Unfortunately, I will start this post off with some bad news and that is our lead developer has parted ways with the Ignition4 project.
We wish him the best in the future and I want to thank him for helping us get Ignition4 launched.

I just wanted to clarify a few things with everyone:
We never intended to launch Ignition4 until the main features were completed. This included a long beta testing period where we would fix any problems that we found. We ran into an unrecoverable bug with our old website where the login cookie from the forums would not be sent to Ignition3, causing a login loop. I had all of our devs look into it, and none of them could resolve the issue. Our backups did not resolve the issue and I was forced to upgrade. That is where we are now. 

Ignition4 is still being developed but all future features that we had planned for Ignition 4.5 have been canceled. This is due to the lack of Laravel/Livewire developers we can find. At the moment we only have three including me. None of us know Livewire as much as our ex-developer knew so we're stuck on fixing certain things and adding new features. We will continue to fix any issues and try to improve Ignition4 to make it as smooth as possible. 

What does this mean for the future of CustomsForge? 

Ignition5 - React

We plan on rewriting Ignition4 to use React instead of Laravel. Every developer I've interviewed recently knows react. It is way easier to find react developers over laravel developers.  We already have a dedicated team of 7+ devs (compared to our old team of 4) that knows react over laravel. It took 2+ years to complete ignition3 to ignition4 due to major rewriting issues, but the move to ignition5 should take a quarter of that time in theory. 

To kickstart the Ignition5 project, I brought back our original layout designer @AshesOfOwls. She helped us design the original UI for Ignition3. We adapted that design for Ignition4, and will be updating (or even revamping) the look for Ignition5. We are very excited to get most of our staff on board to help with the Ignition5 react project

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Q&A

Q: Will planned features for 4.5 be included in 5?

A: Our main goal will be porting all currently used features for Ignition4 with features we wanted for 4.5 in mind. This way we can get the website over to react ASAP while also improving missing or broken features.

Q: When will collections come back from the old site (Ignition3)? 

A: At this time, collections from the old site will not be brought over. It has 20 million entries and it's just impossible to work with that amount of data at the moment. We will need to figure out the best way to store that data without making ignition slower.

Q: Are there any planned features that might make it for Ignition4?

A: Not at the moment. We would love to bring Artist search back, as that is highly requested but that would need to be done with extra free time not devoted to fixing ignition4 bugs or coding Ignition5. 

Q: Are you not looking for Laravel developers anymore?

A: We would absolutely love to find another Laravel developer so we can finish some features on Ignition4 that are not completed. If you know Laravel + React that is a huge bonus. Contact Unleashed2k on our Discord if you have any of these qualifications. 

Q: There are tons of broken features! I don't like the new site, etc etc

A: We are fully aware there are some people who do not like the current website. Like I mentioned before we never wanted to release the site in this current state, but it is an improvement overall with the new site speed and forums being upgraded. We are working on bringing all the features from Ignition3 & Ignition4 and the planned 4.5 to Ignition5

Q: Will Ignition5 still use the forums?

A: Yes! We will be using a more advanced integration using the IP Board API which will allow us to use groups & more features from IP Board. 
 

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We're very excited about the future and the possibilities of Ignition5. 

I hope this answers some questions and we're looking forward to improving CustomsForge.

Edit: I've launched the Ignition4 FAQ. We hope to create the ultimate knowledgebase of all Ignition4 questions there.

https://ipb4test.customsforge.com/index.php?/faq/

I think Ignition 4, formatting and forum connection aside, is a welcome improvement.
Now I can log in and have access to all customs on any computer, without problems.
There will always be people complaining, sadly not everyone is informed about the hard work that goes into maintaining a website supported only by donations.
From this side of the world, thank you for keeping this alive, even more so considering the current health situation that affects us all.
Cheers!

Hello, one question

Have you considered opening the ignition source code? That is, put it on Github? I understand the question of financing being exclusive by donation, but a time programming can very well be considered a donation. For example, I could help with the work with React.

Another doubt, but in the technical case. If the frontend is react, what would the backend be?

Heya @SrMouraSilva

Im gonna be doing the base setup for the new react system for i5 and I love your questions.

