Forum software upgrade (for real now)

[Cthulhu]

@Yop, looks like there's a way to import thanks, worth considering?

Context for people who aren't Yop: all the thanks did not transfer to XF (which has a similar "like" system. IDK how many people this is important to.

Neat, and it looks straightforward enough too. Should try that on the test forums before doing it for real though.

It does help that the Xf importer can retain original post IDs; iirc discourse would just discard them. TBF that's what I would've done if I had written Discourse. Xf really went out on its way to be compatible with vB in many ways. Just not permissions, lol.

 

[The G'randiest' Daddy]

Okay I just went on the XF forum and I FUCKING LOVE IT! It's sleek, the customisation options feel solid, I love how the quotes look in posts, it's awesome!

Airling's PC is bork atm so I'll post for her, she says it feels like home, just a bit more modern, and it's beautiful!

Neither of us has said much about this as it isn't our area of expertise, but gorramit I like it

Also y'all are fucking aces, especially Yop, for getting all that shit up and running and I could literally just log in and it was

 

[Cthulhu]

heck off, Lex spent more time on it than I did so far

So, when do we want to move?

 

[CrashOuch]

^ Yeah exactly, I can't see any reason for not doing it sooner rather than later. The test site is working, I'm sure there'll be some kinks to iron out along the way but hey, I say tear that plaster off!

 

[Lex]

We'll give folks to the end of this coming weekend to air their concerns and discuss them.

One of the things I've said is that we haven't really had enough people actually use it, I mean even in a best case scenario when it goes "live" for real we'll need all hands on deck because it'll be a shitstorm of sorting permissions and shit, those are kinks we need to work out.

What we need to do is set a go live date and have Yop, me, and various other staff members available. I'm going to just say this now aswell: as much as I love and have faith in X and Tres as site admins in an authoritah/ hierarchy sense, AFAIK their technical knowledge of the backend is limited (correct if wrong folks). I know they can deal with the board structure and vague user permissions so as long as we're all active at the same time and communicating about changes it should be fine - I'm more referring to actual forum backend/ SQL technical knowledge that only really Yop provides now since Aaron left.

So on the back of that just consider it'll require about 15 hours to transfer all the data, then it'll need to sit hidden for at least a few hours while we all go fix it up before it actually goes back up. Then when it DOES go back up we'll be sorting issues for a while (all of this on the day of the actual move). So with that in mind it should probably be a weekend because AFAIK we're mostly Mon-Fri working folk. As in Yop actions the transfer overnight EU time and he and I are up the following morning/ early afternoon when it returns working stuff out.

We still need to discuss flattening user permissions prior to the move - yay/ nay? Yop there might be a way to transfer our user post ladder because that option exists in Xenforo, it's just not on by default.


THE MOST IMPORTANT THING

Is that everyone remembers that features and looks etc. are all going to be about community feedback after the move, so I'm thinking discussion threads and polls etc. about features people might want. It'll be an ongoing project for some time, which tbh is refreshing because this board as it is right now, its looks and its features might be iconic and it might be home, but it's been the same for nearly a decade and it'll be good to give the place a face lift.

Another issue nobody's really commented on is that people might be using different themes here - there's a style menu at the bottom. So one person's "TLS" might not be the same as mine (I just use the default "The Lifestream"). When we first move to Xen we'll all be on the same theme for a while (though there is an option to just use the Xenforo default, so there are technically two). With that in mind there are opportunities for people to step up and provide new icons and art etc. to make it really feel like home, there are people who have been doing that kinda thing recently.

I have 16th to 18th July booked off work and am busy this coming Saturday (hen party) and the entirety of the following weekend (pride - hence the preparatory hangover days off on the 16th to 18th July). I feel like I'm a necessary attendee at this "launch" if you will just because I'll be quick at getting to the stuff that needs fixing based on what I've looked at on the test system, so if it has to be a weekend (and it doesn't have to, we basically just have to have Yop + Admin(s) + Me available for a good few hours after it going live) then the first "free" weekend I have is the 21st and 22nd July. But I'm totally open to trying to work something out sooner. The only thing we have to be careful of is the time it takes to transfer the board over and coinciding that with several of us being available to actually do a lot of work in managing the permissions etc when it comes back up, otherwise we're looking at the board being totally offline for a couple of days.

