Thoughts on Forum Updates

[Solecord]

As I've been working on updates to the site the last couple of weeks I've come across potential updates to the web site software and thought I'd open it up to opinions from the community.

As you know the web site is currently run of vBulletin Forums. Well, they have an upcoming new release of their forum software. You can see a demo of the new forum here:

vB5Demo Home - vBulletin 5 Demo

vBulletin has drastically changed its software/templates so the forums more mimic HTML5 dynamic capabilities. Paging through topics or forums do not issue calls to brand new pages; rather, the forum uses ajax and just modified the content on the existing page. Some say this is slower, some prefer not having to reload the entire page.

Can you give this a look and let me know your thoughts? Do you like the new style of vBulletin, or do you prefer the current style? (By style, I am referring to how the pages function - navigating forums, navigations threads, searching, etc.)

[Syluxguy28O3]

i think that the new format looks good, i wouldnt mind the change.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I'm betting a trial run for a week or two with a feedback poll (that doesn't get replaced with a poll about "How wet is water?" during that time........................)

[Solecord]

Can't do a trial run here on the actual web site... either I upgrade or I don't... once it's upgraded, it's not going back. You'll have to navigate the demo in the link posted to test it out and determine your thoughts.

[Baker]

Sounds dangerous and potentially CMS breaking. The feature list ... well ... I don't see anything that would apply to this community. I mean, for example, this isn't a photo sharing site. Says something about easier customization, but frankly I wouldn't believe as everything claims that and nothing I've ever used has actually delivered.

Could break CMS, lots of content pages, server browser ...

vBulletin has drastically changed its software/templates so the forums more mimic HTML5 dynamic capabilities.

Current Forum: Can add, edit, delete posts.

New Vbulletin: ++shiny buzzwords technologies and it teh "web 2.0" (if anyone still says "web 2.0") and has teh "HTML5" and is all AJAXy using JSON and maybe <insert that popular javascript library ... what's it called>

I mean unless this turned into a photo share community or something ... the last upgrade had captcha, blocked spam bots, indexed the pages in the search engines beyond belief, but broke half the site.

This version 5 doesn't seem to have any new features that would enhance anything as this site is used, but I bet it would break half of everything too.

/End thoughts

[Solecord]

Baker - sorry I meant this post regarding the forum itself, not the CMS portion... for the CMS portion, I'm debating on what to do. I can hand-develop some things like the downloads, use a module that already exists, or switch to a better CMS... the new version of the forum does have built-in CMS whereas right now we're using a third party CMS module which I don't think has been updated since I installed it.

And believe me I'm torn between upgrading the forum and leaving it as is. I think I prefer the current version myself over the new version, but there's lots of things that have been improved backend wise (templating is the main one).

As an aside for Baker, I've been looking at Expression Engine as well (ExpressionEngine /EllisLab) which is a commercial, full featured CMS. It's very nice (my work uses it for some sites), and can allow for different permission levels so anyone can be granted access to specific areas and given specific access to add, edit, and/or delete cotent. Note however that nothing is going to be changed without further indepth discussions with everyone involved. This is kind of the basic "feeling-out" topic. I'll probably send out a PM later on with more indepth technical points/questions to those who are involved with the site.

[Baker]

Baker - sorry I meant this post regarding the forum itself, not the CMS portion... for the CMS portion

If the server browser doesn't get permanently broken, the rest isn't so important.

At the end of the day, everything else could be re-made.

I greatly fear the server browser being somehow unavailable for months on end.

^^ Only thing I really care about

[Phenom]

I'm betting a trial run for a week or two with a feedback poll (that doesn't get replaced with a poll about "How wet is water?" during that time........................)

Yeah mindz, a trial run of vbulletin software on QuakeOne would be like shooting someone and instead of them getting the bullet extracted you would just magically "un-shoot" the bullet out of them and heal the wound with magical runes lol It can be a nightmare on a live site (suicidal even)

the only options for something like a trial run would be to setup a prototype domain "upgrade.quakeone.com and attempt the upgrade there, which seems like a lot of work just to try out a new vbulletin update.

Solecord, I hope you plan on using some Q1 textures on that new vB forum version, the vanilla theme would make me hari-kari. I'm sure you would though. I
m not a big fan of change but I also am about "If it ain't broken you haven't hit it hard enough (I blame the infantry) and wouldn't mind to see a new facelift to the site as long as it meant the functionality is there that I use (posting/viewing/new posts viewing) and as long as the site still felt like QuakeOne.com.

I've dealt with a few sites that changes their layout and their whole format completely, it did not work out well for the majority of those sites since the site that was replaced(upgraded) was not in the same format(CMS/theme) as the original, needless to say they took a huge hit in SEO popularity, however this is just a vB update.

I normally ONLY update if there is something majorly broken or the update has features I need/want.


Either way I personally don't care, I'm sure you will make it look like the current QuakeOne.com theme and stuff so just Goodluck on whatever you decide to do.

I say for security, do it.

But my personal preferences are to leave things be.

[Baker]

like a trial run would be to setup a prototype domain "upgrade.quakeone.com and attempt the upgrade there, which seems like a lot of work just to try out a new vbulletin update.

They need to invent "Uber CMS". vBulletin is a great forum and seems to be able to handle virtually every situation.

For a forum ...

Then you have to pick some sort of Frankenstein CMS a Frankenstein downloads module and <a whatever module>stitch the heads on.

Then later, the head all falls off when anything changes. (Repeat indefinitely)

[Then again ... the internet is relatively new and no where near mature so this is to be expected for the next 150 years. Think about how long it took for all the English speaking people to agree on how to spell the words, where periods go, make a list of all the words and put it in Websters.

