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Wanchope

  • Posts: 234
My Journey with Wedge.
« on April 27th, 2015, 11:46 AM »Last edited on April 27th, 2015, 12:02 PM
Hi,

    This is a sort of Diary on creating a Forum using Wedge forum Software which I don't think will be a 'big' board or something special but I don't want it to be a mediocre forum either.  The title of the thread 'my journey with wedge' may be strange but I don't have any other thread title that may be more suitable to it.

What type if forum do I want to create? I want to create a Nigerian Movies Forum. Why Nigerian Movies? I think Nigeria Movies have a huge following not only in Nigeria but Africa at a whole. Is there any popular Nigerian Movies Forum? Yes
Code: [Select]
naijarules.com
but I think they are not getting many things right...

Why Wedge?
This is a choice I made after some considerations, I have 4 Forum software in mind which are
Xenforo : I purchased Xenforo Software license immediately after Paypal added my country, the software is not bad but I just don't see the much hype. The message display is annoying, 'ajaxyfying' everything including the member card pop up can become so boring after sometime, if you request a little mod, some of the developers will charge you up to $300 to do it for you.

SMF: A great forum software and free, with very friendly support community. So strange but the forum have no mobile theme, I understand 2.1 is responsive but it is still not okay for me, I need forum with a separate mobile theme. I've came across Dragoon's Smf4Mobile in which I was impressed but the painful fact is that is not usable in Opera Mini browser and about 60% of Nigerian internet users are uses Opera Mini browser so the answer is - No! Elkarte is also great but the same Responsive issue goes with them.

MYBB: A great forum software despite the childish support community, Euan, Leedfish and Yaldaram are great guys though, I am currently using Mybb in a new http://sajforum.com. The mobile plugin/theme is great but they have no great media gallery addon. Creating a movie forum with no gallery  is just not acceptable. The performance of Mybb is questionable, that's why I am using it on a VPS running on  a highly Nginx to web server.

Wedge: A better version of SMF with State-of-Art media gallery built in the core, have all the strength of smf and none of it's weaknesses. Still on beta but it is 100% usable. The developer is just not far away and also a great guy that is available to help when called upon. The Moderation Filter will also be useful in doing some moderation job while I concentrate on Content and quality of the forum. Many medium sized forum are using them too. I chose Wedge over Mybb because of the media functionality and security, also I think it performs better than Mybb (I have no proof to this for now).

My Journey so far.

* I already have a domain I will like to use for it - NerdNg.com.
* I have also purchased a cloud ssd vps with Vultr.
* I have Installed Nginx Webserver ( please don't  tell me about Apache because I have decided not to go back to it again after leaving them since two years ago).
* I have installed Wedge on test folder @ http://nerdng.com/wedge but I have disabled guest access as I am currently working on it. I'ill soon post my observation once I take another close look to it again.

I will always update this thread, please fell free to advise if you feel like.
Thanks.

CerealGuy

  • Posts: 343
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #1, on April 27th, 2015, 03:02 PM »
Nginx is perfectly fine with wedge at far as i have seen it. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that nginx does not support .htaccess files (at least in default installation).

forumsearch0r

  • Posts: 118

Wanchope

  • Posts: 234
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #3, on April 27th, 2015, 05:59 PM »Last edited on April 27th, 2015, 07:49 PM
Quote from forumsearch0r on April 27th, 2015, 05:44 PM
Have you seen ElkArte yet? Another nice SMF fork.
Yes I have, a great forum script but no Media functionality and also the responsive instead of a real mobile theme is a big turn-off (for me anyway)
Quote from CerealGuy on April 27th, 2015, 03:02 PM
Nginx is perfectly fine with wedge at far as i have seen it. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that nginx does not support .htaccess files (at least in default installation).
Thanks for the confirmation, please what configuration are you using for your Nginx /etc/nginx/sites-available/website.com, ie the .htaccess version of Nginx. I just can't find it anywhere in Wege.
CC  @Nao

forumsearch0r

  • Posts: 118
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #4, on April 27th, 2015, 09:49 PM »
What's the advantage of maintaining two complete themes instead?

