[Ribbon-Blue]

Greetings ES,

it's Ribbon-Blue, once again and I'm here to speak to you all about some major, website changing events that are already well under way. As you know, I myself have been gone for an extended period of time and even when the forum update was completed, I had to wait before getting onto the new forum, since I needed to replace my PC. During that time major decisions were made concerning the future of Electrosphere, which will soon become reality within the year. Without going too far into details, I will break down what is going on. For those that don't feel like reading this entire post, a shortened version is available at the bottom of it. Naturally, feel free to ask questions about anything after this post.

Electrosphere will become a major contributor in a new Ace Combat website project that seeks to create the top website within our online community. The website itself will have both AceCombatSkies and Electrosphere forums hosted under the main domain, AceCombat.net. AC.net will act as the community portal and present guests with information about the series, special articles and other content. Electrosphere will have its information presented on the AC.net portal, using a flexible editing system, allowing us to edit articles with ease and present them outside of our forum.

Various concerns were addressed during conversations about Electrosphere's role and position in this project. Electrosphere will remain autonomous; our forum will remain separate from ACS, our staff will not be forced under another the control of another website's staff. ES information will be managed by ES members, using the system we use on the forums. Advanced Contributors and a few other members will be given the proper permissions to edit the information. Beyond that, only staff members from ES will be allowed to give permissions to people that want to edit or add information. This will continue to keep our information as secure as it can be.

RMN, ES and ACS are all taking part in this venture. We will be providing an important piece of the new AceCombat.net. Because of this, we will have our opinion in what does and doesn't happen to our forum and will also have a part in what goes on with AC.net itself. However, this does not mean we can freely push ourselves onto other websites or try and change something without properly going through all parties. This goes both ways and ensures us that no one can attempt to commandeer ES for themselves. By acting as a part of the team, we gain the ability to be a part of AC.net, the ability to maintain and upgrade our community and get even more exposure to the rest of the Ace Combat online community.

So, to sum it all up: Electrosphere's information is being transferred into a better format, while maintaining its quality, by keeping editing permissions within ES control. ES will continue managing the database (and be accredited) as a part of a team of websites that are contributing to the community portal, AceCombat.net. As one of three groups taking part in this, ES will have its fair share in the say of the overall scheme of things, but will have no power to act on its own to try and force changes on one party or another. In return, we remain independent, continue on with our information and get a good chance at getting our info even higher exposure to the community.

[Steel Hawk]

RMN is the whole reason for the debacle with Blarney becoming a Global Mod on ACS. I don't trust the other two parties to find their way out of a paper bag, much less having the other two shares of a Ace Combat supersite.

[Roaches]

What is RMN?? :S

[viperzerof-2]

real military network what ever that is

[Millie]

Real Military Network is our host server's handle. Lionheart is the administrator of all websites under RMN, which includes a number of other gaming and military-related websites. (Many of which are listed at the bottom of the forum page.)

[viperzerof-2]

Millie, on 06 June 2011 - 02:42 AM, said:

Real Military Network is our host server's handle. Lionheart is the administrator of all websites under RMN, which includes a number of other gaming and military-related websites. (Many of which are listed at the bottom of the forum page.)

well that explains lionheart

[Steel Hawk]

Tis the devil of having somebody else pay your server costs.

[Ribbon-Blue]

TornadoADV, on 06 June 2011 - 03:05 AM, said:

Tis the devil of having somebody else pay your server costs.

I've got that covered.

[Steel Hawk]

I can't quite recall why we intially merged with ACS and then joined RMN, kinda fuzzy on that part of our history.

[Ribbon-Blue]

Merged with ACS....? We moved onto the ACS server because LH offered us a free IPB in return for doing our job. A few years and months later we get to the server being bought by RMN and then here we are.

[Steel Hawk]

Yeah, merged in terms of being on their server, not sharing the same address. My bad, should of explained better.

[SMS SKULL 2]

Ah, so this is the fabled "You'll see" project.

This could be interesting.

[Broth3r]

TornadoADV, on 06 June 2011 - 03:58 AM, said:

Yeah, merged in terms of being on their server, not sharing the same address. My bad, should of explained better.

That was when ACS went down for a few hours to update to a new version of IPB, and then ES went down for some days afterwards for some reason, and was restored in this form.

[Steel Hawk]

Na, Bro. I'm speaking about the time ES went down for a week to weeks almost a year back.

[Ribbon-Blue]

SMS SKULL 2, on 06 June 2011 - 09:37 AM, said:

Ah, so this is the fabled "You'll see" project.

This could be interesting.

I've already seen the preview of what the front page is going to look like. It's suprisingly... professional. Much better than I thought it was going to look.

[Steel Hawk]

Will we be using Novahawk as our format for the frontpage stuff?

[Ribbon-Blue]

Using Novahawk? You mean the editing system for 2.5?

[Steel Hawk]

Da, the system seems to be best suited for compact and easy to search system instead of wading through forums within forums to find something about Ace Combat.

[Ribbon-Blue]

It probably won't be the same exact system, but it will be similar in most ways. That way editing can be easily done. The webpages should allow us to do more custom formatting if we need it. A search engine will also be included.

[Steel Hawk]

Hopefully a functional smart search engine like Google's "Instant". I could see that being a boon to people interested in Ace Combat lore.