Cellar new forum software project
 

Now that the cloud move is generally a success, this is the next thing.

As time goes by it becomes more and more important for us to move off of the venerable vBulletin 3 software we have been using for, oh I dunno... 8 years now?

We started with vBulletin 1, and continued to upgrade with it, until it was sold and the new owners began mis-managing it. Never upgraded to version 4, and people are really hating on version 5.

Couldn't we just live on 3 forever? No, with every server move it gets harder to support the software needed to run version 3. You have to upgrade the OS... eventually there are major security issues... it's a long story.

So I have been starting down the path of evaluating new software in order to find something that is great, allows us to do new things... but can be made to look and feel like what we have now.

Whatever we wind up with will not be an exact duplicate of what we have now... but "close enough" should do it.

Oh Noes, the dreaded change. Hot flashes, mood swings, oh the humanity.
But I guess it's worth it to not have to worry about getting preggers anymore. ;)

People say they're afraid of change... but on every corner, there's someone begging for it.

That's the spirit, humor will see us through these troubled waters.
What does this cost? It's a worthy project. Yes it is. Yes. It. Is.

The cost will be as little as $0.

But there's work involved. Yesterday night I started a converter chewing on all the Cellar data to see how it would fit in MyBB. Once it got to the attachments, it slowed down. It's working on the 30,000 or so attachments, it's through more than half of them now. Here's the CPU graph of the test system.

http://cellar.org/2015/cpuload20151216.png

How about Invision Pro Board? Speaking as a member of Ex Isle Forums, IPB's pretty easy to use...from a member POV.

'course, it ain't free...for board owners.

I don't think I've ever come across this phrase.

Up for consideration are MyBB, PHPBB, Xenforo and SMF but I will take a look at IPB.

So that's why the whole internet is slow today!:p:

That's because we civilians don't speak that technical jargon. :lol:

Or spent a winter in northern Alaska

Put me down for Xenforo.

Well whaddya know... the test system ran out of disk space before it could complete its 2-day conversion.

The test system is a virtual server about half the size of the Cellar, so that is not unexpected... I was trying to run two Cellars at the same time and convert one to the other... a tall task

No biggie because I can just set up another virtual server for the job, and try again. This time a bigger system with more disk and two CPU cores etc.

I'm kinda "talking out loud" here but I thought you might like to "hear" it.

Maybe if we post in txt spk. :haha:

Have you considered Drupal in this context?

Drupal's not a forum, that's what we're after

mybb conversion completed ~ You could try it

test d0t cellar d0t org slash mybb

Don't link to it. You can play. You can't break anything. This is just a scratch cellar. This is the default design which would not be final by any means. It kinda did not convert really well. Thread counters and sorts are wrong. I doubt this is where we will wind up.

Can the columns be re-sequenced to show up as they are now?

I view my notebook from a few feet away (it's on the coffee table while I'm on the sofa with wireless mouse and keyboard). The view is set for continuous 200% magnification for easy reading at that distance. The view on MyBB cuts off the Last Post column since it's not next to the Forums column anymore. I also wonder how this would affect others using magnified views on smaller devices.

Simple Machines Forum conversion completed ~ You could try it

test d0t cellar d0t org slash smf

Wow, that was easy and it looks like it worked really well!

I'm only seeing the pictures in the IOtD, no other threads.

Will UT or any moderator remove the URL description in UT's post above until UT can close the moderators' board in the Simple Machines Forum.

Thanx.

The search function doesn't work by usernames only. There have to be words to search for accompanying the username. At least that's what I see while not logged in. Perhaps there's another mode available. The layout looks nice though.

Either I forget my password or you can't post yet

Oh. You have to read. It wants your pw 2 times

Will Tapatalk play nice with that one?

Tapatalk supports all these forums softwares, it's pretty good about that.

When you make the switch, will I notice?

Yes, unlike the cloud move, in this switchover I think there will be an impact and everyone will have to adapt in little ways. In Tapatalk you will notice the people who have left the Cellar because they are afraid of change.

As long as you can provide a "sterile for work" interface in whatever the new system is, it shouldn't impact my experience much.

That is a certainty, I wouldn't change anything without having a sterile for work version

Does this software allow users to customize their color scheme? Like... What colors the board looks when they are logged in.

They have tons of themes, but I don't know what's user-selectable. I'll find out. Of course the logo and header monkey always remain the same color

Also, I have yet to check out phpbb.

xenforo, it turns out, is for-pay -- nothing religious against that sort of thing, but I don't think it's the right model for us, if there's anything just as good available. We need something not tied down with software licensing.

PHPBB has trouble with the conversion - this may rule it out

So who's the infidel, the Cellar or PHPBB?

The converter. PHPBB's VB3 converter was written by a disinterested third party who no longer maintains it. This is part of the problem with running crufty old software.

WOW! I see 32 pages of forum discussion on the VB3 to PHPBB3 conversion. Not only are there gross considerations like having everything on the same server for conversion, there are nitty-gritty particulars to each version of VB3.

It seems there have been successes; but, you'd potentially have to negotiate a lot of obstacles to get there.

And another five pages here covering the topic in more recent months, converting to the latest PHPBB (the 32 page thread converts to version 3.0, PHPBB is now on 3.1).

The simple machines one seems ok. I think that's what the forum Tiki and Roger came from used. The safari people. what was that place called again? i wanna see if I'm still banned////

eta: Principia Discordia.

meh. can't remember my password... and that place seems to have kind of faded. not may posts. it IS simple machines, though.

For what it's worth, after looking at the mybb and smf tests; also, finding a few phpbb based sites to look at, I find the smf format the most user friendly for viewing. I like vBulletin the best with the Forums and Last Post columns side by side. The smf format is 1st runner up with Thread counts and Post counts consolidated into one column between the other two. It most closely resembles what we're used to. The mybb and phpbb have separate columns for those counts distancing the other two more important (IMHO) columns.

The appearance is what we have to live with everyday while other features are used intermittently and I'd rather work around any disparities in other features than sacrifice easy viewing.

Perhaps if smf is found to be seriously lacking in features, a fully completed conversion would be a good staging platform to go to another BB like phpbb down the road (I haven't looked into that).

It may be possible to push everything into something closer to our format anyway

Or to create a "Old Cellar" theme which does that for the people who want to stick with it

Other than Social Groups, are there any other features we presently have that aren't typically found in more recent software? Perhaps some user control panel options, archives access, dedicated Who's Online display ... etc.

Does newer software typically have an images search; or, multiple images display function built in? That's been a feature of interest for some in the past.

Are we going to have the traditional like button / karma debate?

I don't think so. The current software is the state of the the art 2007. It didn't even support blogging at that point and blogging is now, roughly, over.

When I think about it, the ability add and manage add-on software ought to be an important of this. Most new features start as modifications people write. but managing add-ons was a huge hassle in vb3.

Because we never had a lot of "modz", there aren't many features we are likely to miss, if any.

Sorry for coming late to this. - There is a new kid on the block, developed by a Finnish guy for his own photography forum when he migrated away from its previous software. Handles huge volume. I don't know whether he will share it at all and whether he would ask fees. It's been up for about a year now:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/index.php

Looks and works fine.

That is a wonderfully clean look, and high volume - there's a big advantage to not loading things down with a bunch of features.

Trouble is, we need something that is pretty well supported in itself - with regular releases and such. Security concerns are a big part of this - you want to know that such things are going to be addressed on a timely basis.

I agree, if he's really a one man show then there's a risk (perhaps ask him?).

On the up side, he's been releasing 4 updates this past year, responding well to users' questions and issues. As it's a new product, perhaps your needs/ideas could be fed into it.