Need advice, TP1 vs TP2

[louhi]

Hello guys. Want to thank devteam first for the great project and your time you spend on us.
I need advice, really do. Hope you can help me.

I have the site running SMF 1.1.10 and TP 0.983. It was set up several years ago and has pretty oldschool (read: ugly) design. Time has come to make it a new appearance, add new features and so on. To be honest, new design should be done from scratch.

And i cant decide what to do. Im afraid that if i will do all job with SMF1 and TP1, next day TP2 will get released and hey-ho: lets do this again. Staying with TP1 is not the option, since i need some TP2 features (f.e. blogs and gallery) badly.

And so i have two questions, would be great to get answer from someone who knows all this TP staff from inside.

1. If you were me, would you start work with SMF1 and TP1 now or would wait for TP2? I can wait.. but clearly not another year.
2. Lets imagine that we have TP1 site (not even near to default or common theme). Now TP2 (suddenly) comes. How hard will be migrating? Will it be possible to painlessly convert one template into another or everything should be done again from scratch?

Thank you very much for the answers.

[Ken.]

louhi, there is no fixed date for a release of TinyPortal 2.0... it is likely to be some time away.

But no matter how long it will be before TP2.0 is released, updating your forum is a good idea because of all of the improvements and additional features available in TinyPortal v1.0 beta 4 as compared to TP098.

It's a choice that only you can make and it would entail some amount of work to do the updates, but IMHO it would be worth the effort.

[mc]

I've currently got the same dilemna.

At the moment, I've got one site in need of an overhaul, one in development, and another one currently in the thinking stage.

They'll all be based on SMF, but I'd also like TP as the portal. TP is by far the best portal I've used, but I don't want to write mods for SMF1.1, given how SMF2 development is progressing.


I know Bloc has stated that TP2 won't likely be ready until after SMF2 final appears, but it would be nice to have some sort of update as to how it is progressing (along with the next release of TP1).

In the meantime, I'm concentrating on my development site, with the aim of having something functional within the next couple of months.

[G6Cad]

When are you going to learn ?
We will NEVER give any time limits on the development of TP as it changes by the day depending in new ideas, things Bloc try out and things he adds/removes etc.
A big factor is also the time he put in, everything is done on his free time, with free we mean free from family, friends, and work.

When something is about to be released you will be the first to know, at this time, not even Bloc knows when something can be released, so please, learn that and read what we have said over and over again, when you can download it, then it's released, when you can read about the development, there will ne a news topic posted about it. We simply cant say, give or do anything else...

[mc]

Nobody was asking for time limits.

The original poster was asking for some advice about how to progress with developing their site, and I was asking if there was some chance of an update on progress.

This post by Bloc over on the SM forums, revealed far more information about what's currently happening, than anything that's been posted on this site lately.

Most people appreciate that Bloc is not willing to commit to any time limits, but it would be nice to have an occasional update as to what's happening.

[G6Cad]

As i said, it will not be posted as we cant say anything as of yet.
To plan for something not even alphatested by our alpha team are not somehting we can even give any ideas or thoughts about what os ever.
Plan for what you have available is the only thing we can say. TP2 is not even in alpha stage for our alphateam, so what do you expect us to say more then we have said allready in numerous posts here on TP ?

Elaborate on features inside TP V2 we can always do, but whats in it now, whats planned to be in it, or whats planned to change or not we cant say as we dont know our selfs, noone on this site have the TP2 package Bloc have developed the past 6 months, The one we have was a very early test version, more or less a version TPV1 ported to "work" with SMF2, but the one developed right now for the past 6 months is a compleate rewright of TP, all new code, all new files, no port from tp v1, but a compleate new package written from scratch and noone on this site have even seen it on a live site or a dev site, so please, dont expect us to write up what, when and where it will contain, release or anything, cause we simply cant give you any info we dont have.

[bloc]

I am sorry for being silent for some time - as G6 says, i did rewrite large parts of the code for v1 beta5, since the current code is frankly a bit ineffective and keep cropping up with bugs.

The rewrite is now almost done and TP 1.0 beta5 is under initial testing before alpha testers can take it for a test-drive.It has support for both SMF 1.1 and SMF2 in the same package and also enhances a few things that were considered bugs earlier. No groundbreaking stuff, but some screens have fo example halfed the db queries count, and generally the code is cleaned up. This have taken some time, as I also been working on themes - not to mention a couple of months working to get SMF 2.0 RC2 new default theme finished.(TP 1.0 beta5 will also support SMF 2.0 RC2, but not until SMF 2.0 RC2 is officially released)

To answer the original question: there will be no TP 2, at least for quite some time. Instead TP1.0 will continue to its v1.0 final version, and being as stable as possible. The "TP2" portion(which really was just TP1 working within SMF2) have been merged and everything is now ONE version to relate to. Like some mods do it, for example SimplePortal, the package will sense what SMF version you are on.

I hope this clears up some of the confusion.

Bloc

[louhi]

Oh my god. TP working with SMF2 on its way? I must have been dreaming.
Thank you guys for your answers.

[mc]

Thanks for the update Bloc (and for all the effort you put in!).

It's nice to know that things are progressing, and that we should hopefully see something in the not too distant future.