I'm rambling at this point but you get the idea

 

[Geostigma]

Another issue nobody's really commented on is that people might be using different themes here - there's a style menu at the bottom.

HOLY SHIT. WE GOT LIEK 40 THEMES DOWN THERE.

I've been here like 10 years almost and never changed the theme lmao.

 

[Lex]

Yeah, and most of them still have the old banner with a "shop" and "donate" link under the logo lol. I actually used the purple theme for a long time back in the day.

 

[Fangu]

Themes is kind of an outdated concept though, no need to support it imo, just make a decision on it. Anything that lightens the job is a good thing to do imo, like flattening user roles etc. I'm fine with just being a regular user for a good while.(Although I'd like to still have Donator rights - I'd be fine without them for a week or two but preferably not longer.)
You can't cater to every little weird quirky thing this forum does anyway, that's just too much work. Prioritize the important stuff and chuck the rest in a backlog of 'less important' or 'nice to have'.

You guys just decide on a moving date. Preferably it should be set a few weeks ahead to warn people (with a FAQ etc) so members can prepare. But I know Yop is more likely to go 'okay I can start this tomorrow' so I'm guessing that's what'll happen anyway, which is fine as long as the most involved people are available

Also, good job. I believe in this move!

 

[Cthulhu]

Re: user groups and permissions, I'm thinking of simplifying it - initially - to:

* Admins
* Moderators (super moderators, I'd rather not have section-specific mods because eh)
* Site staff (/ contributors / authors) - more of a vanity usergroup
* Registered users (normies!)
* Donators

We'll need to decide what to do with the "vanity" usergroups:

* A few subcategories of site staff / moderators
* Half a dozen permutations of the donator usergroup, mainly with different colors
* Staff Emeritus

I'd opt to flatten those out, if people are like specializing in a certain area they can chuck that in their user title. I'm fine with keeping Staff Emeritus around.

Re: themes, IDK, I feel that was more of an Aaron thing on the one hand, and a necessity for mobile users on the other hand; Xf has a pretty okayish responsive design by default, and the theme Lex made is mostly just color changes, that is, any theme updates should work just fine (this was an issue back when vB still got updates, so urrh, back in 2007/8)

Re: moving, I'm thinking I should initiate the move on a friday night, leave it on overnight - we'll drop a message on vB indicating that any post made after Point X will not be transferred over. Plan B is to just put it in archive mode altogether, shut it down until we've moved.

Re: availability, I should be available the coming few weekends; the weekend of the 27th I'll probably be home a bit later than usual but starting the move will only take about idk, 20 minutes? Set up a new database, start the transfer, that kinda thing.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

I'm on board with those flattened permissions. The only usergroup that I think might be useful to implement in some capacity would be the Staff Emeritus, since that helps to point to some folk who know what they're about in the community a tad bit differently from the Donators. Whether that's a usergroup, or something else I dunno, but I think that it's a valuable distinction.

I think that themes are just fine, and it might be nice to design a few over time just because, since using them is really fluid, but I don't see it at all as a requirement prior to moving.

Lastly, I think that the "lock down the forums during the move" is the best plan. We can even have a temporary front page poast about it if need be. Anything that freezes conversations from having anything dropped is best.





X

 

[Lex]

Re: user groups and permissions, I'm thinking of simplifying it - initially - to:

* Admins
* Moderators (super moderators, I'd rather not have section-specific mods because eh)
* Site staff (/ contributors / authors) - more of a vanity usergroup
* Registered users (normies!)
* Donators

We'll need to decide what to do with the "vanity" usergroups:

* A few subcategories of site staff / moderators
* Half a dozen permutations of the donator usergroup, mainly with different colors
* Staff Emeritus

I'd opt to flatten those out, if people are like specializing in a certain area they can chuck that in their user title. I'm fine with keeping Staff Emeritus around.

Re: themes, IDK, I feel that was more of an Aaron thing on the one hand, and a necessity for mobile users on the other hand; Xf has a pretty okayish responsive design by default, and the theme Lex made is mostly just color changes, that is, any theme updates should work just fine (this was an issue back when vB still got updates, so urrh, back in 2007/8)

Re: moving, I'm thinking I should initiate the move on a friday night, leave it on overnight - we'll drop a message on vB indicating that any post made after Point X will not be transferred over. Plan B is to just put it in archive mode altogether, shut it down until we've moved.

