Changing forum to a different program

[molly]

Dear Nodeoramians--

I'm thinking of changing the software we use for this forum. If anyone's interested in giving their input, here's the scoop.

We are now using XMB forum software.
http://www.xmbforum.com

I am thinking of changing to Simple Machines software.
http://www.simplemachines.org

Wondering if any of you have any info about either of these to share? Or experiences, or advice. Yes you can advise me since this is an administrative matter rather than a chart.

Why would I change? For one thing, it's getting more and more difficult to find support and customizations for XMB. In addition, when I upgraded to the latest version of XMB yesterday, I found they had placed an ad in the footer at the bottom of each page on this forum. I removed it, but ick poo. They also advertise spammy things on their support forum.

"Low Credit? | Order Celebrex | Order Prilosec | Order Phentermine"

Is anyone else completely turned off by these? I never liked seeing those ads on the XMB support site, but seeing an ad appear here on Node-o-rama, that crossed a line. It was an ad for eCoupons.com but still. They can be as spammy as they want on their site, but when they start putting ads on our community site, it's time to start considering other options.

So what do you think of Simple Machines? If you go to the website (http://www.simplemachines.org) you can see their forum. If you go to the "showcase" forum, you can see a lot of other sites that use it.

I know I haven't heard of everything out there, so I am open to suggestions. Simple Machines is the front runner in my mind because they have a conversion script that works-- so that all of the posts we have now will carry over to the new software. And there is a very strong support community. I was having some trouble running the conversion script, asked a question, and had an answer in 5 minutes. In addition, there is a good search engine with SM. This is something we have been wishing for, for a long time now.

What don't I like about it? Well, it's a bit gray and cold. It is customizable, however. We can choose colors and create our own graphics to suit us. If there are any graphic designers in our ranks, and you would be willing to help, please let me know!

I installed SM and imported the current forum here:
http://nodeorama.com/smf

Feel free to post over there, but keep in mind that it's just a test forum.. any posts you make there will be deleted eventually. So keep the astro discussions happening here.

Let me know your comments. I look forward to your input!
Molly

[Keishin]

I've had success with EzBoard too, but it's not as simple to setup as SM or other PHP based sites.

The test site looks great!

btw: I'm a graphic designer, so any help you need just shout!

[molly]

Hooray! Keishin's on board!

I would love love LOVE some help with the graphic design. And I'll be glad to put a nice link to your website somewhere if it might help you. All helpers get props.

Ezboard.. very pretty.. but I don't see an XMB importer.. we'd have to start over from scratch.

Thanks for your feedback Keishin!

Another question for everyone.. how do you feel about those "karma points" things on forums? Seems like at best it could be fun, but it could also become an annoying popularity contest.

M

[darksun]

- Molly -

i love your forum so if you change it i will still post, BUT I have always prefered the design of this forum above all others. for some reason it just seems well organized and easy to navigate. i realize that the setup of the tester is the same, but somehow this one seems easier on the eyes...."shrug"....don't mind me i'm oddly particular about aethestics.

...edit...

took a second look and it and figured out what i don't like, it looks clinical to me. very standard, seen it before, and ouch it hurts....(remember, don't mind me, i'll post on whatever =P )

[molly]

Thank you Darksun .

I agree simplemachines would need a pretty serious makeover. It's kind of gaudy and cluttered.

We could work on the design before making the transition. It could be a lot of work though. The default colors and icons for SM are pretty cheesy. Would you be up for the task, Keishin?

M

[Paula]

Hi Molly. I just got back from a long road trip related to family (New Orleans recovery) matters. I haven't seen the test site, and somewhat scanned this thread, but wanted to say I wish it wasn't so much work for you!

I don't like the ad banners, either, but weigh the cost against the gain is my input. Your time is worth alot and we appreciate all you do. This is my favorite forum. I feel at home here and that's the part I hope to see stay the same. Wish I could help but I'm pretty computer incompetent on this type of thing. I'll try to check out the test site in the next few days. Our son is preparing for his return home with bleach and rubber boots...........so I won't post much until after he heads out late tomorrow or the next day.

[molly]

Thanks Nodal-- you're right, the ads in themselves are not that bad.. and I very much appreciate you not wanting to waste my time.

The ads just tuned me in again to something I have been thinking about for a while. I don't like the direction the XMB staff is going with their product. There used to be a HUGE support forum with lots of people. I'm not sure what went down, but something happened that caused many of the moderators to step down, and many of the sites that used to offer help & customizations to the XMB forum are now gone. The ones that are now there are *very* cheesy.. (check out xmbgarage.com).

