From the Editor

TMP's Great Migration: Progress Report #4

Have been making substantial progress this week on the new Membership System:

Now in place are basics such as log in and log out, access controls, new account creation, and profile pages. I'll be working on account editing next. Also, I'm concentrating on function at the moment, the styling will come later.

TMP's Great Migration: Progress Report #3

There's not much to see yet, but here's a screenshot of the new TMP's homepage so far:

The new content management system is up and running, and I have been able to successfully import some data from the old site to the new site. I am now working on the design of the new databases.

Remembrance Sunday

In the United Kingdom, Remembrance Sunday is the second Sunday of November, the Sunday nearest to 11 November (Remembrance Day), which is the anniversary of the end of the hostilities of the First World War at 11 a.m. in 1918.

Steve Blease's son is Head Chorister at Bristol Cathedral. Earlier this year, he recorded the old hymn O Valiant Hearts. Steve created this short stills movie.

TMP's Great Migration: Progress Report #2

As I've announced, TMP will be moving to a new software package to support its current size and to leave room for continued growth.

Based on my current research, it now appears that it will be possible to use an off-the-shelf content management system, import the data from the old databases, and tweak the software to make everything work.

I am currently setting up the test databases under MySQL.

TMP's Great Migration: Progress Report

As I've mentioned before, TMP needs to migrate to a new platform due to its continued growth.

Based on my initial research, the best candidate appears to be PHP and Zend Framework, and I am familiarizing myself with them now. I have already been able to get a test website (very, very basic!) up and running.

Is TMP Showing Its Age?

With a number of recent gremlins in the system - topics disappearing some mornings, membernames sometimes switched then switched back, yesterday's annoying Daylight Savings Time bug, and more - is TMP getting old?

No. Unlike you and me, code doesn't age. The problem, rather, is one of size - TMP is becoming too big. Or, in other words, certain of our databases - the membership system, the main forum - are becoming difficult to manage for the programming language on which TMP is built.

Since the weakness is in the underlying programming language, the ultimate solution is to migrate ("port") our server code over to a programming language with better database support. I am looking into this now.