First item, I'd like to explain the Event Archive subforum. Each regional Event forum now has an Event Archive subforum. When an event is passed, or if it is cancelled, a moderator or admin will move it to the Event Archive subforum.
There is no technical restriction keeping you from posting to the thread after it is moved to the event archive, so if you want to write about your experience at the event or thank the host there is nothing stopping you. If I've made a mistake and moved anything to the event archive that shouldn't be, just let me know and I'll move it where it should go.
Second, here is the consolidated todo/plans. Some of it has been suggested by members, some is things I'd like to do. Please, any objections, let me know. Any comments and additional items are welcome.
1. Combine "Forum Updates" and "Forum News"
2. Split out most prevalent thread topic(s) from "General Board", and make a new board for that topic(s)
3. Some sort of "[OLD]" marker or Archive for Buy/Sell/Trade. You can help right now; if your post is no longer an active proposition, please add a followup to your thread so it can be closed.
4. Absorb "Game Nights" into "Lower Mainland Events". With the current low number of active threads, seems unnecessary to have a subboard just for that.
5. Split "Rest of BC" into more regional subboards. Although there isn't a lot of activity in "Rest of BC". Or is this a chicken and egg problem?
6. "Forum Games" -- Some people have requested that it not show up in Recent Posts. I don't see an easy way to do it. The apparent way would be to create a membergroup that cannot see the "Forum Games" forum, then I switch people in and out of that group by request.
There should be a way to simply create an open usergroup, where people can join and leave as they please anyhow. Just so long as people are aware it is there, I suppose.
Also, Forum Games probably should have been left where it was origonally, rather than being made a sub-board of general toppings. Wow, pun accident...
Well, I don't see a way to do user-managed groups.
As for Forum Games, that is easily adjusted when I reorganize.
1. Done
2. Open to comments. The most prevalent kind of thread that could be a sub-board is "Blogging about my life" type posts and "Personals (from friend to hang out with to long-term relationship)".
3. Still an item to do. Any threads you wish to post an update on to indicate that it is no longer an active proposition is welcome.
4. Done.
5. Still looking for discussion. One idea I had is to just absorb Fraser Valley events into Lower Mainland events. then we'd just need one or two additional boards.
6. Not hidden from Recent Posts, but did follow the suggestion to not have it as a sub-board of general board.
Personals sounds like a good idea.
Fraser Valley/Lower Mainland consolidation sounds good as well.
Another thought would be to update the news banner to point out the necessity to look in these topics for updates, because most people don't.
Additional idea: Change "Movies" board and "Music" board to top-level forums, not child forums. Thoughts?
Yeah, definately a good idea. As it is, the Movies Music and Reviews forum is absolutely empty... so it kinda puts more distance to the content from the front page.
May as well rename Hobby Gaming to Hobbies, so that it can cover a wider spectrum. There are plenty of hobbies out there that have nothing to do with games or gaming.
Merge Movies and Music into one forum. "Media" Less activity means we don't need two separate forums for them.
I split out "Movies" and "Music" to top-level boards; they're no longer child boards. It's reversible if people decide they don't like it. Combining them into one board would be a bit harder to reverse if necessary, so I'll wait for more feedback about that.
I've changed the default time zone for the forum. If you're in BC, it'll show the correct time by default. If you've changed your option, change it back to zero. (Profile/Look and Layout Preferences/Time Offset, enter "0")
There are several ways to improve the boards, and being careful not to step on peoples toes i would like to stick my neck out to provide some suggestions to what i think could be beneficial for the forums as far as usability goes, it might just be me, but in my opinion SMF isnt exactly user friendly, though that might change with version 2.0 whenever they decide to let that go into final, havent tested it yet, i might be biased however as far as forum softwares goes, i have had experience in administrating furry forums since 08, but i've had a few forums before that for various cases and events.
