PHP-Nuke Platinum ??

Client Joined: Dec 04, 2004 Posts: 757

Hi all, I have phpnuke 7.6 patched installed on my site and I have just noticed this new Platinum version 7.6 ? can I upgrade to this ? is it straight forward ? would it be worth while for me? also is it compatable with security sentinal 2.3 etc?
Thanks for any help
mrix

Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2005 7:31 am

mrix wrote:

Hi all, I have phpnuke 7.6 patched installed on my site and I have just noticed this new Platinum version 7.6 ?

can I upgrade to this ?
Yes
is it straight forward ?
Yes
would it be worth while for me?
I dunno there is a lot of mods that not everyone would want. Theme offerings are limited so if you choose this plan on porting a theme.
also is it compatable with security sentinal 2.3 etc?
Yes for the most part.
Thanks for any help
mrix

My opinion of this is it is geared towards users who have limited experience with installing mods but want a lot of them. It falls a little short of the novice level for users because some of the speed hacks make some normal operations behave abbynormal.

Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2005 7:48 am

Ok many thanks for the advise I can undestand your points and I have so many different mods now I dont think its worth risking it for whats on offer
Cheers
mrix

Client Joined: Nov 06, 2004 Posts: 20

It is upgradeable from 7.6 nuke basic but a fresh install is suggested. It comes with nuke sentinel preinstalled as well as a few nice module upgrades like NSN Groups and Downloads. As well as Flash links and scroller marquee built into the theme control Panel of the main theme. There are now a ton of themes available in the platinum community and support is growing strong. If you like a beefed up Nuke then this is the way to go.

Useless Joined: Aug 23, 2002 Posts: 213 Location: Chicago

That I would never understand, when PHP-Nuke already has 2 groups system already, why did they installed NSN Groups too? Maybe a cause behind it that I have over looked.

Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 10:32 pm

Its sort of like glue it holds the rest all together.

Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 10:36 pm

I should add throw in a $5.00 NSN PayPal block and you have the lowest cost most powerful subscription system available.

Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 2:44 am

imho, Groups is required. I never did understand FB's Group Point System, but Bob's Groups is what counts. It's an extremely powerful mod, I wouldn't be without it.

I've been playing around with Platinum 7.6 for a couple of weeks now and plan on importing my phpnuke 6.9 main site into this newer core. I'm sure I won't activate many of the modules, but I like having those other extras pre-installed and playing nice together... it would take me a year to code those all mods and I'd still break Edit Admins while doing it.

And, as feature rich as Platinum is, it still misses essential modules... FriendFinder, Photo Gallery, Instant Messaging and Blog/Journal. That would be Nuke Titanium??? <g>
Dance-Stick

Posted: Sat Jan 29, 2005 11:13 am

Support is more important to me than features. If you use Platinum you are pretty much stuck getting support from that site.

In the last week they have probably 100 unanswered posts where here there are maybe 10 unanswered for the week.

registered · Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 7:31 pm

No Longer Served!? seeing how far back these posts go and trying to get in the site at this late date- I hope someone somewhere takes up the project

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 7:47 pm

I agree with TheosEleos, the few times I personally needed help I was ignored, and way too many of the replies to other help requests were short, rude and overall unhelpful to anyone.

New Member Joined: May 01, 2005 Posts: 1

As an admin on techgfx, I do know that are sometimes where a person isnt helped, that is probably for some fair reason, although there are times in which that is not true. We have a couple questions that are asked atleast 20 times over and over and ive noticed the lack of usage of the search on techgfx by the users before asking questions and for those questions that are repeated it is usually ignored and or we respond with use the search. We also get alot of questions in which we sorta realise the user prolly hasnt made an attempt to fix it themselves and sometimes the post gets bumped to the bottom due to volume of posts that we dont even see it. We also get PM's with people asking questions and those are completely ignored as we get a high volume, which does not make sense to me as they are trying to ask one person rather then posting publicly where they can get many people at various times to help them.

The features of platinum are based upon both what techgfx uses to run and what other sites use commonly. Its made so that way its not restricted to a specific type of nuke user but to accomodate many different types of users and so we put modules/mods to help them out. The modules can obviously be removed by deleting the folders in the modules folder and the forum mods can just not be used such as the arcade. I dont use half the stuff that platinum has but it only took me 10 minutes to remove what I didnt want.

