Thoughts about replacing vBullettin with another forum solution?

[copse]

The current forum software is pretty good, even if Linux or Firefox users or whoever have Linux user or Firefox user or whoever problems, but as I am not a Linux user or Firefox user or whoever these things are not really happening as they are not happening to me :-)

If whatever is switched can save moderator or admin time or resources and reduce support requirements sounds like a win to me. I don't care if it runs on Amiga. It's easy to tick a box to say "use what runs on an amiga" and harder to say I'll pay the cost to observe these arbitrary constraints.

[davideo]

AmiBay used to use vBullettin

We migrated to XenForo a while ago and the Forum performs a lot better since the changeover.

[gimbal]

"Page generated in 0.07813 seconds with 15 queries"

Performance doesn't seem to be much of an issue. How people perceive performance is really academic anyway. John Carmack had an interesting thing to say about that; act on press, not on release.

https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1...064005?lang=en

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

We could always move to Discourse

I don’t mind Discourse (I appreciate many programming forums not using these old phpBB-style solutions), but:
I also appreciate the speediness of EAB (even speedier if it weren’t for the snowman or the rotating boing ball in the header).
I think many EAB users wouldn’t be able to handle Discourse.
Migrating would be fraught with terrible amounts of trouble, breaking twenty-five years of links as well as message formatting. This always seems to happen with web forums, but considering the differences in philosophy between phpBB and Discourse, a migration would be even more troublesome.
Default Discourse theme is very wasteful with screen real estate.

[dreadnought]

As for "like" buttons, I'm quite happy this place is one of the last on the web not to have them. Even though they are mostly harmless, they still mess about with psyche a bit.

I also really love this "old school" theme, the mobile-oriented ones just always seem targeted either at children or seniors, what with the big buttons, rounded corners, lame colours, big empty spaces, etc...

[jman]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

As for "like" buttons, I'm quite happy this place is one of the last on the web not to have them. Even though they are mostly harmless, they still mess about with psyche a bit.

Slightly off-topic: IME the "Like" button serves two purposes: as a "thank you" and as a "OK, I agree with what you just wrote".

How do you handle the case where you just want to thank someone for a useful post? I personally didn't find a good solution in this forum. Adding a new comment with just a "thank you" is explicit but it also pollutes the thread history. So I end up not acknowledging people being useful and this is not great either.

[TommyTomorrow]

Originally Posted by jman

Hey,

I could not find a recent discussion in this subforum, so I'm opening a new thread: what are the thoughts about migrating the EAB to another forum solution?

Let me preface that I am perfectly aware that it is a big task and that would be on the shoulders of the technical staff maintaining this forum (AFAIK just @RCK).

I would be happy to hear if you @RCK already did an assessment and - if yes - which solutions did you evaluate and what were the PRO and CONS. Or if in the past an attempt was already done.

(If I missed a previous discussion, happy to be directed there)

thanks

I don't see any reason why it would be worth changing the forum engine. Also, you haven't provided any argument why anyone would change anything. What's new is not always better than the old. I see a lot of forums on newer engines and these forums are no better than, for example, vbulletin.

[cloverskull]

The legacy links to threads/posts will no longer point to anything relevant. That's my trepidation with changing anything. I don't personally use the forum from a real Amiga though so my opinion is limited to just modern browser and mobile usage.

That said I've stood up an instance of nodebb in the past and really liked it. The navigation is quite a bit different but it was super performant and extensible.

[DisasterIncarna]

Originally Posted by TommyTomorrow

I don't see any reason why it would be worth changing the forum engine. Also, you haven't provided any argument why anyone would change anything. What's new is not always better than the old. I see a lot of forums on newer engines and these forums are no better than, for example, vbulletin.

as far as i can tell, its just the visuals/theming that stands out as different when i see other forum types, the theme/layout could easily change here and many might not even care for an engine change so to speak.

[jman]

Originally Posted by cloverskull

The legacy links to threads/posts will no longer point to anything relevant. That's my trepidation with changing anything.

That's a valid concern and goes without saying that it should be taken into account when planning any migration of this kind.


Unsurprisingly, XenForo has documentation to migrate from vBullettin and specific tools about URL redirects:

https://xenforo.com/docs/xf2/import-redirection/

[Predseda]

Current forum engine in its mobile skin works perfectly with AmigaOS3 Workbench in 8 colours using IBrowse on A1230. I wont change it.

[fxgogo]

I don’t mind this forum engine. Sure it is a bit clunky and old school, but that is part of its charm. Other forums I like are Vogons and Amigalove. Not sure which engines they use, but they work for me as well.

[Dunny]

I would be very, very cautious about changing what works well already. Look what happened to HOL.

[hiho]

If it isn't broke, why fix it?

[copse]

It kind of is broke though? Firefox or linux users or something having terrible ongoing trouble editing posts.

[malko]

Originally Posted by copse

It kind of is broke though? Firefox or linux users or something having terrible ongoing trouble editing posts.

for the "terrible ongoing trouble editing posts"
An empty line is not what I would incluse in such definition

[jman]

Originally Posted by malko

An empty line is not what I would incluse in such definition

maybe there are different definition of "terrible", but being dismissive towards other users' difficulties is not very helpful.

For me the current UX of EAB has always been subpar. And frankly now it's become even worse because of that issue. Correctly formatting a post is for me important. I'm tired of editing two or three times my comments to get an acceptable visual formatting. Navigating and searching the forum is equally important. Easily crosslinking posts is important, etc.

RCK suggested a possible replacement (XenForo). I had a look at that forum and reported some thoughts with what I see could improve, if a migration is planned, see my previous comment.

[fxgogo]

I use both Linux and Firefox and have not experienced this issue. Can you explain what the issue is?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by fxgogo

I use both Linux and Firefox and have not experienced this issue. Can you explain what the issue is?

You can read about it here: https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php...83#post1686383

[van_dammesque]

vBulletin is, IMO, the pinnacle of forums layouts. That xeno linked suffers the problem ost websites suffer from, widescreen-itis. Big empty bars either side of the screen, seems like 4:3 ratio WAS the best for computer use.