As far as the forums go, i would suggest looking into lisencing for vBulletin, this is kinda hard to decide on as legally this costs money to do, and its newest version (vB4.0) is out of my exerpience field, while i may admit, i might be a bit more of a power user in the field and I aim to create as good a system as possible, not really that great with the user base sometimes. (example (http://forums.thefurryden.net/member.php?u=1))
Other than that, styles, modifications, making sure modifications are updated (or menus atleast *points to chat shortcut* on the menu bar on the top) this makes for a bit more usable system without any major admin interaction, though if the worry about vbulletin would be the work needed to get the conversion progress finished and all of that jazz, dont hesitate to ask me, that goes for anything in this matter though, i wouldnt mind giving a helping hand to my fellow furs in on the to the west, who knows, maybe we'll be able to meet up at a furmeet in Canada at some point!
~Calmcacil
The Very Insomniated feline
(07:30) Military time
I have a test forum up and running with RC 3.0 up and running on it...seems fine so far. I'll give it a few more rounds of testing, do a little bug research, and if everything checks out I'll release it on live.
: Unition April 06, 2010, 01:27:40 -06:00
I have a test forum up and running with RC 3.0 up and running on it...seems fine so far. I'll give it a few more rounds of testing, do a little bug research, and if everything checks out I'll release it on live.
Would it be wise to upgrade to a RC on a live forum?
No, which is why I had a test forum made with duplicate data (including posts), and ran the upgrade there first.
It's been up for a week or so without any problems, I'm not looking at pushing it to live even anytime this week until I'm satisfied with testing.
Even then there will be a backup of posts on both our side and on the server, and I can reinstall from nothing in about an hour.
And then the test server itself is a viable backup.
: Unition April 06, 2010, 01:48:28 -06:00
No, which is why I had a test forum made with duplicate data (including posts), and ran the upgrade there first.
It's been up for a week or so without any problems, I'm not looking at pushing it to live even anytime this week until I'm satisfied with testing.
Even then there will be a backup of posts on both our side and on the server, and I can reinstall from nothing in about an hour.
And then the test server itself is a viable backup.
I dont relaly know the usability of SMF version 2 yet, i know they arent suggesting towards upgrading a live forum at this time but if you think its safe to upgrade ill take your word for it, never really used SMF myself. Any words on when the final version is expected to be finished? I might just consider writing some "mods" to it myself.
To be honest I'm not entirely sure it is safe to upgrade the live forums at this point, after I've done a little research I will have a better idea. But I do think the forums need to be kept up to date - there are a lot of neat new apps that newer versions can run that this one can't, that I think will help the community do things like plan events and communicate more efficiently. Forum games and facebook-like functionality for example.
As for the official new version - no idea when that's coming out, I suppose I should check that out as well. If a new official version is coming out next week it makes sense to hold on and wait.
: Unition April 06, 2010, 02:02:26 -06:00
To be honest I'm not entirely sure it is safe to upgrade the live forums at this point, after I've done a little research I will have a better idea. But I do think the forums need to be kept up to date - there are a lot of neat new apps that newer versions can run that this one can't, that I think will help the community do things like plan events and communicate more efficiently. Forum games and facebook-like functionality for example.
As for the official new version - no idea when that's coming out, I suppose I should check that out as well. If a new official version is coming out next week it makes sense to hold on and wait.
As far as keeping an updated forum goes, a conversion of forum softwares would probably provide with better updates and features, the real shame is that such a change would require a licence, not that there arent boards running vB without a lisence... but yeah i do agree that upgrades are necciary, but usually RC's are flustered with bugs and very often exploitable weaknesses, considering the userbase on this forum i dont think its in a danger of being "attacked". if you need help with anything though as previously stated, dont hesitate to talk to me, i have a pretty good idea about whats going on in the forum world.
EDIT:
As a lisence holder of vBulletin im allowed to setup a temporary test forum which could be used to see how the forum conversion to forexample vBulletin would be doable on how the result from doing this would look and how good a change it would be. Just a lil helping paw for possible improvement ;3
I don't think that switching forum software to something completely different would be a very good idea. Not only would it be a pain to migrate, but Database migration would not include everyone's userpics and attachments in their posts, as they are files on the server, not database items. It would take over a month to get everything working again.
Furthermore, Ratt already said that the forum will not be migrated to a release candidate.
: Felix McKline April 06, 2010, 05:37:22 -06:00
I don't think that switching forum software to something completely different would be a very good idea. Not only would it be a pain to migrate, but Database migration would not include everyone's userpics and attachments in their posts, as they are files on the server, not database items. It would take over a month to get everything working again.