Re: availability, I should be available the coming few weekends; the weekend of the 27th I'll probably be home a bit later than usual but starting the move will only take about idk, 20 minutes? Set up a new database, start the transfer, that kinda thing.

I think prior to the move we should just have:

- Admin
- SMods (no section specific like you said)
- Registered Users (normies)
- Donators

I'd rather sort the site staff permissions after the move, because we have a lot of new content creators and a lot of people with site staff positions (site author etc.) who don't actually do anything.

IMO leave Staff Emeritus and reinstate it after the move.

Yop, if we can find a way to make sure the user ladder and permissions transfer over that would be decent because it'll save the initial scramble to fix permissions so that literally everyone's posts don't need to be moderated, but flattening prior to the move makes that significantly easier anyway.

Re: themes, we should just stick to colour themes. Initially I'm thinking TLS dark and TLS light. The default will be the TLS dark greenish colouring set up and we can make a light theme based off that for people who prefer bright board (which can just be a child of the default theme) then if people want specific themes they can request?

Agree with Fangu on it being kind of a legacy thing though.

I'm on board with those flattened permissions. The only usergroup that I think might be useful to implement in some capacity would be the Staff Emeritus, since that helps to point to some folk who know what they're about in the community a tad bit differently from the Donators. Whether that's a usergroup, or something else I dunno, but I think that it's a valuable distinction.

I think that themes are just fine, and it might be nice to design a few over time just because, since using them is really fluid, but I don't see it at all as a requirement prior to moving.

Lastly, I think that the "lock down the forums during the move" is the best plan. We can even have a temporary front page poast about it if need be. Anything that freezes conversations from having anything dropped is best.

IMO best course of action is just leave a maintenance message in place of the board link til we're set up? This is what most other places do. I suppose there's no harm in locking the forums so people can read threads and whatnot though.

 

[Cthulhu]

Light themes are literally satan though, . Except outside, but outside is literally satan too.

We should make sure to make snapshots of who is in which usergroup(s).

As for closing vs 'archiving', I'm wondering whether we should keep vB up and running for a while (e.g. move it to /oldforums, disable search engine indexing) so we can look up older posts and the like if need be; I'm aware of some encoding issues happening in existing posts, but I haven't yet heard people mention they've been looking at (very) old posts in Xf. Which is either a good sign (they looked, no problems), or a bad one (they didn't look and it's all fucked).

Re: front page post, maybe we should put one up right now? We also still have the option to send a bulk e-mail to all users (at least the ones we can be sure are not spambots) to get them in on it. I remember back in the day we'd get the odd mail from forums to ask us to come back, sometimes it'd boost activity too.

One thing I am glad about is that with Xf, accounts just move and passwords just work; with Discourse everyone had to reset their passwords.

 

[Lex]

If there's a way to keep a copy of the vB board up on another url for a while that'd be good just for reference purposes re: usergroups and stuff. I wasn't intending to remove any usergroups from the actual backend, they all transferred over - it's permissions that are the issue. So the idea is to flatten all the user titles on a per-user basis prior to the move rather than actually change any of them in the backend. Then we can fiddle with the permissions in the XF backend and get back what we need.

Most permissions were OK, the biggest things were every post needing mod approval and the private feedback forum so that's another thing that'll need to be heavily looked at before we go live. It has highly custom permissions here that just didn't translate at all to XF.

 

[CrashOuch]

So we need to be talking about what's gonna happen with the user permissions, right? What are the options there? Should we start discussing them and then make a poll or something?

 

[Geostigma]

So just to kind of get our ducks in a row should we make like a quick list of "fix it nowww" stuff and "can be saved for future development" stuff?

Fix asap​

User Title/Permissions thing - Possible solution , Flatten the thingy?

Work on later​

Post bit information - I.e. Join date, user title length, aka field etc.

Sig/Avatar dimensions - I know we said smaller, but getting a fixed dimension set in stone would be neat at some point.

Anything else?


edit:


Also haha this formatting is total trash sorry.

Also hope you feel better soon Lex!

