.

Here’s a list of stuff to look forward too from me!

1. ImperialBB Development Update. The contents of which will be determined after our staff meeting.
2. ImperialBB 1.0.0 Alpha unveiling. Within the next month or two we plan to upgrade the community at www.imperialbb.com to ImperialBB 1.0.0 Alpha 1. (Barring any unforeseen issues, of course).
3. Final Fantasy Crystal Cosmo getting content. A few of us at FFCC have been assigned a game to start writing content for. So expect to see some games pop up soon!
4. The Glass Prison’s Future. I’ve got a few more plans for TGP. I can’t enact those until I get some money first.

So, there, some cool stuff to look forward too.

Let’s go back a ways. When I made my second coming to the internet world, I stated I was here to stay… and so far I’ve accomplished that (obviously… or I wouldn’t be typing this). And I’ve made my biggest mark to date, in the two short years I’ve been back.

Since my return I’ve started FFCC, started Evolution-X Productions (now deceased), became an Administrator (again) at The Glass Prison, became a developer for Imperial Bulletin Board, and have purchased domains for several other sites ranging from General Chat to TV and Movies.

I decided, a while ago, that I needed a way cumulatively manage all of these sites (minus Imperial… maybe <_<). I also wanted to network the sites, so that each one can promote the other.

Thus, Crystal Core is born. Crystal Core is an application framework that will be used to power the main website of every site I personally manage, and will provide a way for each site to interface with each other.

Crystal Core will have to capability to manage all types of content, ranging from Game Content and News Articles for FFCC, to Blogging for ryanashbrook.com, and everything in between.

On top of its content management capabilities, it will also feature the ability to integrate with vBulletin -and- Imperial Bulletin Board. All from the same framework, using the same code.

The code for Crystal Core is derived from what was going to be the Final Fantasy Crystal Cosmo site (hence the name “Crystal Core”).

However, with Crystal Core being built, I also wanted a way to network the sites so that, not only could they all promote each other, but they could integrate and share data with each other.

Thus, The Crystal Network is born. I have big plans for the core TCN website and how it will play into the rest of my sites. I also have plans for TCN to have it’s own unique content available. Along with plans for websites, outside of my jurisdiction, that wish to join the network.

So yeah… I’m fucking excited for the future. =D

1. Logged in to MSN this morning, and received a message from Tom P telling me that Vivant Media Network’s staff forums were hacked. Fun stuff.

2. Spent all morning fixing stuff and investigating who did the hacking. I have my suspicions but that’s private…

3. Drank an entire 10 cup pot of coffee within two hours… I will never do such a thing ever again, because I feel like royal shit right now.

4. I’m at my sisters again to babysit, which isn’t bad. But I forgot the files to FFCC’s Top Secret Project, so no development is going down today. I have my sisters Wedding Rehearsal and Dinner tonight, and the actual wedding is tomorrow. So I can’t do any coding on it until Sunday, which means the private testing won’t take place until next week.

Never thought I’d say it… but FML right now…

The plan is, when an entry is posted to a specific blog (User FFCC’s blog on the forums) the entry will be posted on the Main Site via a database insert on the main sites database.

The database will contain the essential information. Title, Poster’s ID, Content, etc. etc. but it will also contain the blog entry it is linked too.

On the main site, the comments to each news posts will actually be the comments linked to that blog entry. And comments from both ends will show up in both places.

For example, if user A comments on a news post via the main site, then that comment will also show up on the linked Blog Entry on the forums. If user B comments on the Blog Entry via the forums, then that comment will also show up on the main site.

What I’m hoping, is that I can eliminate a lot of unnessicary coding but still provide the site with a full article posting and commenting system via the vBulletin Blog’s Data Managers.

This will also allow my News Reporters to post news on the main site without having to create a permissions system for the main site and without giving them any FTP access as well.

This is quite possibly the best idea I’ve ever had, now hopefully the vBlog will be up to the challenge.

So far I’ve got classes prepped for Twitter, Akismet, ReCAPTCHA, and Last.fm. I’m also planning to add support for Facebook (possibly, if I can find a use for it) and Flickr. As well as support for my new Network, which will be elaborated on some other time. The database will use MySQLi (of course) and I’m thinking of looking into XCache or APC for Opcode caching. I’m also going to build a template engine based off of Audentio’s, which Mike coded.

But, for now I’ve started on Twitter and ReCAPTCHA. Both of which, are bugged, and I have no idea why. Lol.

Twitter won’t submit status updates, and that’s the only thing it’s supposed to do, so that means the Twitter support does not work at all.

ReCAPTCHA works partially, I can get the Captcha to display, but when I submit I’m always getting a failure… at least I think I am anyway, I haven’t exactly learned ReCAPTCHA’s response codes yet… or I just did something wrong in the submit method… which is highly likely.

There’s also support for ReCAPTCHA’s mailhide module, but that doesn’t work because this server doesn’t have the mcrypt PHP module installed, so I gotta poke James sometime and see if he can install that for me.

And, of course, integration with the forums is implemented.

The original plan for FFCC was to use the Zend Framework as the backend but it would have taken more time to set that up than it would have to just code my own backend.

Oh yeah, gotta go with pretty URL’s, since I’m actually getting relatively good at mod_rewrite.

I’m also reconsidering the design of the site… I love the design but it’s not very versatile. So we’ll just have to see if someone wants to do a new design for me.

You can see the new site here: http://www.ffcrystalcosmo.com/dev/

Comments are welcome, of course, but one thing to keep in mind is the fact that the backend comes first… so NONE of the pages are done yet.