Im not trying to offend any of you, and I don't deny a slight response problem, but I do just wish to let you know its not as much that we lack the will to support, but do get alot of questions, and sometimes the person who does know the answer isnt on in time to answer the question. I will however see about improving the posting some in order to provide better support for the suite and see about improving the project overall itself.

Thank You
Distortedcore [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6433

Distortedcore, thanks for the followup. I think we can all appreciate the lack of use of the search feature. I used to get 10-20 emails each day from visitors asking questions that were clearly answered either in the forums or in other parts of the site. I eventually removed the feedback function, but re-enabled it recently after some visitors requested it in the forum. Within 2 days, the same old problem reoccurred - even though I specifically stated on the contact page to check the forums first and made the contact categories VERY specific (e.g. "Issues not appropriate for the forums").

We often get bogged down answering the same questions over and over, when (we feel) our time would be better spent solving real problems, improving / enhancing the software, or adding new modules.

Platinum is growing - maybe it would help to grow the list of moderators. That can sometimes be difficult, but it's not impossible to find the right people to help provide effective support.

Keep up the good work...

New Member Joined: Dec 28, 2004 Posts: 2

Also, for the rude responses to many posts, we have seen this and have discussed this problem within the last week, so hopefully this won't happen, just understand some of us get tired and are a little rude because we just got done dealing with someone being rude to us, so if you could try to take everything we say with a grain of salt we surely would appreciate it. thank you very much for expressing your opinion as we have noted it.

Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 11:38 pm

Hi Folks

I wanted to cautiously respond to this thread and make a few corrections to statements here while making a point that I think should be expressed.

Please note that I've recently been named a support moderator here, but what I am about to talk about has nothing to do with that, Ravenphpscripts.com or anything here, but rather my personal experience as someone that is not only running Platinum in production, but is also a major contributor to the cause in terms of support to the Platinum community as well as being on the BETA staff and contributing literally thousands of bug fixes for the upcoming version.

I have personally spent more than 250 hours debugging the latest version (which is still in BETA) and am solely responsible for making it the very first version of any form of PHP-Nuke to be fully W3C Compliant. That includes not only user screens, but admin screens as well. (You can access my domain and Platinum BETA 7.6.3 domain for examples and new files). Needless to say, I've been committed to Platinum development.

Now... First, I wanted to point out that NukeSentinel is not preinstalled, but rather Protector is pre-installed and an older version of NukeSentinel is included as an optional add-on that must be installed separately.

Platinum also uses a non-NukeSentinel-developer-endorsed, proprietary installation routine for installing NukeSentinel. I have already gone into my concerns about that issue extensively at the techgfx.com site and thus I won't go into it further here, but will rather simply mention that if anyone wants to use NukeSentinel with Platinum, they SHOULD NOT use the included version or scripts, but rather download a copy of NukeSentinel from an NSN authorized distribution site (yes, like from here at Raven's or directly from Bob at [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] or any other NSN approved site).

As for the comments about including FriendFinder, Photo Gallery, Instant Messaging and Blog/Journal, I should point out that all of those modules have different (many with severe security) issues that would make inclusion undesired. No offense, but if you are looking to start a dating site, go write your own solutions or put together the modules on your own. Generally speaking the Nuke community doesn’t need those modules, only select few people need them and only for a very select function.. (dating sites).

Journal is included and there are Blog mods out there now. I suspect that you will see a blog function in the new upcoming version.

As for support issues, I would merely point out that if it takes 10 minutes for a page to load, chances are you aren’t wasting your day away waiting for a screen to load at techgfx.com so you can reply to posts. Further, I’m sure everyone by now is familiar with the concept of users not searching so I’ll simply leave that alone.

Next, for 3 or 4 months now I have had serious concerns due to some of the horrendous problems that the domain has been having, which have gone completely ignored and have simply been unresolved, even to today. Regardless of the reasons for this situation, it has been a serious concern to many other respected contributors/developers as well.

In fact, if you have been trying to do anything at techgfx.com for the past few days, you would undoubtedly have noticed that the domain pages don't load, you can't navigate, post forum messages or even read old posts and if you do actually get an email notification of a reply, it is pointing to an invalid or incorrect message id. If you do manage to get a page to load, good luck going to any other page. You can click that button all day long, but it won't go anywhere.