Another story.. A few years ago, wanting to support the project, I signed up & paid for some kind of membership package that was supposed to get me access to different themes, etc. There was a problem with the order and I didn't hear from them for months. When I got in touch with someone at Aventure Media (the company that develops XMB), I was not treated well. The customer service rep thought I was lying about not having received the membership info and was pretty rude to me.

So I have been thinking about making a change for some time now.

What I'm hoping folks will do is go over to the test forum (again, it's http://nodeorama.com/smf), understand that we can tweak the design and a lot of the features to make it what we want.. it's very tweakable.. and pay attention to how you move through the forum, how easy or difficult it is to post a message. The biggest improvement in SM over XMB is the search engine. It's a lot more flexible.

If there are any PHP programmers on the forum, I can send you the source code.. if you'd be willing to take a look under the hood and let me know how it looks. I like to use code that programmers get excited about. It means the project will continue to grow.

The decision has not been made.. there are hundreds of possibilities. So many that it's confusing. So if you know about forum software and have a suggestion, let me know. The only absolute requirements are, it must be free, and there must be some way to get the existing posts into it.

Molly

[Keishin]

Quote:Originally posted by Molly
We could work on the design before making the transition. It could be a lot of work though. The default colors and icons for SM are pretty cheesy. Would you be up for the task, Keishin?

M

Let me take a really in-depth look this afternoon on my lunch break and see how tweakable things are.

Depending on how much needs to be redone, we may need to host some of the gif source files somewhere apart from SM. Temporarily, for test purposes, I can always use my site.

Once I take a look, I'll post back with an estimate of the complexity. Shouldn't be too bad though . . .

[Keishin]

Sweet, this is all done in CSS and XHTML. :does happy dance:
This won't be hard at all.

If you prefer, we can chat (MSN or Yahoo IM) or via email once you're ready to go. That way I can figure out what you want for a look - www examples are always welcome - and get all the other ditzies taken care of. And not bug the crap out of everyone on the board! (Design is about as arcane as astrology to the uninitated.)

Though let me say right now, that white box behind the collapsible forum headers is *SO* going to have to go . . .

[molly]

Hiya Keishin-- before you spend too much time on the design, I want to check out and open the floor to considering another option, punbb.. which is simpler in structure and not as fully featured as SMF.. or as cluttered as SMF, depending on how you look at it. Also, it looks pretty similar to what we have now. So it would be WAAAY easier to design.

http://punbb.org

I hope to get a punbb test forum working by this evening.

As far as design priorities, my main concern is keeping it simple. The problem with the SMF forum as it is, is the gaudy, feature-packed interface sort of overwhelms the discussions. I think the reason Darksun and others like this forum is that it's easy to use and easy on the eyes.

If any other members have any input on the visual design of the forum, now's the time to speak up! What do you like about the way the forum is now? What don't you like? What features/additions would you like to see?

Keishin, I can't find your IM info.. Mine is in my profile here, or you can e-mail or u2u me with your info.

Molly

[Keishin]

Nope, I'm waiting for the word from you before I start anything. As you said, another option may come out the woodwork and be better for us all.

Whatever y'all want (short of dancing hamsters) is fine with me.

And I sent you my IM info via u2u
(I guard my privacy a bit, so I don't just post it willy-nilly)

[astroflute]

I've always liked the look and mechanics of this forum but with two exceptions: in the particular theme-template I use (white on dark), the planet glyphs look like illegible mush. And #2: I preferred a particular theme-template of some months ago which was then made unavailable, and of the choices available now nothing really hits the mark to my eyes....

( and nix on the pouty-face graphic! )

[molly]

haha.. I wanted dancing hamsters! Waaah!

astroflute, we may be able to arrange for a light on dark theme for you and your dark loving comrades. It means a whole new set of planet smilies, which is probably why I deleted the one you were using. Sorry!

M

[pinky_shushu]

I like it! There seems to be alot more choice, plus I like that I can upload an avatar straight from my computer instead of having to have a URL. Is it possible to add 'Bios' into the profiles? Even though not everyone uses it I enjoy reading what other people have to add about themselves. The cool and angry gifs aren't working on the Reply page, so hopefully that is a small glitch. And it also sounds like you can add the planet gifs, right? It would also be cool if we could add a few more choices for the colours of the page layout, but I don't mind the blue/grey scheme...

I do like that on the current software once you've submitted a post to a thread, the programme takes you back into that thread, rather than to the main page, but other than that, it's all good. Maybe that can be altered anyway?

