The Official Game Maker Community went offline for a couple of hours earlier today and users are still reporting that they are experiencing problems.
An explanation provided by Sandy suggests that maintenance of the site had been neglected, “there was a LOT of old backup and other non essential stuff clogging the hard drive.”
This is not the first time problems at the GMC have occurred because time has not been spent on the site. In March 2008 when YoYo Games introduced their green colour-scheme to the forum they also updated the forum software which had not been kept up-to-date for two and a half years.
Just over a year ago malicious software was injected into the forum after YoYo Games failed to install a critical security patch.
Even now the forum is running Invision Power Board version 2.3.6 which is a year old. The most recent release (3.0.3) was made about a month ago.
All of which is a big no no for the GMC. 😉
I am getting an “IPS Driver Errors” now, like everyone else has been saying 🙁
I think you could classify it as a portal because it contains a gallery, downloads section, blogs, etc.. ^_^
I don’t believe YoYo allows the reqular GMC admins (Chronic and deputy KC LC) to do any major changes to the forum. I think YoYo staffer Marc Simpson (mds) handles all of that stuff.
IPB 3 is radically different, but it doesn’t move to a portal or anything, it just embraces new technology 🙂
But yes, because its a big leap, people are usually hesitant to upgrade. Natural.
As far as I understand it, IPB 3.x series is radically different than the 2.x series, moving more into a portal kind of application rather than a forum boards application. This may explain why they do not want to upgrade.
They could alternatively convert the system to phpBB3: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?p=9367695#p9367695
@Mattthew_H The new office will mean new employees to take responsibility for things like this.
@Clavus YoYo Games were not involved with Game Maker 6 years ago although I agree with your point.
What’d you expect. YoYo Games didn’t really make a name in keeping things up-to-date… I mean, finally alpha .png support in Game Maker 8. Just 6 years late or so.
YoYo are more bothered about the YoYo Games Forums…
I’m not actually entirely sure why YYG are ordering an entirely new server for the YYG Forums. Maybe it’s to minimize the threat of YYG.com getting attacked or whatever has gone wrong with the forums.
I agree with the fact that they should update the forum software, however, the Admins could do that too, couldn’t they?
As far as I see it, if falls under there responsibility.
Maintenance does seem to be a problem though… makes me wonder why they don’t get things sorted out before they get there new offices. Maybe hire some dedicated staff to specific roles?
It gave me an IPS error earlier today,
but the GMC works since 15 minutes ago for me.