 

[Lex]

So the workflow to me ideally will be like this:

PRIOR TO MOVE

- Sort user (and thread) permissions for smoothest possible transfer

DAY OF MOVE

- Yop performs database transfer (day prior, it takes nearly a day)
- Test user permissions and boards using test accounts.
- Install theme (it's been exported already)
- Install addons (emoji's etc.)
- Remove historic plugins (XF has built in BBCode, ours breaks it)
- Use test accounts to check everything again
- Go live (public access)

ONGOING PROJECTS POST MOVE (can be worked on prior)

- Discuss user titles, postbit info, sig and avatars
- Further custom skinning (replacing "like" button with a monster, easy CSS)
- Feature discussions and request (I strongly think people need to use the board for a while to get used to it so we can all discover what we like and don't like/ what features we want added if any)
- Develop light TLS board theme for those who want it

To address some of the stuff you bring up Gabe:

The avatars have a fixed width over there. We should be able to make them larger if people want to, I'm OK with the size they are now but that needs discussion.

Postbit info: my idea is that rather than having user titles we have small icons, so that if someone is many things (i.e. an SMod and content contributor) they have a small collection of easily identifiable icons rather than text. These will have text on hover, and be VII themed. Just an idea, but it's neater and more visually pleasing than the text jargon we have now. Re: join date and all that, that's totally up for discussion. I'm happy for none of that to be visible, it's cleaner. But we can have polls post-move to decide what we do and don't want, it's all just a switch that can be flipped in the backend.

AKA: This is particularly important for TLS, and I would actually advocate for someone to have an AKA title under their current forum name. So an AKA field that can be enabled or disabled (only disabled for people who don't ever change their usernames, like me) sitting as a subtitle under their forum name. I don't see the need to keep a list of every single username a person has had with this option. All of us kind of have a name they're most known by, and that's the one that should be in the AKA subtitle. So Carlie would have AKA: Carlie under her forum name, and it never changes. You'd have Gabe because that's how we all know you. So on and so forth. I know there are some examples of people who are newer knowing people by other names (i.e. Yop has almost always been Cthulhu here but everyone eventually just calls him Yop because that's how we always refer to him), so he'd be AKA: Yop. I guess it can be whatever someone wants it to be, but IMO one name that's to stay there for good. No real need to list every single previous username in a field. How do we feel about that?

If we can limit the pixel height of sigs I'd like to go for something like 200-300px max, would people be cool with that? Some people have sigs that are the size of a page.

I'd also advocate for enabling custom text styling (i.e. the colour of your post font etc.) because I know people like that, but I don't have any particular horse in that race. LET US OUTLAW THE PINK FONT OF DEATH haha jk

 

[Geostigma]

Well look at mr. fancy pants over here and their proper formatting

Postbit info: my idea is that rather than having user titles we have small icons, so that if someone is many things (i.e. an SMod and content contributor) they have a small collection of easily identifiable icons rather than text. These will have text on hover, and be VII themed.

This is so fucking cool, I'm totally down for something like that!

AKA

Yup. That's why I made sure to specifically bring it up in that post. When looking for forum upgrade threads I also did a bit of drama thread reading (guilty pleasure lol) and man. Some of the shit that went down because that.. Ooof

I don't expect for petty stuff like that to go down ever again. I hope, but none the less I feel it should still be a thing as well.

I like your approach to it too. It makes sense and the vast majority of us do indeed have that "one username" we all know each other by so it should be ok for the most part. If need be I guess someone could just add more usernames to their sig? lol


Regarding sigs. That sounds like a pretty fair size and since "sigs/tags" are like super 2006 anyway I think as time passes it will be rarer and rarer to find people still into that anyway. I mean heck I love those things and haven't made one in years

That said I also know that resolution offhand and what it looks like just by seeing its dimensions posted and realize others may not be able to visualize that. I don't have time now but when I get home I could make different sized blank "sig" images in those resolutions so people can get an idea for it or something.


edit:

For reference though I'm pretty sure my current sig image is somewhere in the realm of 500x200


edit:

LET US OUTLAW THE PINK FONT OF DEATH haha jk

Definitely Neon Pink at least


pls

 

[Lex]