Thus, effective two days ago, I officially posted in the BETA developers forum that I was leaving the techgfx.com community and would no longer provide either technical support nor post additional fixes for the Platinum 7.6.x solutions in techgfx.com forums due to these major problems that IMHO have been ignored for far too long.

I’ve spent far too many hours simply staring at my screen waiting for a techgfx.com page to load and have run into or discovered FAR TOO MANY other serious bugs or problems with the domain to address here. I find the entire situation at techgfx.com utterly ridiculous and ultimately a deal-killer.

The performance issues (of having to wait for up to 10 minutes for a single page to load) went on for MONTHS... Not days, not weeks... MONTHS!

The domain has never been right and people seem more concerned about applying for nonsensical awards (see the left block if you can actually get a page to load) than fixing the serious problems that in my humble opinion seriously damage the reputation of not only Nuke, but Platinum itself.

Why anyone would want Platinum after visiting techgfx.com is beyond me. A User MUST have seen Platinum run somewhere else OTHER THAN techgfx.com to become interested in the solution, that much is certain.

I've seen moderators and admins blame this on hosting, but that is really no excuse when there are dozens of great hosts out there that the domain could be migrated to, in a single day. Raven's is one of them, but if need be, I could provide others. Furthermore, MANY problems with the domain are configuration and file maintenance issues and unrelated to hosting. I can cite at least a dozen problems that I have identified that are causing problems, but I'm sure there are more than that.

I find the whole situation at [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] to be embarrassing to everyone involved and while I have never blamed anyone, I certainly think someone is to blame, though I would never presume to point a finger. Nevertheless, I identified my concerns several times over the past months in private areas (no, I didn't want to make a big deal about these issues in public) and even sent emails to Tech offering to either help, or simply to fix the problems personally if others couldn’t, but never got any reply or response to those offers.

I also know that I am not alone in this regard as well. Other major contributors and developers have contacted me in confidence expressing serious concerns about what is going on and also have claimed to offering help in resolving these serious issues, but as was the case with me, to no avail.

In the end, I simply got sick of waiting around for someone to take action while also being concerned that someone might associate the serious techgfx.com problems with me as an endorser and developer of the solution, which I simply would never allow. I will continue to use Platinum (until I find or write something better) and will continue to help Platinum developers, but I will no longer do it via techgfx.com.

Anyway.. Nuff said! I thought that I should mention not only the clarifications, but my opinions about the situation with techgfx.com and the evolution of Platinum.

I suspect this very new involvement now by TechGFX staff here is due to the fact that they can't access techgfx.com themselves anymore, but again I want to emphasize... no hard feelings, only frustrations.

Steph

Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 2:41 am

Hi 64bitguy, as always, thank you for the good reading.

You are not the only one who raised voice against those issues but let's see if goose does anything about it (actually from my understanding he is doing his best to fix this problem).
My question to you is that I have been following your fixes and changes in beta section of TechGFX and LOVED every bit of it, would you still continue to release those changes on your test site as you have been or you are out from fixing PNP game?

I would really appriciate if you continue your great work but then again, it's in your hands.

Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 3:37 am

As you've seen (because you know where my test domain is), I've been working on Platinum full-time for a while now, but I'm taking a break while I completely rewrite my PHP-Nuke Syndicated News module from the ground up.

To answer your question directly, it will probably be a little while before I dive back into Platinum. Given all that has transpired, I have a pretty bad taste in my mouth right now. In any event, when I do release updates, look for them on my BETA test domain but don't expect update notifications at techgfx.com.

When you say he is working on it ... what do you mean? Does spending two or three minutes a day count as working on it? If my domain didn't work for 4 days, I would have a mutiny on my hands. I can't imagine my domain running like that for a day, nevermind a week, a month, a few months. The latest problems have affected the domain for a solid week now! If it were me, I would have changed hosts after the first day, I wouldn't be messing around and pretending that it isn't going on and leaving my community in the dark about everything. But I guess that's just me.

Steph

Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 3:55 am

I don't know whats the best way to put this but let me try.

