Author Topic: Migrating the forum to Discourse (Read 62382 times)

SilverSolder · « **Reply #275 on:** April 26, 2021, 06:27:30 pm »

Quote from: Black Phoenix on April 26, 2021, 04:55:57 pm

Quote from: Bassman59 on April 26, 2021, 04:34:29 pm

I snipped most of your message but I need to ask: did you write it on a smartphone, or did you use a computer?

Because I think that the vast majority of this forum's users access it using a standard web browser on a standard computer, not through an app or mobile browser on a smartphone.

You simply can't write a detailed response with, perhaps, graphics and images on a smartphone.

Anyway, one wonders whether the Discourse developers bothered to submit their product to actual usability testing. Actually, I don't wonder. Because if they did, their software wouldn't suck.

I use both the Smartphone, the Laptop and a Tablet. It depends of the situation, were I am and what is close by. Regarding writing an message with image links (IMG) and text on a Smartphone, is possible but time consuming, but I've done sometimes. But yes, most of the time I access this forum via PC, so it doesn't bother me that much.

I use smartphones/tablets primarily to consume information, not for content creation (other than short messages). I suspect most people do that, unless all they have is a phone.

james_s · « **Reply #276 on:** April 26, 2021, 07:51:50 pm »

Quote from: Black Phoenix on April 26, 2021, 03:48:28 pm

My opinions are meh, I don't mind. It is true that "dinosaurs" like SMF, phpBB and vBulletin simply work and have a lot of development years plus a wide implementation on the WWW. But is also true that their layout is dated compared with the new trends, specially for mobile.

Screw trends. So many of the challenges we face in tech these days are caused by people obsessed with change for the sake of change, to keep up with the changing winds of fashion and it's a complete waste of time. What's wrong with "dated"? What does that even mean? Is the wheel "dated"? Are levers and pulleys "dated"? To me stuff that has been around a while and serves the purpose for which it was designed is "tried and true", it works, it does the job, it has withstood the test of time. Quit screwing with it just to keep it looking new and trendy, if you want to do that with your pet project go right ahead but when it's a tool that thousands of people use, leave it alone unless it is actually broken.

Interacting with something like a forum on mobile is a painful experience, I don't care how trendy the interface looks. I'll do it in a pinch when all I have available is a phone, but 99% of the time I want to use it from a computer with a proper keyboard, screw mobile, certainly don't make it the primary focus. It may make sense to focus on mobile if your site is for kids or middle aged women but technical people who wish to contribute meaningfully are overwhelmingly going to primarily use a proper computer.

Ranayna · « **Reply #277 on:** April 26, 2021, 08:04:43 pm »

I already have mentioned this at the start of this thread when it was first posted, but i think it bears mentioning it again...

If there ever is a migration planned, please take a look at Xenforo.
This is a classic forum software that is also very mobile friendly. At the same time though it does not loose the look and feel of a forum.

MarkMLl · « **Reply #278 on:** April 26, 2021, 08:12:03 pm »

Quote from: drussell on April 26, 2021, 02:14:38 pm

The EEVblog forum has an index, so if one were to point a recursive crawler at it, (probably some incantation of something like wget -r -k -p https://www.eevblog.com/forum,) you should get a local mirror of the whole forum. This obviously doesn't let someone "continue" the forum but does provide a static archive of a site if it were otherwise disappearing completely.

Not nice. Not /at/ /all/ nice.

Now granted that I've not put any real amount of effort into this since /if/ this had to be done I'm sure it would be to help Dave out rather than trying to do it from outside, but I've not found a way of getting a message in isolation and every page that comes back comprises multiple messages in iframes... but the message number /is/ preserved.

It would be possible to do something like piping the wget response into a script which broke it up and saving each message precisely once, but getting full coverage of the messagebase would still be uncertain and there would be a vast amount of redundant data transferred: I'm seeing a 1/4Mb response to a request for a single message.

MarkMLl

MarkMLl · « **Reply #279 on:** April 26, 2021, 08:43:27 pm »

Quote from: Ranayna on April 26, 2021, 08:04:43 pm

I already have mentioned this at the start of this thread when it was first posted, but i think it bears mentioning it again...

If there ever is a migration planned, please take a look at Xenforo.
This is a classic forum software that is also very mobile friendly. At the same time though it does not loose the look and feel of a forum.

Except that it's similarly based on PHP and MySQL, so is presumably subject to the same scalability issues as pushed Arduino off SMF (unless "felt really old" is their only justification).

