Datix E-Forum Past Projects – My Journey

One of my past projects with Datix was to redesign the SMF forums. For years, Datix used the default template and never changed it. They was also running an old version of the SMF forum.  My duty was to first move the server from using an linux system to a virtual windows system. The reason being they want to virtualize all the server, so there was no need for additional hardware.

Before I needed to make sure that the forum still works when being moved from a different server. To do this, I had my own virtual operating system which I installed XAMPP on. Having Administrator access to the E-Forum, I was able to use the Control panel and export an SQL dump and reimport it into my virtual system XAMPP using phpmyadmin sql import. Once I had done this, I found an archive for the old version of SMF forum, downloaded it, and extracted it to the webroot folder. Added the database connection and viewed the site to see if it worked.
It did kinda work on the front page, but then the links was pointing to the old carlton server (Doh!!). Using trusty notepad, I went through the sqldump script changing the  url links from carlton to localhost. Resaved and reimported and it worked!
Now having a local working copy of the forum, now it was time to change the outer skin look for it. Most of the work was done in redesigning the CSS file, but before that I looked at SMF Website and chose a minimal  template which will give me the flexability to design it. When finding that design, I looked at Datix main website, downloaded the CSS and front page and then went onto merge the design into the E-Forum using Notepad++.
Alot of trial and error was needed to do this as you can imagine, as the Datix main website is a custom CMS system done by DDME. The CMS System has it own template system, but thankfully the header was the same, so applying the header was pretty easy. The body was the tricky one, but to me now it looks okay. Also merging the colour schemes from Datix to the forum was also tricky in terms of finding all the color. They was dotted all over the CSS file and not kepted in one place which was annoying. But this was down to the template I had imported rather than the actual forum. I added my own touches which was the Datix logo on section. Grey is if you have read that section, and orange is if a posting is brand new on there.
Behind the scenes I also made changes. Finally I updated the core forum to one of the latest version, but also implemented a new registration signup. This was to reject any free email address signup, so the only way to signup would be to use an NHS email. This worked great and the administrator now do not need to reject any hotmail, gmail or yahoo signup as the system already does that.

Once everything was done as far as I could do, I asked the CMS webdesigner Paul from DDME to check the forum. He kindly added the CSS2 rollover button in the  design and it looked perfect. The only other thing was to go onto the virtual server, install MySQL and get that working with IIS7 which was pretty easy. Again do an sql dump and also the webfiles and transfer it across and as you can see on http://forums.datix.co.uk/forum/index.php  it is up and running

The time taken for this was approx 4-6 Months from being discussed, getting the virtual server and implementation.

Datix E-Forum Screenshot