Re: sig size a good reference is mine, which is IMO too large vertically. Currently it's 350px (including the text underneath but not including the edit, quote etc. buttons). We could do something like have a perk of higher postcount be +50px sig size up to a max of 300px, starting at 150px. Vast majority of regular posters here would start at max size obviously because postcount etc. transfers over. Newbies (up to however many we decide posts) have no sig, then can have a 150px sig at 10 posts or something. idk it's all just theory at this stage

 

[ForceStealer]

I dig all your thoughts/suggestions, Lex

 

[Carlie]

Postbit info: my idea is that rather than having user titles we have small icons, so that if someone is many things (i.e. an SMod and content contributor) they have a small collection of easily identifiable icons rather than text. These will have text on hover, and be VII themed. Just an idea, but it's neater and more visually pleasing than the text jargon we have now. Re: join date and all that, that's totally up for discussion. I'm happy for none of that to be visible, it's cleaner. But we can have polls post-move to decide what we do and don't want, it's all just a switch that can be flipped in the backend.

AKA: This is particularly important for TLS, and I would actually advocate for someone to have an AKA title under their current forum name. So an AKA field that can be enabled or disabled (only disabled for people who don't ever change their usernames, like me) sitting as a subtitle under their forum name. I don't see the need to keep a list of every single username a person has had with this option. All of us kind of have a name they're most known by, and that's the one that should be in the AKA subtitle. So Carlie would have AKA: Carlie under her forum name, and it never changes. You'd have Gabe because that's how we all know you. So on and so forth. I know there are some examples of people who are newer knowing people by other names (i.e. Yop has almost always been Cthulhu here but everyone eventually just calls him Yop because that's how we always refer to him), so he'd be AKA: Yop. I guess it can be whatever someone wants it to be, but IMO one name that's to stay there for good. No real need to list every single previous username in a field. How do we feel about that?

Postbit: I like this idea.

Aka: Yeah is honestly better that way, I used to have Carlie, my most used username if I wasn't using it and the one I had used before. But now there's just Carlie there, is simpler and it serves its purpose.

 

[Cthulhu]

FYI, I've split and closed part of the discussion from the past few pages (starting at the staff emeritus discussion); they detract from the main subject of the thread (= moving, etc). I did not handle that situation appropriately, and I apologise for all of it.

Re: steps, Lex's list of tasks and whatnot is pretty much what I've had in mind too. At this point I think most of the work / tasks / etc listed aren't prerequisites to move, e.g. I don't think there's any outstanding blocking issues at this point.

I think a lot of the info currently in the postbit - join date, sex, location to name a few - can just go to the user's profile page, it's not something you need quick access to. I wonder what the history behind that is, I can imagine that a random passer-by would glance at that at least.

Speaking of random passers-by, we'll have to review the permissions of unregistered users as well, like, which sections they can view and what parts of user profiles they can access.

Avatar sizes, we can play with those.

Signature sizes, same. Another dimension for both avatars and signatures we should consider is mobile users. I've had a quick look; at the moment, avatars on Xf look like they're between 2 and 20 KB in size, which is acceptable enough I reckon. The main banner atm is 500 KB and the logo is 122KB, something that we could look into optimizing; switching to JPG might make a lot of difference already. It will be cached for returning users at least.

IIRC custom text styling was a custom modification or a plugin to the site, if it was custom then it'd require template edits which I'm not a fan of, it means having to do a bit of work (re-implement it?) whenever the original template changes. Something to look into.

Re: AKA fields, I think Discourse had an elegant solution for this (but I don't remember if that was discourse or I'm just making shit up here), where as a user you could just pick a "display username", and you could see the original username in the postbit, or switch an option to only show people's original / login names.

 

[Claymore]

So when's the big day?

 

[Lex]

This depends entirely on Yop. I'm free for the next two weeks because I'm off work with a broken rib. I can pretty much start cleaning stuff up as per The Great Purge after the conclusion of today's vote, shouldn't take me too long. When that's done it's a "whenever" scenario, although the same stipulations apply as before re: me wanting multiple people there to test etc. before we go live.

 

[ForceStealer]

This depends entirely on Yop.

Famous last words

 

[Fangu]

Somehow I feel like Lex breaking a rib is like the best thing to happen this summer

(jk you know I don't really mean that babe but yeah)

(also Yop you've done well <3 I know the stuff you've done the last months to not be insignificant work)