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<b>IMPORTANT</b>: Change to new Forums?

J

john

Guest
Dear all,

I've been giving serious consideration to changing the forum software over to phpBB from the current Discus. There's method to my madness. Discus is basically written and maintained by one guy and while it serves its purpose well it has limited features and cumbersome to customise. phpBB lacks some of Discus' clever features but it has a lot more usability features that make it very attractive (it's very easy to integrate your forum membership with the rest of the web site).

When I started the forum, phpBB wasn't all that great and Discus was the best software around at the time, hence my choice. Now we have a forum with 25,000 messages or thereabouts. Unfortunately there is no converter from the discus system to phpBB. So if we did change we would be starting over from scratch. On the positive side, I would leave the old forum software in place, but with posting disabled. In effect the old forum would be an archive of the years 2001-2004.

I'm looking for input on how people would feel about making the change. You'd have to create a new account, your posts would be reset to zero and we would start off with an empty forum. Your donor, site contributor or moderator status would be preserved though.

What do you all think? I know it's my decision to make but I do not want to go against the wishes of the majority of forum users.

Please let me know.

Best wishes,

John
 
J

john

Guest
I will put it another way: I intend to change to phpBB. This thread is your chance to stop me or at least make me think twice.

Under the new system you would have to create a new account on the system. Your personal settings would have to be set up again on the new system.

The old board would remain as an archive and also so photos and posts can be linked from the new forum.
 
S

sergé

Guest
I can not overlook the consequences, but when you do you should try to send an e-mail to all the users that they have to re-create a new account and install again their personal settings. But that's just a few clicks of work...
But turning to you: is it worth all the work? Do we miss something very important the way we work? (try to save you work :)
 
Y

yago

Guest
I reckon its better to be on the edge than let thing be outdated. So, its always time to update. It will reanimate the site for old users as well since changes and innovating brings freshness. People will be willing to explore and discover the new features and changes. So, I support the idea.
On the other hand, how is the magazine going? Still a lot of expectation, everybody is asking around but nobody has heard recent news and dates on that. Let us know.
Best greetings
Yago
 
J

john

Guest
I agree with Yago's thoughts on it but as Sergé suggests, I will contact the people on the forum and let them know things are changing. Their info will still be available for them to read (nothing will be deleted), so changing over should be painless for them.

The time consuming part from my point of view is setting up the forum topics again.

Yago- With regard to the magazine, I'm not going to comment on it right now, sorry. I will update you all at the end of the month though.

Regarding changes to the forum software, I will not begin work on that until a magazine appears.

Yago - while I think of it, didn't you correct my Spanish in an email (for the cover of Caudata.org) ? I can't seem to find it and I am doing site updates at the moment. If you can tell me again what I should have said, I would be very grateful indeed.
 
Y

yago

Guest
Hi John
I don't remember any spanish translation for you. I have check your e-mails and I haven't found anything similar. Anyway, just send me an e-mail with the the text and I will do it gladly.
Best greetings
Yago
 
H

hayden

Guest
I really like the software here better than that of TONMO...But thats just me...if its better for the site...PROCEED.
 
K

kaysie

Guest
I like TONMO's forum because you can see who posted it, how many views, last reply, etc, before you open it...
 

colin

Member
Joined
May 7, 2007
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Yes, thats one of the things i like about it too.

One point in favour of this board is that it is very easy to upload pics and have them visible rather than links. With phpBB you need to mess about with it a bit to get the picture seen in the text of the reply.

Hayden, what didnt you liek about phpBB?
 
J

john

Guest
Yes, I've looked at Tomno and Aquahobby and the integration of the forum into the sites is quite attractive to me. Colin, I wasn't aware of the image upload problem - that could be an issue. Can you tell me precisely what the problem is? I can code in php so I'm not too worried about _very minor_ modifications.
 

TJ

New member
Joined
Oct 26, 2002
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Location
Tokyo
Ah, a software change? I'll adopt a cautious stance on the issue because I'm really comfortable with the site as it is right now. I have no technical basis for arguing against the move, it's just that new and improved so often turns out to be just new, not necessarily improved. But hey, I'm confident you know what you're doing so I'm not dead set against the idea. Before you do anything rash
lol.gif
, are you sure that there's not a new and cutting-edge version of Discus about to be release any time soon?
 
J

john

Guest
Tim - I doubt Kevin (the programmer) is going to drop anything seriously new on us soon. Discus 4 does have some major advantages over phpBB (particularly from my own point of view and that of a moderator), but looks and web integration aren't some of them.

I'll give the matter some more thought.
 

colin

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Hi john,

pictures are uploaded as normal and in the final displayed reply they are shown as a link to click which opens a new page. To embed the pic into the text of the reply you first need to post your reply, then open the link, copy the address of the pic, then edit your post and insert the link to the picture between two IMG icons... its a wee bit of a pain but not too bad.

I have to say that I prefer the phpBB look and feel and think that there is much more scope for stuff as well as the forums...

So to recap, its dead easy to upload an image but there is a round about way of actually displaying it.

This thread has a lot of pics in it on the screen, its actually quite funny in a sad trainspotter kind of way but it will let you see what i mean
happy.gif
http://www.tonmo.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=2691&start=0
 
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