Important Qt-project.org Migration to qt.io Info

Today, we will go live with the new Qt Wiki on qt.io with content migrated from qt-project.org. Before we do that and as we reach a major milestone in this migration project, I wanted to explain a bit on what are the biggest changes you will see with this overall migration project and what it means to you and also new functionality and things to expect in the future.

The biggest changes you will see are:

• The current gamification, points system from qt-project.org (DevNet) will change
• “Qt Account” will be the new login service to access and edit the wiki and forums
• The services will be on new platforms

Different point system

As we change the wiki and forum platforms, some things will change.

One of these is the current points and levels system. In the new site, we will not use one point system to denote your activity within the qt.io site. Instead, each service (wiki & forum) will have their own lists of activity.

In the forums, which have been the main source of points in qt-project.org, the new system has a Reputation score, which works more based on people liking posts and answers, a more people-centric approach. Initially, there won't be point levels. As we move along, we will introduce other features and possible programs to allow for more interaction.

A great thing about the new system is that it provides badges and groups, which allow us to have many types of engagement and recognition-based on forum activities. We will migrate the badges from the old system, so those won’t be lost. However, as it is a big task, those will not be there on the first day we switch over to the new forum. (BTW: we are estimating that the migration will happen sometime next week. But, please bear with me, as some things in the technical world are just beyond our control.) The new forum will provide a more flexible badge system overall, so we will be working more with badges in the future.

In the new wiki, the system will keep track of who edits and creates pages and keeps lists based on that. The main difference is that these statistics will not be directly added to an overall point system, at this point.

To sum it up, in the future there won’t be designations like 'Ant farmer', but you will have a reputation score on the forum and an edit history on the wiki. The main goal of knowing who is an active community member will be met; the way it is done will be slightly different giving us more flexibility to add more interaction possibilities as we move along and as we hear feedback and ideas from the community.

As mentioned, we do have plans of a new overall unified-level point program system, where those that are truly active within our channels will benefit greatly. This will span both commercial and open source users where the goal is to connect to all our users and provide valuable interactive information. However, this is still in the planning stages and we will communicate those as we move along. For now, our updated services like wiki and forums will have their own point system and history overview.

Profiles & Qt Account as your login service

One of the biggest changes for you as a user is that we are moving to using Qt Account as the identity and login service for the new wiki and forums in qt.io. The logic to having a single service for logging in is simple; no need to have separate logins for different services.

If you currently have a user profile under qt-project.org, your personal information contained in it, such as detailed contact information and social media accounts, will unfortunately not be migrated over at this time. We will, however, migrate and match all existing nicknames/usernames from the current system and peg it to your Qt Account. We are not throwing that information away, if at some point in the future we enhance the Qt Account profile to include the data, it can be added from the qt-project.org database we are keeping in backups.

Qt Account is in essence the gateway to what we are building as a new Qt developer portal. We have already started using it for commercial evaluators and customers in the past year. Currently, the Qt Account web portal provides users with license information, account and payment options. It is also provides access to The Qt Company Support Center where commercial users can submit support issues.

This is just the beginning, however. Our goal is to add valuable Qt information and resources, early access benefits, programs and the like into the Qt Account developer portal, making it your one-stop-shop for up-to-date Qt info and goodies.

IMPORTANT: Please make sure to use the same email address as you had on qt-project.org, that way you will get your nickname to come along with you to Qt Account and the new services.

New look and feel & new platforms

As always when moving to a new platform, the services will look and feel different. We are not at this point in a final stage with the design. That will get incremental updates as things move forward. We know it takes some time to get used to a new site, so please take it easy and explore the new services as they migrate over.

The reasons for going to new platforms are many.

In order to be able to provide a better experience to our users, we had to clean up some of the technical backend headaches caused by the current system. New platforms will allow us on the backend side to better support the services and stay up-to-date with new requests and platform development in order to add more functionality as we and you see fit.
The new forum platform, NodeBB, has a very active community and provides the following benefits:

• is usable directly on mobile devices, as it supports responsive design out of the box
• has an active open source developer community around it
• supports plugins, and has many ready-made ones
• plug-in creation interface is easy to use
• has a clean modern API
• has post tagging out-of-the-box
• has better spam control

For the wiki, the new platform, MediaWiki provides various benefits mainly because it is also an open source solution with a large community. I will provide more information on the wiki migration in another post coming soon.

Feedback

We know that getting used to a new platform and site takes a while. When you encounter something that you find annoying, and if it is a bug, please file a bugreport, but if it is an inconvenience or a feature request, please start a discussion in the Website discussion forum.

Thanks for your help and support during this migration process. All feedback welcomed!