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New Platform Poll

New Platform Poll

  • Discourse

    Votes: 5 16.7%
  • XenForo

    Votes: 13 43.3%
  • phpBB

    Votes: 8 26.7%
  • Simple Machines Forum

    Votes: 4 13.3%

  • Total voters
    30

Lutiana

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Mar 26, 2009
Messages
3,298
Location
Dublin, CA USA
Thanks to everyone who commented on the original announcement post for this. Surprisingly there were only 3 options suggested and here they are for you to vote on.

The plan would be to evaluate the top pick and see if it could work, staying with vBulletin is an option, but I am not including that on this survey as I'd rather get the community feedback based on what we should evaluate against staying with vBulletin.

EDIT: This poll is also anonymous, I can't see who votes for what.
 
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Surprisingly there were only 3 options suggested and here they are for you to vote on.
Can't be. I suggested SMF, which I don't see in the list.

Also, if staying with vB is an option, why isn't it possible to vote for that as well? I mean, afterall many members may not like yet another switch.
 
Noone will like the switch... But we all hope its for the better.

Lutiana, I dont understand why it had to be anoynymous. Most of us already voiced opinions. I dont think the members would care if you knew the results. ITs probably not a good idea to show the public though.
 
Noone will like the switch... But we all hope its for the better.

Lutiana, I dont understand why it had to be anoynymous. Most of us already voiced opinions. I dont think the members would care if you knew the results. ITs probably not a good idea to show the public though.

It didn't, it's just the way the polls seem to work. I only mentioned it in case it made a difference to anyone.
 
Also, if staying with vB is an option, why isn't it possible to vote for that as well? I mean, afterall many members may not like yet another switch.

You did, and I missed it when putting together the poll, I added it now.
 
Thank you for being so considerate about all of this. I appreciate how much you include the fora's userbase in your decision-making process. You seem like a very good forum admin.
 
phpBB is the most comfortably familiar for me, but I understand the concerns about its track record with security. XenForo isn't terrible, but it looks crappy with JS disabled for some dumb reason. Discourse seems to work reasonably well without JS, but I gather from others' opinions that it's quite annoying for people who don't have NoScript as an option. My vote is for Simple Machines, which seems to be the most straightforward, glitz-free option this side of phpBB. We don't need anything fancy here, just something simple and reliable.
 
You did, and I missed it when putting together the poll, I added it now.

The choice of staying with vB still seems to be missing? If it were there I would be sort of inclined to click on it just because you've already sunk so much effort into one migration that brought out the absolute worst in people reacting to it that having to do it again would just be a louder sequel. But I guess the fact that you're running this poll does suggest that the problems you're seeing on the admin side simply run so deep that you feel like you need to at least evaluate out loud if this is one of those "sunk cost fallacy" kind of situations.

I guess I'll vote SMF of the available options because compared to phpBB it's the devil I *don't* know.
 
My biggest concern would be that if any of these offer an upgrade or import option that it would just import the screwed up permissions. Perhaps even if that happened, maybe with the new software it would be easier to fix those permissions.
 
The choice of staying with vB still seems to be missing?
In a previous thread, he explained that vBulletin is a dead-end with no support or major updates going forward, just minor security patches:

https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/a...ld-you-recommend-we-use?p=1225114#post1225114

And the Board of Directors who forced this botched update on us are still AWOL. Erik promised me months ago that he would have a public response to the complaints about the forum, and I'm still waiting. The Board seems to have little interest in VCF other than having the 501(c)(3) in their name, so they can enjoy their hobby tax-free.
 
In a previous thread, he explained that vBulletin is a dead-end with no support or major updates going forward, just minor security patches(...)

Okay, I guess I missed that one where just how dire the situation was with this software was spelled out. I suppose this certainly raises some due diligence questions about how much was known about the state of this particular vendor going into it. But that decision-making chain isn't a thing that can be comprehensively undone at this point.

Honestly the reason I said what I did is simply because I've seen these incredibly heated emotional breakdowns multiple times in the past in other places (like, every single tech forum ever, maybe?) when there's been upgrades/platform changes. If vB is genuinely unsalvageable, yeah, I'm with the admins ditching it. It's just difficult for me to imagine that people are going to be any kinder about whatever changes going to another platform, and every bump in the road there is going to be yet another opportunity for those so inclined to grind whatever axe they enjoy waving the hardest. If the end result of switching is a "healthier" software foundation, great, but... the process is going to suck. There's no escaping it. Another change is going to remind everyone how much they hate change. :p
 
The choice of staying with vB still seems to be missing?

Yes, this is deliberate, I want to know what people would choose if staying with vBulletin was not an option. If I added this, then I'd expect it to be the top pick for most everyone, so it would render the results useless for our decision making process.
 
Yes, this is deliberate, I want to know what people would choose if staying with vBulletin was not an option. If I added this, then I'd expect it to be the top pick for most everyone, so it would render the results useless for our decision making process.

Okay, carry on. The wording of your answer on that question was a little confusing (you replied to the "vB as an option" paragraph instead of the inclusion of SMF part.)

Whatever the results I'll support your decision, I don't really have particularly strong feelings when it comes to UIs, etc. (Stuff changes, sometimes for good, sometimes for stupid, getting wound up about it doesn't help much.) Whatever makes your lives easiest gets my vote.
 
TalkWeather uses XenForo which I've had great luck with. Unfortunately their latest update broke it for K-Meleon, but I've finally found a workaround with a custom build of Pale Moon being able to log in to this forum as well as be able to continue to use TalkWeather.

If anyone is interested and wants to do the same (access the forums from an XP host) here is the build of Pale Moon. You could probably get this to work under 2000 as well but I haven't tried doing so yet. https://archive.org/details/palemoon-of-windows-xp-32bit
 
Whichever of the three options doesn't report user's browsing habits to Facebook, like the current forum does!
 
Whichever of the three options doesn't report user's browsing habits to Facebook, like the current forum does!

Gross! I didn't know it did that. Another good reason to go with one of one of the options with an open source license: You don't have to trust the developers to not be evil.

I believe phpBB and Discourse are the two choices which have open source licenses and the other two are proprietary.
 
I don't understand. You guys have made a fair to middling mess of the upgrade from one version of vBulletin to the next. The problems are totally solvable, and yet they haven't been solved. I can't even see any real progress on them. Why should we expect a better result from a wholesale change of the forum? This is magical thinking.
 
I don't understand. You guys have made a fair to middling mess of the upgrade from one version of vBulletin to the next. The problems are totally solvable, and yet they haven't been solved. I can't even see any real progress on them.
The problems aren't going to be solved because vBulletin is a dead-end. They have no interest in doing anything more than necessary security updates.
 
No one says the makers of vB need to fix the issues. I remember back when I did run two forums, I fixed issues myself. It's PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. None of that is magic. If you refuse to mess with that, changing to any other software won't help.
 
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