Wanchope

  • Posts: 234
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #5, on April 28th, 2015, 12:13 AM »Last edited on April 28th, 2015, 03:54 PM
Quote from forumsearch0r on April 27th, 2015, 09:49 PM
What's the advantage of maintaining two complete themes instead?
You can easily beat down and remove what you want in mobile theme, plus you can rid some excess javascript in mobile theme, you may not understand this enough because your site visitors may be  Google Chrome users but right here in Nigeria, opera mini is considered the best option because it saves data and data is costly here. I can't give all the advantages dedicated mobile themes have over responsive. I really know I can hide things with style.css but it is preloaded on the theme which makes the theme size the same with that of desktop. Again, most people that visit forums with mobile phones are not looking for full functionality  -  they just want comfort/ease of use.

forumsearch0r

  • Posts: 118
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #6, on April 28th, 2015, 01:14 AM »
You shouldn't use excess JavaScript anywhere. Indeed, Opera Mini has serious problems with JS overall, but responsive layouts are mostly CSS anyway. And if you use media queries, you can load CSS files from CSS according to your current screen size,  so you don't have to load the whole thing every time.

Wanchope

  • Posts: 234
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #7, on April 28th, 2015, 05:34 AM »
Responsive as I understood is using one theme to render both desktop and mobile theme at the same time, how do you remove Java script on mobile and make it available on desktop at the same theme? This is me not doubting you, I just don't know it can be done, css can to resize the screen size but can it disable Java script / Ajax?  Can it reduce the font on mobile from being different from desktop? Thanks.

forumsearch0r

  • Posts: 118
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #8, on April 28th, 2015, 10:09 AM »
You can also include JavaScript files based on your screen size or even platform. :)
Not in CSS but in JavaScript.

Wanchope

  • Posts: 234
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #10, on April 29th, 2015, 12:14 PM »
An update -
I was not free yesterday but  I took my time to do more settings in the test forum. Very nice and almost everything is working though there may be one or two edits I will do on the template (both wild and Wireless as they are my default desktop and mobile theme respectively).
Whoever wrote the Moderation Filter function did a very fine job and this is highly recommended in a big forum, a must for every big forum believe me.

  Some of the problem or better headache I am still experiencing includes
* Unable to configure the Nginx rewrite rule so I can fully use the pretty Url.
*  There is no function to disable some of the functions I don't need which will always generate unwanted query in every single load, this includes - Thought (great but I don't need it, Nigerian spammers will kill my forum with it before it even kick off). Unwanted query in the media page like file size, members comment and uploads, they are great but I don't really need it and also it doesn't format well on mobile pages.
 This is my position so far on the journey. I will keep you updated.
Thanks.

CerealGuy

  • Posts: 343
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #11, on April 29th, 2015, 01:16 PM »
You can disable thoughts. Somewhere in the admin panel you can configure the startpage. There should be a start page where you can change the objects which should be displayed.

Wanchope

  • Posts: 234
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #12, on April 29th, 2015, 02:11 PM »
I haven't came across the thought disable settings in admin panel, I know I can remove it from home in the settings but the query is always generated unless disabled. Please where do you see the thought settings?

CerealGuy

  • Posts: 343
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #13, on April 29th, 2015, 11:54 PM »
index.php?action=admin;area=featuresettings;sa=home
Sorry don't know the english descriptions, but there you can change it.

Wanchope

  • Posts: 234
Re: My Journey with Wedge.
« Reply #14, on April 30th, 2015, 09:35 AM »
Quote from CerealGuy on April 29th, 2015, 11:54 PM
index.php?action=admin;area=featuresettings;sa=home
Sorry don't know the english descriptions, but there you can change it.
From the link you gave me, there is no option to disable it entirely, just to remove it from the displaying in the homepage. This means that thought query is still executed but to displayed. I was looking for an option to display thought entirely.
Thanks anyway.
« Introduction
Is Wedge free? »