All up, I like it, plus I love changing appearance once every now and then for the fun of it (I have Uranus in the 1st House so what do you expect?!)

Pinky

[molly]

I'll admit this is my favorite option so far: http://www.nodeorama.com/punbb

Punbb is the brainchild of a member of the "family" of developers that hosts many of my websites and develops both my favorite blog software and the content management system that runs north-node.com. I trust these folks a great deal. They are so good at their craft, and their hearts are in the right place as far as ethics. No phentermine.

Advantages-- it's simple and elegant, much less cluttered, yet still customizable. The search engine is good and works well. Pages load quickly. We can add in the planet-smilies, and there are many other modifications available for this forum as well.

Drawbacks-- Passwords did not convert. When you get to the "login screen" for the first time, you'll have to select the "forgot password" option, then have a new one sent to your e-mail address. You will only have to do this once.

u2u's might not convert. We would start all over with the private messages. However, I don't think this is a huge deal. I will leave the old forum up and running for a while, 6 months or a year, so that you can still log on and get your old messages if you want.

Let me know what you think~~
M

[molly]

Is no one going to be upset if I close down the forum for a few hours this weekend and convert it to another software.. speak now or forever hold your peace!

Molly

[Keishin]

Fine with me - I'm doing computer maintence m'self!

[Chris Mitchell]

Mmm, looks quite nice. My main gripes:

1. Avatars are limited to 60x60 - this is pretty small.

2. While I'm very happy with the date and time formats, US readers may not be! I think the 24-hour clock is natural (especially for astrologers!) and I find 12-hour format highly confusing, but I know it's the other way round in the US.

[molly]

Thanks for your input Chris!

Avatar size can be increased. does anyone think using 24 hour time format is a big deal?

[Chris Mitchell]

Quote:Originally posted by Molly
Thanks for your input Chris!

Avatar size can be increased. does anyone think using 24 hour time format is a big deal?

I think it's an excellent habit for astrologers to get into

Most forums allow users to set their own style - so one person can display the date/time as "14 Oct 2005 20:55" while another has it as "10/14/05 08.55pm" to match their own taste. XMB does, SM does. VBulletin doesn't, but the admin can change the standard house style. Whatever style we use, it would be very useful to be able to have the month displayed as a name rather than a number (2005 Nov 05 is clearer than 2005-11-05).

The advantage of yyyy-mm-dd is that it's unusual enough to be obvious! When I see 03/04/2005 I immediately think 3 April, others may immediately think 4 March. But 2005-04-03 is obvious because it's unusual to put the year first, so we don't make assumptions. It's also a far more logical sequence to have the date/time stamps as 2005-10-05 20:59:04 (date and time then goes from slowest to fastest: years, month, day, hours, minutes, seconds), and I hope that one day all the countries of the world will agree to scrap m/d/y and d/m/y and move to yyyy-mm-dd (there is a proposal to do just this, apparently).

[molly]

That makes perfect sense, Chris. And it was easy to do.. Punbb's admin panel lets you enter the php codes for however you want to format date and time. There are so many options!

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

[pinky_shushu]

Looks good and I have to say that I'm glad we can increase the avatar size - 10kb is hardly worth it! And 24hr clock is defo fine with me. I like it - go the change-aroonie-oh!

Pinky
:uranus::venus:
ps. when do you think we'll go permanent on the new one?

[astroflute]

Quote:Originally posted by Chris Mitchell
...When I see 03/04/2005 I immediately think 3 April, others may immediately think 4 March...

Tell the planet please Chris! Drives me nuts!

[molly]

Hooray! I'm glad y'all like punbb. It runs like a dream from an admin/webmaster point of view.

Max avatar width here is 125, max height is 150. I can do the same over there and change the size limit to 50k, think that'll be alright?

I should have some time this weekend to make the change.. I'm going to close the old forum, then do a brand new install & import of the new forum so that all posts get brought over. Once that's done, I'll open up the new forum at the main URL.

And I will keep the old forum up for a while so that people can retrieve their u2us, avatars, and whatever else might be left behind.

It may be a few days before things like the glyph smilies are over there on the new forum, and we may not have the nice pretty title-banner at the top of the page for a little while. But otherwise we'll be all set.

M

[Chris Mitchell]

Quote:Originally posted by astroflute

Quote:Originally posted by Chris Mitchell
...When I see 03/04/2005 I immediately think 3 April, others may immediately think 4 March...

Tell the planet please Chris! Drives me nuts!

LOL! I do, Astroflute - it's my own personal mission