Cheer and Gears: Research and Development Site

[Drew Dowdell]

There is a major update to CheersandGears.com coming.  I invite you to go play in the sandbox at the development site.

 

While the look of the new software appears to be a minor upgrade of what we use today, it has actually been completely re-written under the hood. Currently, only the software default look and feel is available, but we will eventually be adding our own look and feel.  Before going into production on the main site, we will be testing out new looks at the R&D site.

 

You should consider any posts/uploads/blogs/articles on the R&D site to be temporary. They could disappear during a future site refresh.

 

I need your help testing.  Please report any bugs, errors, or "How do I...?" questions in the Bug Reports forum.  Please include screenshots when possible.

 

Feel free to play around in the Lounge forum with any off-topic discussion you like as long as it remains work safe. If you would like a new forum category, gallery category, or something else added, just let me know.  The Blog plug-in is currently available on the R&D site, but we will likely not be using it.  Feel free to play in there and if there is enough demand, I can make it available here.

 

Those of you who have been with C&G for a while will remember NewsFeeder.  He is making a cameo in R&D. He will be importing articles from the main C&G front page to help fill in some test content.

 

[G. David Felt]

Looks very cool, So do we need to create a new email based account? I tried my current email in my profile and another one you and I have used to exchange info and neither allowed me to log on.

 

Thanks Drew.

 

Created a new account for now to gain access and play.

[Drew Dowdell]

Looks very cool, So do we need to create a new email based account? I tried my current email in my profile and another one you and I have used to exchange info and neither allowed me to log on.

 

Thanks Drew.

 

Yes, if you wish to log in there, you need to create an account.  There is no connection between that site and this one.  Again, keep in mind that everything there is temporary.

[William Maley]

I'll start playing around in the R&D site over the weekend. I can't wait to see what you have in store.

[Drew Dowdell]

Great, the more the merrier.  The software package is still very much in early beta stages and there are things over there that are clearly not working.  The articles system can't even be properly configured yet until the next beta release for example. 

 

However, because it is such a major upgrade and will take a long time to get all the pieces configured the way we like and the look-n-feel installed, I wanted to get started on it now and let us grow into the new software rather than just dump it on the live site like a bucket full of ALS challenge. 

[Drew Dowdell]

I almost forgot.

 

Because the timeline for the next software version is at least 6 months out by my estimation, there are going to be a series of tweaks and add-ons done on the current site hopefully to all be completed before the Detroit auto show.  I'm not going to roll them all out at once, they will just be incremental changes to the look-n-feel of the software and the layout of the pages.   As you can see, some of those changes have already been installed.

 

I took screenshots examples of the site's main pages and printed them out at work on 11"x17" paper. I did the same with some of my favorite main competitors who's designs I've admired.  Then I took a bunch of sharpies and started marking up the page layouts where I felt we need to improve, enhance, or just lightly spackle. I hope you'll like where we're heading, and I'm pretty sure you all will. 

[G. David Felt]

Awesome really appreciate what you have been doing and where your leading us. Thank you!