So, those of you who follow the forums are no doubt already aware that I'm in the process of putting together OGA 2.0.  It's going to have some major new features, which I'm not going to discuss at length here -- you can read about them in the OGA 2.0 forum. :)

What I would like to discuss is a point release before OGA 2.0 that will (hopefully) make the site a little more pleasant to use, and make development a lot quicker and easier for me.

Here's the deal:

The current version of OGA has a lot of legacy junk left over from when I didn't really understand Drupal very well.  I made some architectural mistakes, and because of that, a simple Drupal version upgrade (the current site runs Drupal 6, whereas 2.0 will run on Drupal 7) is impractical.  Instead, I've written a 1000+ line data migration module that copies all the content over, reorganizes it a bit, and sets up the new site.  Unfortuantely, every time I make a change to OGA2, I have to add that change into the migration script and re-run it to make sure everything migrates propertly.  I'm not going to mince words here: This is a time consuming pain in the ass.

So, what I'd like to do is get the Drupal 7 site to a point where we have feature parity with the current version, then move the site over to that.  Afterwards, I can develop the beta version of the site without having to maintain a bunch of ugly data migration code, which will make my life vastly easier.  Plus, most people agree that the new site is a lot nicer than the old one. :)

As I see it, here's what still needs to be done (I'll cross these off as I do them):

• Searching needs to work. (It's broken now -- no idea why)  (apparently I need to run the search index command manually when nodes are first imported)
• Art browsing needs to work.  (Turns out if I just create a menu link to an advanced search, it should work fine)
• As much as possible, old links to art need to point to the right place.
• Medals need to be moved over.  The actual module works, but the content isn't there yet.
• Stats blocks need to be moved as well (top submitters, etc)
• Links and articles need to be moved.
• The blog needs to work again.  (ugly but working)
• User permissions need to map correctly (right now, everyone is just a regular user on the new site)
• The FAQ needs to be moved. (gonna just do this manually after the site is live)
• Our RSS feeds. (should be easy)
• Audio previews. (This is mostly working, but needs some additional help)
• Friends and favorites. (currently in progress)
• Theme tweaks.

None of the above tasks is *particuarly* major, although given the slow development process, they may take a little while yet.  I honestly don't know for sure how long it will be.

There are a couple things that we might have to temporarily give up, due to the fact that the necessary drupal modules haven't been updated for Drupal 7 yet:

• Twitter announcements of new art
• Polls

In addition to making development easier, this will also allow me to introduce new site features as they're added, as opposed to making everyone wait for all of them to be done at once.

I'll keep everyone posted as I make progress.  For now, you can check out the beta site here:

http://beta.opengameart.org

Please withhold comments on the big, empty left side bar until I've had a chance to actually put content in it.  The beta site isn't done yet.  However, at this point, you shouldn't be running into errors or theming bugs.  If you see any such issues, please let me know so I can get them fixed before we go live.  Oh, and feel free to submit whatever you want to the beta site for testing purposes, but understand that I will wipe the data frequently.  Any new submissions to the beta site will be lost permanently.  I'm not kidding.

Peace out,

Bart K.

P.S. Just to be clear, the beta site IS NOT OGA 2.0.  There are a lot of features yet to implement for OGA2, and this point release doesn't mean that I'm not going to address those features; in fact, as I said, it should make development a lot faster.

Just wanted to let everyone know that we'll be doing another expansion of the wildly popular spell icon sets.  This time OGA is teaming up with the Weaver Project for the commission, with another 10 spell "families" including sizes and color variations on each.  Note that we already have the funding to pay for this set, so it won't be in the commission box.  We're still looking for a commission goal. :)

Here are some teasers from the set: