New features
- New website design – tell us what you think about it!
- 100% mobile friendly – forum can be browsed using a smartphone or tablet
- Built-in notifications system
- New modern and professional licensed forum software (XenForo + custom mods)
- Better dedicated server with faster speed and better hardware
- Bought a license for a faster web server (cpNGINX)
- Faster download speed
- Lots of new features in the forum
- Built-in social network
- Hardened security against hackers + secure SSL-encoded connection (https)
- Upgraded to the latest version of Linux CentOS + PHP + SQL + NGINX + cPanel (bought all paid licenses)
- Better social network integration. We also got a new automated Facebook page sharing daily anarcho-punk bands’ images/biography.
- Stronger anti-spam protections
New features added in June 2017:
- Modern live chat room
- Improved search engine with A.I.
- New smilies + integration of hundreds of classic Emojis
- Optimized alerts – You can now subscribe to forum notifications to get alerts in your browser (Chrome or Firefox) or push notifications to your Android or iOs device
- Improved member profiles. On top of your avatar, you now can set your own profile banner just like on Facebook
- Preview of an external link when the mouse pointer is over the link
- Giphy integration to post animated images in replies
- Forum tour and help function for new members to learn how to use the forum
- Optimized images
- Dozens of other minor improvements and new backend functions
- Improved subcategories sorting for the International Anarcho-Punk Downloads section
- No data was lost. All downloads were migrated to the new website.
Why a new website?
8 years ago, Anarcho-Punk.net was launched using a customized version of a forum software called phpBB. The forum system was heavily modified to fit our needs for a music download database, making it almost impossible to upgrade and this is why the website didn’t have any major updates since 2009. The Web changed a lot since 2009 and APN couldn’t keep up with modern technology anymore.
– There were many securities issues with the old version and running outdated software was putting us at risk against hackers. First, the connection on the website wasn’t even properly encrypted with a secure SSL connection. Also, phpBB lacks of good anti-spam security so we got a lot of spam. Mar from the moderator team has been dealing with spam bots almost every day but the problem kept getting worse.
– The old version was so outdated that it wasn’t even optimized for smartphones and mobile devices. Today, statistics show that the average website gets at least 50% of its traffic from mobile devices. This means that half of the web traffic can’t even navigate on this website. Also, the google search engine downranks websites that are poorly optimized for mobile devices, which means we also get less traffic from computers. All of this means fewer people were coming to this forum.
There was only one solution and it involves serious investments in time and money. We have to start over from scratch and rebuild this website. This update has been on our to-do list forever but we just never had the time to do it. However recently we started having bigger problems and now members were getting disconnected while browsing the forum, making it totally unusable.
The website is still under construction
So here we are. During the next days and weeks, this forum will be under construction so don’t be surprised if you see big changes or weird things going on during the update. The new website will have a better design and we’re going to add a lot of features to this forum so it may take some time until everything is ready. We hope everything will be finished until 1 month.
When Version 2 is completed, we’re going to send an e-mail message to all members about the update in order to make the forum alive again.
Thankfully, the No-Gods-No-Masters.com t-shirts shop has us covered with the fees and will be donating over $1000 USD to upgrade this forum. Our team volunteers for web development to lead the migration and we hired professionals to help (same team as NGNM). We bought a modern forum software and we’re modifying it to look similar to the old forum while ensuring it’s future-proof and upgradeable. Don’t worry we’re not asking for money and we don’t need fundraisers. If you want to help, just spread the word to help make this community alive again.
One year ago we did the same thing and upgraded the old french-speaking “Resistance Forum” which became Libertaire.net. Over 12 months, we doubled the statistics of the website and the forum is now receiving twice more traffic as before. Check it out here to see what can be done: Libertaire.net – communauté militante et ressources anarchistes
Screenshot of the NEW version
Screenshot of the OLD version
Original Post
https://www.anarcho-punk.net/threads/major-update-anarcho-punk-net-version-2.18338/