And still doesn't work completely: Is it theater or theatre or magic or magick? Europeans put semi-colons in numbers and the British put commas in numbers in the wrong places, and the British still use words like "quid" (wtf is that?) and "stone" (ditto). And the French keyboard you have to press shift to type numbers. Meanwhile, to use a computer in Japan, you have to unfold the keyboard and it takes up the whole desk so every one of the 1300 letters has a key (someone told me this ... I can't vouch for this firsthand ...).

Meanwhile the Mandarin and Cantonese clans in China agree on the spelling of all the words, but speak them entirely differently.

And today, the aliens are curious over why we are having a discussion about vBulletin 5 versus the vBulletin "not version 5" one ...

I'm trying to explain this to them. But they have a funny look on their faces, as if they don't believe me ... ]

[Solecord]

The one problem with the current forum is it's out of date. This is running version 3.8. The current standard version is 4.X, and the new 5.X is coming soon (beta version is out)... the problem is there's not many good modules available that work with such an old version of the software. Once that were made for this version have since not been updated by their authors or they have moved on to newer versions.

My conundrum is do I upgrade so we can utilize some modules to handle some of the features we want on the site, or do I just keep it as is and custom-develop. I'm all for custom-developing (that's what I do ) but it just takes more time than using something already made.

I've already looked at custom-developing a module for demos and know how to tie in the vB user/permissions sytem into a developed module. I just want to be sure this is the route to go before doing it and hence this post here.

And yes Phenom, whatever route is taken, it would be modified to fit the current theme of the web site (or new theme if/when it's finished and approved).

[Baker]

and fighting the flu

Can relate. Midwest blizzard coming and I'm burning up at 100 or 101. Life +1. No more jokes about flu shots in future ...

[Solecord]

No problem Planetnine! Hope you feel better!

[monoz]

The cite doesnt seem broken and any requests (such as demo downloads, etc...) are unrelated. If it aint broke.....

[Zop]

Do whatever rakes in the most cash for the site.

But- seriously, I never thought the UI should be updated or changed, but you guys know more and work more with the backend, so I'd say that would be more important. As long as we still have our brown-on-brown goodness, we should be fine.

[Phenom]

They need to invent "Uber CMS". vBulletin is a great forum and seems to be able to handle virtually every situation.

For a forum ...

Then you have to pick some sort of Frankenstein CMS a Frankenstein downloads module and <a whatever module>stitch the heads on.

Then later, the head all falls off when anything changes. (Repeat indefinitely)

[Then again ... the internet is relatively new and no where near mature so this is to be expected for the next 150 years. Think about how long it took for all the English speaking people to agree on how to spell the words, where periods go, make a list of all the words and put it in Websters.

And still doesn't work completely: Is it theater or theatre or magic or magick? Europeans put semi-colons in numbers and the British put commas in numbers in the wrong places, and the British still use words like "quid" (wtf is that?) and "stone" (ditto). And the French keyboard you have to press shift to type numbers. Meanwhile, to use a computer in Japan, you have to unfold the keyboard and it takes up the whole desk so every one of the 1300 letters has a key (someone told me this ... I can't vouch for this firsthand ...).

Meanwhile the Mandarin and Cantonese clans in China agree on the spelling of all the words, but speak them entirely differently.

And today, the aliens are curious over why we are having a discussion about vBulletin 5 versus the vBulletin "not version 5" one ...

I'm trying to explain this to them. But they have a funny look on their faces, as if they don't believe me ... ]

MkPortal seems to be the most viable "tack-it-on" portal for vB. I just don't like the way most vB forums execute this setup. It either looks like crap or functions like crap and the portal essentially becomes useless if it's a discussion based forums(which is almost always the case).

An "Uber CMS" would be pretty nice but unless they had a migration module ro assist from moving from vB to "Uber CMS" this wouldn't be worth the time of day to do manually.

I personally enjoy QuakeOne.com just the way it is, but I can't help but remember all the cool little trivial things we used to have like the arcade which got a lot of requests for it's return.

I normally ONLY upgrade for functionality/security if it's needed other wise you are running risk of breaking just about everything.

Seeing as Sole is interested in adding functionality to the site and knowing he has the skill to execute such a upgrade makes me feel it's destined to happen, which is just fine, I just hope the upgrade doesn't hurt any currently high quality links this site has created (all the guides and such) in a way that would make it harder for new-comers to successfully find the new content by using the same old search phrases.

Upgrading can cause major SEO catastrophes and hurt traffic badly.
I'd just make sure all your ducks are in a row before any upgrade is attempted, but something tells me you may know a bit more about these things them I do, I'm just as website developer and never had much of an interest in trying to run my own server/community (at least in the same hand) but I do know a great deal about both as I've done both at least to the point of understanding how things work.

Solecord, you obviously know what you're doing and I'd just like to thank you for creating this community(a long with the other founders) for us Quakers to vent/rant/chat on.

I welcome the upgrade, just don't break anything!


To relate, I'm in a similar boat with a Drupal 6 website that a client wants upgraded to Drupal 7, the only problem is is that their current website has 35+ added on modules which some of those modules have been integrated into Drupal 7's core so a direct upgrade (attempted already) would obviously break any upgrading, so each module must be brought up to date first then the Drupal core gets upgraded, then once everything is upgraded to Drupal 7 I get the pleasure of reprogramming everything that broke which as of right now is 40% of my client's website. Upgrading can be a real bitch sometimes especially depending on the route (CMS/portal) you choose to use all the way dwn to the PHP version your server is running, anything could go wrong even if you follow instructions to a fine printed T.

I would say upgrade and see if everything checks out OK and if so then do the inevitable. QuakeOne.com should be as secure and as feature-full as it can possibly get.

CMS are both a cure and a curse for workload