MUST READ! It's Time! Site migration is about to begin!

I’m fine with the new site but I really miss the mouse hover preview on topics.

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It always helps weather the process if you know why a change is made. I don’t speak for the owner of the Forum (Bill), but I can give you my perspective on why we made the change from phpBB (the old Forum software) to Discourse (the new software).

The whole thing began with a conversation about how to improve the system we used with the old Forum to give recognition to users who might not provide financial support, but made significant–sometimes huge–contributions in the form of time and expertise. The old “Supporting Member” badge wasn’t cutting it. It was clear that we’d have to come up with some addition to the built-in, manual ranking system in phpBB. That led to a discussion of how frequently over the years we had to cobble together solutions to make up for deficiencies in phpBB.

For example, several years ago, when Photobucket went to a pay-per-view model and blocked the display of images in forums, we suddenly had to cope with thousands of missing images that users had painstakingly added to posts. The loss of those images–which belonged to the affected users–really made a huge negative impact on the Forum. We came up with a script that imported the images from Photobucket and saved them locally, replacing as many of the missing images as possible. It took a lot of time, and it wasn’t a permanent fix.

If you add one of your images that is hosted elsewhere to the new Forum, Discourse automatically downloads the image and saves it locally to prevent that kind of fiasco.

Adding images to phpBB, the old Forum software, was a hassle. We got constant complaints from users about it, and the difficulty of getting their photos on the Forum discouraged many users from adding them. We built the Gallery to compensate, but many users still had trouble with it, and it was a poor solution in the long run.

The ease of adding images to the new Forum is one of the main reasons Discourse was chosen as the software for the Forum. Not only can you click an icon and select a local image, but you can also drag-and-drop an image to add it to a post and immediately see the result in the live post preview that Discourse offers. Or you can paste a link, and Discourse will add the image. And you can paste a link from YouTube and Discourse will embed the video. These are features that modern software has had for years, but they are not yet available in phpBB.

If that weren’t enough, there are more features we wanted that Discourse offers but phpBB does not:

  • A modern, mobile-friendly user interface.
  • One-click upgrades. (Discourse’s one-click upgrades only result in 0-5 minutes downtime, compared to phpBB’s manual upgrades with 45-60 minutes of downtime.)
  • A built-in, state-of-the-art immune system to prevent trolls, spammers, and bots from interfering with the Forum.
  • In-app notifications, which I am personally not a fan of, but many are.
  • A very helpful, responsive, development team, committed to making Discourse the best forum software out there.
  • Built-in support for Akismet to reduce spam.
  • A more-sophisticated system for recognizing contributions made by members.

Finally, the most critical factor, is the import script that allowed us to take the existing content from the old Forum along to Discourse, so we were able to make the move without losing all the categories, posts, and private messages from the old Forum.

Hosting the Forum in Discourse costs more, but from my perspective, we’re getting more than our money’s worth out of the deal, and the Forum will be better off in the long run.

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Also keep in mind how this forum is still privately owned and operated unlike many other forums out there. I have stopped participating in those forums pretty much as soon as they transferred to that platform. It just was not the same.

This is a big change here but thanks for the commitment of sticking with it in the name of the community! This format is alot different then Ive been used too(as many others Im sure) and its hard to pickup on considering how long Ive participated in bb style forums. In time Im sure all will get used to it as see the benefits it can provide. As I try and do things here as Ive been accustomed too I have to kind throw all that out the window and look for the new way of doing the same thing. It does take some time but its relativity easy to figure out.

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Thanks for the reply. The new format will sink in over time. About the acknowledgement, is everyone starting at zero now or did the post count transfer over as well?

Perhaps I should have looked at my own profile before asking about the post count. Anyway… same old cars, new meeting place.

Thanks for the explanation,
Attaching photos is 1000% easier, especially as i use an iPad almost 99.9% of the time now.

You mentioned a cost to have it ?
How much is it and how is it funded?

overall i preferred the general layout of the old system, but you have explained a net benefit going forward.