Furthermore, Ratt already said that the forum will not be migrated to a release candidate.
As far as i know Impex (vBulletin product) has flawsless import mechanics from most forum softwares, including SMF
Now that I'm off work and have more time to say what is necessary...
I don't see much point in switching forum software when what we have is free, and works perfectly.
Switching to a release candidate would be a bad idea, because as it very well could have security holes, glitches, and whatever else, we have already been attacked, and guarenteed it will happen again. It is better to not take unnecessary security risks.
Also, why does this forum need to cost more money? Ratt is already paying for domain services, and hosting. We already have free forum software that has all the same features as most of the licensing based forum softwares.
We will not do things illegally, so we are not going to crack a copy of vBulleton to get around the licensing cost.
The administration and moderation teams would then have to learn the new software, and all of the mods and customizations we have already done would have to be done again.
In the end, it would simply be a big unnecessary project. I would support fully, upgrading to SMF 2 when it is officially released. But, I do not support switching forum softwares.
Don't fix what isn't broken, right?
: Felix McKline April 06, 2010, 09:53:22 -06:00
Now that I'm off work and have more time to say what is necessary...
I don't see much point in switching forum software when what we have is free, and works perfectly.
Switching to a release candidate would be a bad idea, because as it very well could have security holes, glitches, and whatever else, we have already been attacked, and guarenteed it will happen again. It is better to not take unnecessary security risks.
Lastly, why does this forum need to cost more money? We will not do things illegally, so we are not going to crack a copy of vBulleton to get around the licensing cost. The administration and moderation teams would then have to learn the new software, and all of the mods and customizations we have already done would have to be done again.
In the end, it would simply be a big unnecessary project. I would support fully, upgrading to SMF 2 when it is officially released. But, I do not support switching forum softwares.
Don't fix what isn't broken, right
Granted, the work involved and the costs make it pretty unrealistic, all in all vBulletin may be a better software and more safe, but SMF probably provides more than whats needed in these forums.
I was simply making a suggestion if it was in the interest of the administration to do something like this to obtain a more secure system with lots of power and dedicated developers making mods and templates, i dont have enough basis to say its
better than SMF as ive never had any serious experience with it, ive used IBF for 2 years and vBulletin for 5, my vbulletin forum has yet to be "attacked" had some trolls but thanks to the tools at hand in vBulletin they were dealth with and thats the end of that. spambots is a problem in any forum software, heck even recaptcha has been cracked, its quite a hassle really.
But as i said it was a suggestion for the forum admins incase they had any desires to move on to something that in my experience seems to have better functionallity than any of the other forum softwares i tested, ultimately its their call to do whatever they feel is best for the boards, i merely said i'd help test the conversion process in advance if its something they would consider trying as i have the lisence and the tools to do such a test.
Update;
would implemention of Tapatalk be possible for these boards? it would make it friendly for iPhone/iPod touch owners, which well i dunno how many of us there are here (android&blackberry support is said to be planned/in beta too)
I run it on my own forums and ive tested for "securty holes" and i havent found any.
Just FYI, back when I worked at Nettwerk we did a bunch of migrations of various artists OFF of things like vBulletin to SMF; we standardized on SMF for all our forums and the various art teams did just fine re-theming/skinning, adding features, etc.
Personally, I'm a big free (as in speech as well as beer) software advocate, and would rather see us stay on and utilize as much free software as possible - especially in the case of open source, you're not beholden to one company to fix or support things, and you're free to fix and modify as much as you like.
No vBulletin. No need for it.
Speaking of which, I just signed up for another forum that uses vBulletin, and then tried to use the site on my phone.
SMF works flawlessly, in full browser mode. I changed my avatar from my phone.
vBulletin gives me more errors trying to load than I've ever seen in my life for a single webpage. I can't even post.
Sometimes free really is better.
Upgrading to an RC 3.0 will break everything on the forum, and you will then have to wait for the addons to catch up (if any want to)
Wee bit of a necro here? You missed by about a year.
: Selkit June 04, 2011, 11:04:26 -06:00
Wee bit of a necro here? You missed by about a year.
your posting is irrelevent, just stating the truth, even with current builds