I think it's time for an Upgrade

Ohai folks,

some of us were having a chit chat about upgrading the forum software - this is the place to discuss it. We should probably stick with vBulletin but there's that pesky licence to pay for, so I'm more than willing to chip in for a bit of the cost.

Reasons to upgrade:

- less bugs
- less spam
- more features
- mobile support
- wordpress/ vbulletin integration (linking site frontend moar with foar rums)

The problem is that it ain't cheap, so everyone would have to chip in if possible. Come January 7th I can donate about £70, which is close to $100.

We'd be upgrading so the cost would either be $209 or $359 (that extra $150 is for mobile support). It seems a bit extravagant to go for mobile support but there are quite a lot of us who use mobile so I guess it's about how many people are willing to chip in. It'd be nice to have it at least. I'm happy to donate because I basically live here .

vBulletin is evil because you have to pay for it, but the free alternatives come with a lot less features and as far as I know we'd probably lose the entire archive of posts switching to completely different software.

Of course, with an upgrade and new features there would be the question of a redesign. I personally love the design of the forum and wouldn't want much to change but it's something that the entire memberbase needs to discuss/ make suggestions about, and it's a project that'll probably take up a great deal of the first half of next year, much the same way as the site front-end redesign took a year or so.

Of course, that above is all opinion and Yop can easily pop in and say "fuck off, no" but he mentioned an upgrade a while ago and a few people have mentioned that it would be a good idea.

I don't know much about the innards of the forum software but I'm going to learn over the break. Maybe our admins can give the mods a training course or something .

Anyway, very important, please discuss.

I'll be happy to pitch in AUD$100, if the idea gets the go ahead.

I want the mobile forum.

I'll chip in $50USD, minimum.

Today's exchange rates with the 3 of us puts us at $255 already. And this thread has been alive for about 10 minutes. I'm sure the rest of the memberbase can put up some of the rest?

£70 = $116
$100 AUD - $89 USD
$50 USD

I have absolutely no desire to upgrade to vBulletin 4. It's an utter nightmare to administer (for starters, the style manager is a piece of shit) and frankly a terrible piece of software. Maybe if they fix some of the problems with it for vB5 I'll be more enthused about upgrading then, but as far as I'm concerned "upgrading" would actually be a downgrade, despite the mobile skin.

*vBulletin 5

And I'm pretty sure BFF uses it and it works fine. I could be completely wrong.

Well, like I said in the Skype chat, they are complete fucking morons and split the style manager so that you have to edit literally hundreds of pages to make a style look even halfway decent. Unless they fixed this in vB5 then we can basically say goodbye to all our skins because there's no way anyone can be bothered doing that much editing for that many skins. That isn't the only major problem with vB4 either.

Gabriel said:

Click to expand...

I'll try and pitch in, though after xmas season it might be hard.

Pahaha Aaron, u funneh.

Yes anyway, test version to see how it is. According to Aaron the style editor was terrible in vBulletin 4. Now it's at 4.2 (which BFF uses fine and looks good in btw) or 5. The licence comes with 4.2 and 5, so if 5 is crap we can stick with 4.2 etc you see where I'm going with this.

Frankly, I am happy to learn how to apply these styles myself and manually sit through the tedium of applying every single thing, no matter how long it takes - if it means we finally have proper mobile support for the forum. I honestly do not care. I once spent a solid week sifting through pages I'd written on this site changing minute details in CSS and HTML to fuck with how tables appeared in my articles. If I learn how to do this, I will get it done.

Lets organise a test server thing at some point so we can fiddle with a cracked version or something.

If I don't have to deal with upgrading the styles personally then that will remove one of my major objections (though it'll be a really complicated process to make all the custom font styling and other matters work again). We'll still need to find replacements for all the hacks we installed though, and that doesn't get rid of the fact that some of the features they took out of vB4 irk me (for instance, there is now no way to look at a thread without removing it from your new posts list).

^No way to what? I do that fine on BFF :/

Maybe they put it back in 4.2 then, or maybe BFF just uses the alternate method of tracking new posts (if it calculates new posts based on last login rather than whether you've viewed the threads, then it wouldn't matter).

edit: eyesonff uses 4.2.2 and still doesn't let me view threads without removing them from the new posts list so I'm pretty sure BFF just uses the alternate new posts method

Break the statement down for me Aaron, I genuinely don't get it - what do you mean by "removing it from new posts list", what are you actually referring to there?

It could be right down to the way I browse the forums. I click new posts. All the posts I haven't read come up. I read them all. I click new posts again to do the same thing. I do the exact same thing on BFF?

If you want to view a thread on a vBulletin 3 that is configured the way ours is (to display all threads from the past X days you haven't viewed) but don't want to remove it from your new posts list (because, say, you intend to post in it later), you can add "&posted=1" to the end of the URL and paste it into the address bar, and it will (usually) not remove it from the new posts list when you refresh it. If you don't include "&posted=1" at the end of the URL, the thread will not be there the next time you load new posts.