He has been working full-time. Then he has some health problems which I don't wanna go into details and most of all he is alone and have been doing everything on his own. Now I understand there are many people like you who have offered to help but he like to keep the "game" simple and one-man-show for any unwelcomed confusions in the future.

When I said he has been working on the issues, I means he is trying his best to fix the problems as soon he gets some time off from work and health problem, let's not talk about his social as I am not sure he has any left.
At the end it all comes down to one thing and that is he is only one and we should expact so much from only one person.

He should take up offers like you have made to help him out but at the end of the day it's his who has to decide.

Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 4:39 pm

on the other hand, I totally understand what you are talking about 64bit, I have also given up momentarily visiting techgfx but will when it appears tat the speed issues are fixed, now as for the speed issues being tech's fault, I in no way blame him for the speed issues, but it has been progressively getting worse since we went beta with 7.6.0 way back in November or so, yes he has been having health problems, and a awful social life, but over the process of 3 months don't you think it could have been possible to copy everything over to another host even if just temporarily, because I mean we all know the work and time it takes to transfer stuff, so maybe 2 days or so to do it, I am sure that in the end we would all be happier with much faster access after waiting a few days.

Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 6:56 pm

64bitguy wrote:

...As for the comments about including FriendFinder, Photo Gallery, Instant Messaging and Blog/Journal, I should point out that all of those modules have different (many with severe security) issues that would make inclusion undesired. No offense, but if you are looking to start a dating site, go write your own solutions or put together the modules on your own. Generally speaking the Nuke community doesn’t need those modules, only select few people need them and only for a very select function.. (dating sites). ....

Okay I must disagree with This most sites i deal with are Car(or other type of) Clubs and Gaming Guild/Clans lumping all the needs for gallery (i.e. SECURITY!) to just dating sites is very un "IT" of you, (I Know I've been in IT a very long long time), everything else you said is spot on!

Mesum wrote:

don't know whats the best way to put this but let me try.

He has been working full-time. Then he has some health problems which I don't wanna go into details and most of all he is alone and have been doing everything on his own. Now I understand there are many people like you who have offered to help but he like to keep the "game" simple and one-man-show for any unwelcomed confusions in the future.

When I said he has been working on the issues, I means he is trying his best to fix the problems as soon he gets some time off from work and health problem, let's not talk about his social as I am not sure he has any left.
At the end it all comes down to one thing and that is he is only one and we should expact so much from only one person.

He should take up offers like you have made to help him out but at the end of the day it's his who has to decide.

How very fortunate for those at Techgfx that so many make excuse's for them. Unfortunitly I see why many like 64bit are shieing away, if you present yourself and produce a product that you want people to use in favor of something simular then you bear the responsibility to support it, if you can no longer do it then you need to recognize that you need others to aide you, I'm not being cold , nor uncaring, I realize that Health, and personal issue come up, but as I said earlier I've been an IT professional for a very, very , long time, I would lose much if I preformed that way and had others make nice for me without the benifit of picking up the slack. If, as you seem to say, know TG and the situation so closely then implore him/her to ask for help, in the long run it will only benifit Nuke Platinum...

Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 7:01 pm

Quote:

Okay I must disagree with this as most sites i deal with are Car (or other type of) Clubs and Gaming Guild/Clans. Lumping all the needs for gallery (i.e. SECURITY!) to just dating sites is very un "IT" of you, (I Know I've been in IT a very long long time), everything else you said is spot on!

What I meant was ALL of those modules together represent a significant security AND performance issue to the baseline solution. For example, we all know about the very problematic Photo Gallery module. Security has always been a problem there.... But couple that with the other modules identified and you've got a real monster on your hands. Futhermore, if you read the wording of the original post, it's pretty obvious what the desire is.

I don't think a Clan site is looking for photo-gallery, FriendFinder, and Instant Messaging together as "essential modules... " I mean cummon. Clan members already have 50 other ways to IM (I mean let's be real here) and would you really want your host shutting you down for consuming those resources? But FriendFinder or photo-gallery being classified as "an essential module?". Sorry, but again, the security issues of the many outweight the needs of the few. Finally, the server resources that the Photo Gallery module consumes makes it impossible to add it as a "standard" module. Those that wouldn't use it, would suffer great performance degradation for absolutely no reason.