Perhaps you can post in a seperate topic a basic run down , in very simplistic descriptive how to navigate the new system …

Its the fear of not knowing which scares most of us I’m sure.

Keep on keeping on, your colective efforts are appreiated……:+1::hugs::hugs:

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just curious,
how many members here, and how many post or not post ?

As you’ve discovered, the post counts are still here, though there are far-more sophisticated statistics and reports available (to administrators) than there were with phpBB, including some cool graphs:

When you’re logged in, you can click the hamburger menu in the upper-right corner and click the Users link to get some information about the number of users, number of posts, etc.

I think once the dust settles, and we have some more time, there will be a more community specific plan for giving recognition to individual members’ contributions beyond the system built into Discourse, but we simply haven’t had the chance to get to it yet.

The current plan we’re on for Discourse is $40/month. We managed to find a very good host that provides excellent value for less than the $100/month we initially thought it would cost. The cost will go up as storage needs and traffic increase, but for now, we should be good on this plan. The main website is separately hosted. Bill (@xr7g428) pays for it out-of-pocket when there aren’t enough donations coming in to do so.

There are quite a few tutorials, both written and video, out there for Discourse. I’m not sure I could do better with a written tuttorial; certainly not for video, but it’s a good suggestion. I’ve been thinking we need to customize the FAQ (available via the hamburger menu). That might be a good place to put some articles about basic navigation.

I wouldn’t be adverse to making a small donation to the common good from time to time.
Certainy Bill shouldnt fund it from his own pocket :thinking:

How does one do such a thing ?

There will be a “Donate” link up by the current “Home” link in the toolbar that you can use to make a donation and/or subscribe via PayPal. It’s one of the things we haven’t gotten to yet.

I get that things change, and things can become difficult to support… and it is not that I cant work out a new forum architecture, but I really liked the old one, (I don’t like my “forum” to mimic social media platforms)… I also hate “Botts”, like you have no-idea…

TBH it is better on a desktop, but I struggle to like it on mobile.

I am a remote worker and follow threads on my mobile. either at the mess, or traveling from the mine to camp where I would catch up to recent posts on everyone’s build threads… it is significantly harder to follow threads now, I also miss the gallery holding all my images together (although i must be the only one), and I miss the “personality” that is introduced by peoples signatures… I don’t have the bandwidth to work it out at the minute. I might try again in a few weeks.

Sorry, but I find the new site harder to use - it doesn’t seem to be as easy to browse as the old site.
Also, the original posting dates got lost.
I’m seeing many new replies to very, very old (but interesting) posts.

I cannot figure out how to get to the bottom of a long forum post.
Perhaps a quick “how to use this site” would help.

Also, the “sticky” link to the turn signal post is gone.
Thanks!

I am still learning all of this too. We need the feedback so please keep the comments coming.

At the top of the page when you first come into the site there is a button labeled Categories. Click on that and then you will see a mare familiar layout.


Then click on Classic Cougar Maintenance and Repair and you will see the sticky for turn signals.

I am with you on getting to the bottom of the posts… I have been using the bar on the right hand side of the screen. I suspect there is a way to do this that I have not yet found.

UGHHHH! I don’t like new things to figure out. I think I’ll go do what I know how to do…crack open a beer and go outside for some fresh air to air out my brain!

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I can’t help you with mobile, but on a desktop, you can use Shift+l to skip to the first unread post in a thread.

I think the “unread” part will be an issue until you’ve used the Forum enough to have read most of the posts, so I’m not sure how well it will work.

Time to admit that I am getting used to the new forum… although mobile can be annoying (I have to log in every time, it is a pain to keep threads in their own tabs like I used to) I am starting to like the new desktop version more than the old one…

Excellent work!

Did the ‘user’ rankings ever get changed/updated? Or is everyone still a ‘basic’ user??

What is a better name for that? We really didn’t have rankings that worked like this before. Not sure what to do with this.

Why has my log in name changed ? Someone has added underscores in my name, they are even required to even log in, so what happened, someone else got my name so I got stuck with underscores ?

Basically, this new software sucks.