With the forum growing as fast as it has been, we're starting to outgrow our server. You may have noticed the effects, such as intermittent timeouts, errors, and general slowness. It's time for an upgrade. Moving to the new server will mean some downtime, which brings us to the "maybe more" part.
I really like our forum software. It's very fast, concise, open source and has served us very well. For the record, it's FluxBB, and the team behind it deserves a lot of credit. It's billed as "a lighter, faster alternative to some of the traditional feature heavy forum applications" and I'd say it delivers.
The flip side is that it doesn't have oft-requested features such as private messaging, and the authors have no plans to implement them. Personally I've always been OK with this because to me it's always done everything that we need. This changed when a long list of email providers started blocking emails sent through the forum, breaking the essential method our members use to initiate private communication.
I had experimented with different forum software previously, but this issue made me take a more thorough look, and seriously consider the possibility of moving fc to a new system. The downtime associated with moving servers would be a good time to make a switch and here we are.
Feature wise, the software we're considering has pretty much everything members have asked for in the threads here in Community Discussion, such as:
Of course there are some downsides as well. Change is hard, and many who have grown accustomed to our current system may not like the new look or new features. I think that anyone who uses twitter or facebook will feel comfortable with the system we're considering, but to those who aren't social networking fans it may seem overwhelming at first. It should be said, however, that these additional features can be disabled by users who do not want them.
Personally I'm very impressed after using the proposed software for a few weeks. It took a little time to get a feel for things since it's so different (dare I say "advanced") but I can really appreciate how much thought went into making it fun and easy to use. It's called xenForo and is being developed byone of the ex-lead developers behind vbulletin (pre-4x)--probably the most well known, and used commercial forum software ever.
We have a test install running that you can check out. It's completely separate from this, so you'll need to register an account if you want to try posting, etc. It's strictly for testing purposes and although some discussion has taken place there, it's not the spot for anything other than testing. Discussion regarding the switch belongs here. It's also on a very barebones machine with no mail server set up. With that in mind, see what you think!
Edit: If we made the switch, all accounts and posts would be imported.
http://199.180.254.196/xen/
I really like our forum software. It's very fast, concise, open source and has served us very well. For the record, it's FluxBB, and the team behind it deserves a lot of credit. It's billed as "a lighter, faster alternative to some of the traditional feature heavy forum applications" and I'd say it delivers.
The flip side is that it doesn't have oft-requested features such as private messaging, and the authors have no plans to implement them. Personally I've always been OK with this because to me it's always done everything that we need. This changed when a long list of email providers started blocking emails sent through the forum, breaking the essential method our members use to initiate private communication.
I had experimented with different forum software previously, but this issue made me take a more thorough look, and seriously consider the possibility of moving fc to a new system. The downtime associated with moving servers would be a good time to make a switch and here we are.
Feature wise, the software we're considering has pretty much everything members have asked for in the threads here in Community Discussion, such as:
- youtube embedding[/*]
- the ability to search within a thread[/*]
- full unread topic tracking[/*]
- private messaging[/*]
- sub forums[/*]
- advanced permissions which would allow us to automatically restrict access to the Classifieds[/*]
- profile commenting, status messages, and the ability to "follow" users for a personal "newsfeed"[/*]
- etc., etc.[/*]
Of course there are some downsides as well. Change is hard, and many who have grown accustomed to our current system may not like the new look or new features. I think that anyone who uses twitter or facebook will feel comfortable with the system we're considering, but to those who aren't social networking fans it may seem overwhelming at first. It should be said, however, that these additional features can be disabled by users who do not want them.
Personally I'm very impressed after using the proposed software for a few weeks. It took a little time to get a feel for things since it's so different (dare I say "advanced") but I can really appreciate how much thought went into making it fun and easy to use. It's called xenForo and is being developed by
We have a test install running that you can check out. It's completely separate from this, so you'll need to register an account if you want to try posting, etc. It's strictly for testing purposes and although some discussion has taken place there, it's not the spot for anything other than testing. Discussion regarding the switch belongs here. It's also on a very barebones machine with no mail server set up. With that in mind, see what you think!
Edit: If we made the switch, all accounts and posts would be imported.
http://199.180.254.196/xen/
are that I think the upgrades are a great idea. Although I'm a new member so I'm not really tied down to the current format, I think it would be great to be able to private message people since I don't like giving away my e-mail to people anyway. Also youtube embedding would be pretty cool too.
However if and when the change happens, I look forward to it, and a new, powerful FC. 
. I don't see the integrity of the community changing enough that features overtake content or quality goes down. I see lots of potential here after the upgrades, and nobody is going to force members to use new features if they don't want to. Wins all around.