You can add those modules on your own, but given how much work they need individually, I wouldn't endorse any nuke solution that includes them other than Dragonfly which has enhanced security over regular nuke. This is what I meant, though I could have probably said it better..

Next... to reply to the other posts.

I'm not sure that it would be proper of me to make assumptions about anything, and as I have said, I have refrained from pointing fingers at anyone in particular.

I do want to point one thing out. While I feel bad that work, Tech's health and other circumstances are affecting his life, that should NOT intefere with the evolution of the solution that SOOOOO many others are working on, nor with the ability to offer support.

The solution was put out there. People were assured support would be provided and many people are working on fixing and further developing it.

If these personal issues are affecting Tech's ability to do what needs to be done in hosting the domain (after all, there are a bunch of moderators and admins), then he should simply hand the solution and domain off to someone else that can handle those responsibilities. You simply can't leave the community hanging out to dry for any reason whatsoever. It's not ethical.

The fact that these problems have been going on for months indicates that the job is not getting done and the community is suffering because of it. It's not a server problem, it's a, "Who's running the show" problem. You can't simply say, "Oh well, the site has been down for 9 days and counting, but it doesn't matter" IT MATTERS!

As for what it takes to move, it takes less than one day to purchase new hosting, pack everything up, move it, unpack it and change DNS. It usually takes 24-36 hours for DNS to start resolving (Depending on who the registrar is and the host, it could be as little as 2 hours). I know, I do it regularly for others and I even did all four of my domains this year, which took about 4 hours of my time.

My personal opinion (as is all of this) is that at this point, someone else needs to assume control of Platinum hosting and management of the day-to-day server functions including management of the files that operate the support site and general total oversight of the domain. Then the many moderators and admins could do their jobs, people could get support and development could continue.

Things simply can't continue as they are as it is not fair the the developers, the moderators, the administrators BUT ESPECIALLY to the community of users that have deployed Platinum for hosting at THEIR domains. To make assurances to these folks that the domain will be there (which is hasn't) and to shut these people out and to make excuses for it for MONTHS, AND YET STILL fail to do something about it is just plain wrong and anyone that argues otherwise is just being foolish.

So again, while I might feel bad for Tech, none of that matters. What matters is that something gets done about what is going on at the domain. If Tech can't address it immediately and pro-actively as needed, he needs to give it to someone that can.

Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 10:12 pm

Quote:

How very fortunate for those at Techgfx that so many make excuse's for them.

One sees what he or she wants to see. I posted what I saw, what I felt, I wasn't making any excuses for anyone. He not my child or brother who I am supposed to take care, someone I respect, because of his help and I get to talk to him more often than some others who have posted here.

We all agree on the issue of website and poor webhosting. We all want to see results and from what it seems, we want them NOW.

Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 2:25 pm

After reading all of these posts I have to say I feel bad for posting my initial reply without elaborating a bit...

The folks at techgfx are awesome at what they do. My post wasn't meant as a derogatory statement in anyway. As always....I post something that is my gut reaction reply and then when I read it later I think to myself "Jeez Curt, could you have sounded more like a jerk" *LOL*

I merely meant that I personally didn't get much help the few times I requested it. The site and forum overall is an excellent resource though, not to mention how much work those folks actually put into a freebie.

So... I hope I didn't offend anyone like I have a terrible habit of doing. *smacks self*

Those of you in the community that know me, well you know I have one of those personalities that may appear rude and abrasive at times but is no way intended to be that way.

Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 3:18 pm

Nobody took it badly or the wrong way Curtis, (at least from my point of view) all of our personalities tend to show differently in reading, especially depending on how many cups of coffee or how little sleep we'd had when we wrote the post. But frustration from personal experiences are hard to ignore.

Finally, I would only mention that your experiences probably happened in the extremely frustrating "USE THE **** SEARCH BUTTON" phase when people were posting the same thing 1000 times.

In any event, I would close by saying that the domain has been totally non-functional for a solid month now, leaving Platinum users like myself totally out in the cold, which kind of trumps your initial comments. Sad

I've started writing my own fork, I'm calling it, "8 PUKED"

Posted: Sat May 21, 2005 3:21 pm

oops!... I did leave out that particular tid bit didn't I? Wonder if they will be back or if this is the end of Platinum.