A vBulletin 4 with the same configuration as ours ignores this "&posted=1" bit and removes it from the new posts list regardless, meaning that whenever you reload the new posts the thread will always be gone.

This is a minor thing to get irked about, certainly, but it's still annoying and I can't think of any good reason for Jelsoft to have removed it.

Ah OK. That's not something I've ever used. I can see why it's useful sure, but having to add shit to the address bar seems cumbersome to me anyway, so it's not something I'll ever do. If I want a thread to remain unread I'll either not click it or I'll leave the tab open or refresh it later.

Are you sure there's not just some other way to do the same thing now? Maybe you have to paste something different into the address bar or something. It's probably not a feature in the new software because the vast majority of people have no idea it's a feature. In fact, I'd hesitate to call it a feature at all, more like a quirky way to trick the software into believing you haven't read the thread?

Not trying to get on your case here, but I just don't see this one as a reason not to upgrade.

It's not really a reason for anyone else to care about not upgrading, it's just another of the many things about vB4 that irks me. I didn't even intend for it to be a big deal; I just used it as an example.

And as far as I know there's no equivalent functionality in vB4. It's in vB3 because it doesn't want to remove a thread from the new posts list when you've posted in it if you haven't actually read the entire thread (you'll notice every time you post, "&posted=1" is at the end of the URL). The programmers took this out of vB4 for god knows what reason. Leaving tabs open isn't an option for me because I always have too many tabs open already as it is, and my browser regularly crashes due to the sheer volume of tabs I leave open :/

There is still a way to trick the software in vB4, by just viewing "reply" through your subscribed threads, but that only shows you the last page of posts. Of course you can view any pages before the last one and the thread still won't disappear from the new threads list, but you will lose your place, and since I sometimes use the "view new post" feature as a bookmark, that's pretty annoying in its own right.

I'll pitch in...


...nothing at all.
I'm actually over 170 in the red this month. ;_;

Considering current staff, their knowledge and free time, plus taking into consideration all the custom hacks done to make the forum and front page work, I wouldn't recommend an upgrade unless it was for security issues.

Also from looking at BFF, I don't think it has a vB/WP bridge. Their front page uses DISQUS for comments, and clicking on an author doesn't give any information at all about their activity on the forums. I did a quick google search and I can't find any information from either vB or WP about any official bridge, and I'd find it weird if there was one. I'd only trust an official bridge tbh (no third party) and since they're two very separate product, none of them are ever going to make one unless one buys the other. The option is that WP builds a forum or vB builds a CMS - the latter being the most probably. But yeah, until then, I'd rather try for some custom solution - but again, there's a reason very few people has ever attempted bridging them. (Looking at the vB code base makes me queasy. For a Senior vB developer it probably makes sense, but to anyone else it's just lines and lines and lines of code with no structure.)

Incidentally it looks like vB5.0.5 is a thing on the official vBulletin site so I guess they're past release candidates now. But yeah, I'm going to concur with Fangu and strongly recommend not upgrading until we're absolutely sure it won't break everything.

So lets test it at some point then and look at it as an opportunity. It's not really productive to just flail about saying everything is shit, lets do nothing ever until some programmer messiah pops up and decides to Inform The World that new versions of vBulletin are now better. I know it's a bit of a headache but it's something to think about in the coming weeks. Ignore it for Christmas at least

Here's a random wordpress/ vB bridge.

Although tbh, I don't care all that much about the integration thing, it's always just been a suggestion/ on the backburner. It'd be a nice bonus, but that's about it. It's in no way necessary.

I know nothing about this stuff. It's a known unknown to me. Also I dont have any money for the foreseeable future. Plus I dont know if it would be better or worse for phones. Atm posting here using ea phone (android) is a bit of a nightmare, as I type right now I can't see what I am typing, and if I scroll up the cursor wil change position and getting it in the right place again is a crapshoot.

So yeah, I dont know if it would improve things for me or not but whatever you guys decide is fine. One day I will have real intynet again!

I tried one of the vB/WordPress bridges on FG. It's shit. Maybe there are better ones for vB4 or vB5.

And yeah, definitely vB5 is something to test out, but I want to be absolutely sure upgrading won't break the site and all the functionality people have come to know and love before upgrading. (For example, TLS would hardly be the same without the thanks hack, and if forced to choose between the thanks hack and upgrading, I'd probably choose the thanks hack).

Well these are the kind of things that need to be brought up/ discussed, so that's a good point Aaron. I'm not going to express my opinion on the thanks system, lest it implode like it did before. It may be that the benefits of new features outweigh the benefits of the system. But I don't really see it being a problem to implement (speaking as a person with no experience whatsoever on that, but a few vB forums use it that I've been to, however I don't think I've ever seen 5 in action).

I can honestly say that browsing this forum on mobile is a nightmare like no other. To the point where I just totally avoid it unless I'm incredibly bored and fancy fighting with my touchscreen for the entire morning bus journey.