Welcome to UnSyntax Software, the quirkiest community on the web dedicated to software programming across multiple platforms! For nearly 2 years we've been serving the public as a fresh new perspective of already existing languages and standards.

Happy 3rd Birthday UnSS!

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HEY!
I can't believe nobody wished UnSS a happy birthday this year, poor UnSS :(

Well, hopefully someone can bring back some life to this forum, seeing that it almost looks as if it were abandoned... don't worry old girl, someone is still thinking about ya! :wink:

Posted on 21 November 2010 at 10:31 PM by tribal | Discuss This News Article (1) | Digg This Article | Tweet This Article

Another Year Flies By. UnSS is 2 Years Old.

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As of June 30, 2009, UnSS is officially 2 years old. Wow... time really flies when you don't pay attention ^^;
Well, now that we're all settled in, time to get to work. Let's rock this year!

Posted on 30 June 2009 at 05:15 PM by Keith | Discuss This News Article (12) | Digg This Article | Tweet This Article

Transition Finished and UnSyntax Software Returns

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First off, I'd like to say thank you to Alex10819 for hosting UnSS on a subdomain for the first year and a half or so of its life. However, like a fledgling bird, UnSS quickly outgrew its nest and it was time to move on up. However, this process of moving took longer than I expected. In fact, it's a bit embarrassing that it took this long. Nonetheless, the deeds are done and the switch is thrown.

Moving on, I would like to apologize to everyone. As I had originally intended for the move to take only a week or so, I requested that nobody post to the forums as the database was, regrettably, one of the first things I had copied over to the new server. This request essentially snowballed. The few active members of this site didn't post, less active members and newcomers saw no activity and therefore found no reason to come here, and in the end the site was left virtually lifeless for the duration of the last few months. I did not intend to "kill" this forum, rather it was my lack of foresight and inexperience in site management that delivered this fatal blow. Again, I apologize for this and hope that we can get this forum busy again.

Also, I would like to publicly apologize to Alex10819, whom I believe didn't know of my intent to move this site. My not explicitly notifying you and the public of this move was not meant to be an offense to you or your hosting. Your hosting is truly superb and again I thank you for being so kind as to host us.

Pressing on, I'd like to detail just what exactly happened during the months UnSS was being transitioned from one server to another:

Initially, with the move I had intended to switch over from phpBB2 to phpBB3. Built into BB3 is a migration tool for easy conversion of BB2 databases. Sadly, the tool wouldn't work. According to some transition support I found, this tool apparently only works with smaller databases. UnSS's database was too large to migrate and the only way to accomplish a migration would be through the installation and use of offline database applications. Personally, the effort required to migrate this database outweighed the benefits of phpBB3 enough to make the extra effort not worth it.
Deciding to stick with phpBB2, I installed a fresh copy of BB2 to the new server and ported the template files from the old copy. Then, it was down to the simple task of rewriting the templates to make Tetra much smoother. I figured it was the least I could do. I also took the liberty of changing up a few things.
About here was where I probably made the worst mistake. I had decided that, since I was redoing the site anyway, I would go ahead and rewrite the site's file hierarchy system too. Essentially, I wanted to make the site less forum-centric by making all the common files a directory of their own which every other site-related item would call from. In the end, I really had no clue what I was doing and ended up borking the site. I spent countless hours trying to fix all the bugs but the effort was futile. UnSS was hopelessly borked.
Luckily, it was about now that I realized I was being an idiot and decided to just port the entire original forum over, fixing all the problems at once. Finally, transition was done. However, file-working is not. I still have a lot of work to do, smoothing out a lot of the templates that seem to have stopped working properly due to the rewrite. But that's for another day.

In closing, here's a list of what's new, what's coming up, and what's still a bit buggy:

What's New
- Tetra has been smoothed out and feels a bit more like BB3. It's still far off from being a clone of proSilver but it's bubbly-rounded nonetheless
- Obviously, a new site logo. It's a trial. If you all like it, it'll stay. If you all hate it, I'll gladly revert back to the old one
- No more Shade, Neon, or Holiday templates. You're stuck with Tetra and any theme derived from it.
- Non-forum pages are no longer in an /unsyntax/ directory. They're now in the root folder of the domain.
- Changed up the subforum organization.

To Do
- Fix profiles (view and edit), fix PMs, and fix View Topics. They're a bit buggy but they work. If you can manage with them being fugly for now, I'll promise they'll be fixed up by next week.
- Finish Home and Projects pages. Add Links and About page.
- Add archives
- Fix whatever else borked up in the process of moving (or was perhaps still borked from the start)

As you can see, my work is still far from done. At least you have your forum back, guys. I encourage you all to post!

Posted on 3 March 2009 at 02:42 AM by Keith | Discuss This News Article (2) | Digg This Article | Tweet This Article

General Site Updates/Maintenance

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List of General Site Updates and Fixes
6/22/2008 - Fixed "Online Users" issue. It now properly displays who's online on every page.
6/22/2008 - Fixed search bar issue. OnClick and OnBlur value change now properly works.

7/14/2008 - Fixed "Forum - Topics - Posts - Last Post Info" to be proper green color (#00FF00 to #80FF00)

7/15/2008 - Added strike-through BBCode for posting
7/15/2008 - Added in-thread username colors. Admins and Mods now have colored usernames in threads

7/16/2008 - Moved the Admin Panel link to the sidebar. Admin-visible only of course.
7/16/2008 - Removed SAX image from tiSAX box. Pop-up client is offline due to non-functionality.
7/16/2008 - Removed the Users Browsing Forum list since it never properly worked.

7/18/2008 - Added "[username] edited a post in [thread]" function to UnSS SAX.

Posted on 16 July 2008 at 07:44 PM by Keith | Discuss This News Article (8) | Digg This Article | Tweet This Article