In regards to open sourcing it, I don't think thats a possibility at this time. The restructure to react is going to take a bit for the core staff to get used to and I want to make sure that the correct setup is done before that could ever happen. Without getting into too many specifics, there just needs to be a flow that everyone gets used to which will make participation easier for any dev to work with. If you want to participate please contact unleashed regarding that!

The front end will be react and the backend will be graphql. The middle layer will be apollo-graphql. I am hoping to use a lot of the new things that React Storybook has provided for testing and CI, which can mock backend requests through apollo-graphql. This will take at least a few weeks to set up, and also my intention is to teach as many people as I can what I know, so to have a stable build that we can get started with will take a little bit.

@AshesOfOwls, hi!

9 hours ago, AshesOfOwls said:

In regards to open sourcing it, I don't think thats a possibility at this time. The restructure to react is going to take a bit for the core staff to get used to and I want to make sure that the correct setup is done before that could ever happen

When a project is hosted in Github ( or Gitlab or bitbuck, etc...), only the project owner and the maitainers will be permission to commit, push and merge code. The fact of the source code is open in the internet isn't the problem. The real problem a weak process. The developer process needs code review, continuous integration, etc...

Even if the code is new, the community can contribute!

But I understand if the team consider that now isn't the moment. In this case, is yet necessary to push the source code in a repository. In Gitlab, Github and Bitbucket is possible to create a team with private/internal source code. They will help to implement a good development process.

I could, for example, set up an Ignition 5 homologation environment, where the React frontend would be exposed in a gitlab / github pages. It could also be configured to run unit tests and require that pull/merges requests would only be accepted if successful. What I said here you already know, but I'm just reinforcing :D

9 hours ago, AshesOfOwls said:

Without getting into too many specifics, there just needs to be a flow that everyone gets used to which will make participation easier for any dev to work with.

I was on this forum even before Ignition 1. I spent a long time out and came back now. I am surprised that there were 4 Ignition. Could you tell me what happened out of curiosity? It could be a link to a forum topic.

9 hours ago, AshesOfOwls said:

The front end will be react and the backend will be graphql. The middle layer will be apollo-graphql.

Ok, as the frontend is React, it's possible to publish it in any static server (nginx, apache). A hosting free alternative is to publish in the github/gitlab pages.

Graphql enables to transfer data between backend and frontend as minimum as possible. This is a good point. Less network trafic, less money necessary in infrastructure.

I confess that I did not work with graphql and apollo. Who performs the queries is the Apollo server? What's the database, Postgres? Is there no Django / Rails / Laravel / Spring boot application?

9 hours ago, AshesOfOwls said:

This will take at least a few weeks to set up, and also my intention is to teach as many people as I can what I know

Great!

9 hours ago, AshesOfOwls said:

so to have a stable build that we can get started with will take a little bit.

Just be careful not to be too picky with yourself and thus take a long time to share the project with other developers. If you define specific tasks, developers will be able to contribute. Examples:

• Search component
• List component
• ...
• CI to tests
• CI to build code
• Configure Storybook

So, I believe, those who are used to software development can already contribute. And, when this initial part is done, newer / enthusiastic programmers will also be able to contribute when you share the knowledge.

16 hours ago, SrMouraSilva said:

Another doubt, but in the technical case. If the frontend is react, what would the backend be?

The backend is built using Lumen + Hasura and for the database we used PostgreSQL.

51 minutes ago, mithleshjs said:

The backend is built using Lumen + Hasura and for the database we used PostgreSQL.

Cool. Last time than I programming php is 10 years ago 😅

Then I can help in the frontend.

@SrMouraSilva

Quote

But I understand if the team consider that now isn't the moment. In this case, is yet necessary to push the source code in a repository. In Gitlab, Github and Bitbucket is possible to create a team with private/internal source code. They will help to implement a good development process.

That's not the question though. A relative part of it that makes sharing code problematic is that we don't want people to create scrapping both without us knowing and our consent about it. This decision is caused by a few factor. And yes, the code is already in a private git repo. The problem is about opening it to the broad public.