New ConwayLife.com

For discussion directly related to ConwayLife.com, such as requesting changes to how the forums or home page function.
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Nathaniel
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New ConwayLife.com

Post by Nathaniel » May 24th, 2011, 12:16 pm

Welcome to the new ConwayLife.com! The website has now moved to a new (significantly faster, more reliable) server and the site has been slightly redesigned. Things will be hectic for the next few days as I get all the bits and pieces of the website up and running again (the new server is Linux-based, so everything that was originally written in ASP has to be completely re-written). Here is a run-down of the current status of the website:

Things that are working fine (to my knowledge):
  • The forums. If things look weird to you, press your browser's refresh button 2 or 3 times. If you have problems, let me know (either post a message or send me an e-mail if you can't post a message).
  • The wiki. One nice side-effect of the move is we can now use "short style" wiki links. For examle, http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Blinker now takes you to the blinker page (note that the old "long style" wiki links like http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/index.php?title=Blinker still work as well).
  • The front page/news aggregator. This pulls stories posted at pentadecathlon.com, nathanieljohnston.com and b3s23life.blogspot.com about cellular automata. If you know of another Game of Life blog that you think should be added, let me know.
  • The pattern database. Note that patterns are now stored as actual pattern files, and they have moved. An old pattern file URL would be something like http://www.conwaylife.com/pattern.asp?p ... clight.rle, while the new URL is http://www.conwaylife.com/patterns/trafficlight.rle.
  • Update (May 25, 2011): The golly online archive pages are now online.
  • Update (July 11, 2011): The scripts repository is back online at http://www.conwaylife.com/scripts.
Things that aren't working yet (if I've missed something, message me about it!):
  • The applet. And it's probably going to take a bit, since I'm redoing it since Chrome and the rest of the world seem to finally be telling us all that Java applets need to die off. It will be a more lightweight javascript solution once it is up and running.
Things that aren't working and likely won't be brought back (or will be brought back in a very different form):
  • The soup search. The soup search has always been quite a mess, and I don't think that it's worth rewriting it all in PHP in its current form. I would be happy to write a version of the soup search that uses C as a front end and PHP for the server back end, but the current bottleneck as far as censusing goes is the actual census algorithm. If someone wants to help with that, it may have a future.

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calcyman
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Re: New ConwayLife.com

Post by calcyman » May 24th, 2011, 12:31 pm

Yes, I've noticed! :D

It's been announced on pentadecathlon.com, but your website doesn't seem to have updated itself yet, for some reason.
What do you do with ill crystallographers? Take them to the mono-clinic!

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Nathaniel
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Re: New ConwayLife.com

Post by Nathaniel » May 24th, 2011, 12:47 pm

calcyman wrote:Yes, I've noticed! :D

It's been announced on pentadecathlon.com, but your website doesn't seem to have updated itself yet, for some reason.
The stories are only updated on conwaylife.com about once an hour, to avoid overloading the various sites that stories are pulled from. Should update shortly :)

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Gustavo6046
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Re: New ConwayLife.com

Post by Gustavo6046 » February 3rd, 2015, 10:24 am

I LOVE the new conwaylife! Though its interface is still confusing... I took years just to find the time frame settings in the User Control Panel!
*yawn* What a nothing-to-do day! Let's be the only person in the world to do CGOL during boring times. :)

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gameoflifeboy
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Re: New ConwayLife.com

Post by gameoflifeboy » February 3rd, 2015, 5:26 pm

Gustavo6046 wrote:I LOVE the new conwaylife!
Have you even seen the old ConwayLife? (pre May 2011)
I personally think the changes were overall worse; the old ConwayLife had a Life applet on the homepage, which for some time I had been patiently waiting to see again until January 2014 when Nathaniel said it needed something the new server didn't have. I would have joined two years ago if the applet had come back. And don't get me started on the soup search.

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Gustavo6046
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Re: New ConwayLife.com

Post by Gustavo6046 » February 3rd, 2015, 5:49 pm

gameoflifeboy wrote:
Gustavo6046 wrote:I LOVE the new conwaylife!
Have you even seen the old ConwayLife? (pre May 2011)
I personally think the changes were overall worse; the old ConwayLife had a Life applet on the homepage, which for some time I had been patiently waiting to see again until January 2014 when Nathaniel said it needed something the new server didn't have. I would have joined two years ago if the applet had come back. And don't get me started on the soup search.
Why don't download Golly? Also Life applets are for losers. :P btw I never seen before 2011. Only since 2015 lol.
*yawn* What a nothing-to-do day! Let's be the only person in the world to do CGOL during boring times. :)

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