Admin Extra 3.0

[The Sandman]

@Shelley - I switched over to the revamped Pumpkins in Sidebar (weren't they called something else before?) but I'm not sure that the smaller ones with the livestock weren't better suited for AdEx. On your site the larger ones definitely look better (weren't we discussing this before - I can't find the posts?).

 

[Shelley]

I'll be honest, I haven't got a clue what discussion your referring to. I only recently designed those revamped larger pumpkins so they were definitely not titled anything else other than what they are now.

 

[The Sandman]

I figured it out - it was the discussion Here, where the smaller pumpkins in sidebar is called "Pumpy Poopy Pants". On BBSmiley it's simly called "Pumpkins in Sidebar". I couldn't find it here because I was searching for "pumpkin" in the title. I knew I'd replied to it though. Sorry for the confusion.

Which version do you like better on AdEx?

 

[Shelley]

I figured it out - it was the discussion Here, where the smaller pumpkins in sidebar is called "Pumpy Poopy Pants". On BBSmiley it's simly called "Pumpkins in Sidebar". I couldn't find it here because I was searching for "pumpkin" in the title. I knew I'd replied to it though. Sorry for the confusion.

Which version do you like better on AdEx?

Oh right yeah. that one went a slight name change on my site. I prefer the ones you have now, they would look better being a tad smaller though (which I might do tomorrow) as I prefer the revamped design but prefer the sizes of the pumpkins to be slightly smaller.

I got lazy instead of adjusting the anchor points layer by layer I re-sized the layer set. If time permits tomorrow, I'll release a slightly smaller pumpkins within that image.

 

[The Sandman]

There's been a lot of changes on AdEx since October. Today I upgraded the forum to XenForo 1.3.0 Beta 3. We're still using a customized version of Arty's Soft Responsive (AdEx 3.0) as well as Audentio's UI.X (customized by Sheldon and called AdEx 4.0). We've installed a bunch of add-ons, including Featured Threads, Showcase, XenZine, and XenForo Resources.

I've had a new server built by WiredTree which should be on line in the next few days. It will be *much* faster and more stable than the current one. Once we've migrated to the new server we'll use the old one temporarily for test purposes to allow us to modify TAZ to run on PHP 5.4 or 5.5 so we can finally move away from PHP 5.2.

 

[The Sandman]

Admin Extra is now running on the new server! If you visit the site and the forums are closed you're still on the old site - the new forums are open! Thanks @MattW for getting Admin Extra up and running on the new server so quickly.

Server specs:

» Intel Xeon E3-1230V3
» 16GB DDR3 ECC 1600 RAM
» Primary Disk: 2x120GB Intel S3500 SSD RAID-1
+ LSI 9271-4i RAID Controller
» Backup Disk: 1000GB WD Black 7.2k RPM HDD
» cPanel / WHM
» SuperMicro Hardware / Hotswappable Chassis
» 1Gbps Network Ports
» Fully Managed - 24x7 Phone + Helpdesk
+ LiteSpeed 2 CPU License

Yeah, it's fast. And it hasn't been fully tweaked yet by any means.

 

[The Sandman]

AdEx is now running HTTPS as standard!

HTTPS is a secure implementation of HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), which basically means that the HTTP protocol is layering over the SSL/TLS protocol, which does two things:

1. Encrypts the data sent from your browser to the AdEx server which prevents snooping while data is being transferred.
2. Authenticates the site so you can make sure you're connecting to the official AdEx servers, rather than a copy-cat/phishing site.

It may seem a little overkill to force HTTPS on a site like AdEx, but we believe we should do everything we can to protect our users and that it's important to set an example to other forum communities.

Thanks to @Null and @MattW for getting this up and running! The cost of the certificate and the work involved in making the site SSL compliant was reasonable, and there doesn't seem to be any significant increase in server load.

 

[The Sandman]

I finally came to realize (as many of you had told me) that it just didn't make sense to run two sites in the same niche. So when I converted TAZ to XenForo I merged AdEx into it. Admin Extra no longer exists as a separate entity but the goodness of its members and its content lives on as part of The Admin Zone.