/If/ I were tackling this and wanted to do a proper job, I'd rough out a semi-automatic PHP-to-real-language translator with PostgreSQL as a backend and then go looking for venture capital.

MarkMLl

tautech · « **Reply #280 on:** April 26, 2021, 08:56:41 pm »

Quote from: Ranayna on April 26, 2021, 08:04:43 pm

I already have mentioned this at the start of this thread when it was first posted, but i think it bears mentioning it again...

If there ever is a migration planned, please take a look at Xenforo.
This is a classic forum software that is also very mobile friendly. At the same time though it does not loose the look and feel of a forum.

Yes well accurateshooter.com changed from SMF to Xenforo a few years back and while in some ways it's nicer to use SMF is somewhat more powerful.
Dave's looked at Xenforo over the years and chosen to stay with SMF.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/important-smf-forum-software-is-all-but-abandoned/

Mobile view is something you either love or hate and most mobile devices select Mobile view by default however it's easy enough to flip to whatever format you like best with the nearly invisible link at the foot of any forum page:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?thememode=mobile;redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eevblog.com%2Fforum%2Ftestgear%2F

Jackster · « **Reply #281 on:** April 26, 2021, 10:38:31 pm »

I have used most of the forum software packages over the years including many mentioned here as a webmaster, moderator and user.

I have to say, if you are going to go ahead with the move away from SMF (which while lightweight and simple, is showing its age) please use Xenforo.
It is one of the best out there that keeps the spirt of classic forums without being old school like SMF or throwing out the forums concept like Discourse does.

Moving forums software is never easy for anyone but it is not too difficult to match the URL formatting so no need to worry about losing all that search engine ranking.

It is also easy to scale horizontally and the CMS is also very good.
Works well with mobile devices too. I can't use SMF on mobile at all. It is shit just like VB on mobile.

I have an Xenforo site running right now with nearly 200k users and it gets a lot with API requests and it does fine on my 4 core Ryzen 5 with 8GB of RAM webserver with a dozen other websites.
Granted we have many users and hardly any content as we use it for user accounts for offsite purposes.

I did a few years ago have a large forum with around 250k users, of which around 40-50k active daily serving something like 2-3TB of media. That was Xenforo on around 12 skylake cores with 32GB of RAM. All media severed off a OpenStack bucket (simular to AWS S3 but priced right).
Spent a lot of time optimising cache and database to get it preforming right but we got there.

There is the argument that if it ain't broke don't fix it.
Obviously not fireproof but this forum just works as it is. Do people here really need better features like what modern forum systems offer?

Like, I much more prefer the Wysiwyg editor on modern forums such as copy and paste an image into the reply with built in display size adjustments.
Can't do that here.

If you do end up upgrading, let's have larger file size uploads too? I understand why you might not want loads of large jpges but modern forums allow you to server high and low quality images as well as modern formats like webp.

EEVblog · « **Reply #282 on:** April 26, 2021, 11:13:46 pm »

Quote from: Jackster on April 26, 2021, 10:38:31 pm

There is the argument that if it ain't broke don't fix it.
Obviously not fireproof but this forum just works as it is. Do people here really need better features like what modern forum systems offer?

Like, I much more prefer the Wysiwyg editor on modern forums such as copy and paste an image into the reply with built in display size adjustments.
Can't do that here.

Being able to copy/paste stuff directy into a post is my favorite feature of ZenForo. Apart from that, it's pretty much the same as SMF.

james_s · « **Reply #283 on:** April 26, 2021, 11:27:54 pm »

That would be a nice perk if one were starting from scratch, but it certainly doesn't justify changing. Migrating over a feature like that is like Trading in your car to buy one with a different cupholder.

Black Phoenix · « **Reply #284 on:** April 27, 2021, 12:42:28 am »

Quote from: james_s on April 26, 2021, 07:51:50 pm

Screw trends. So many of the challenges we face in tech these days are caused by people obsessed with change for the sake of change, to keep up with the changing winds of fashion and it's a complete waste of time. What's wrong with "dated"? What does that even mean? Is the wheel "dated"? Are levers and pulleys "dated"? To me stuff that has been around a while and serves the purpose for which it was designed is "tried and true", it works, it does the job, it has withstood the test of time. Quit screwing with it just to keep it looking new and trendy, if you want to do that with your pet project go right ahead but when it's a tool that thousands of people use, leave it alone unless it is actually broken.

Interacting with something like a forum on mobile is a painful experience, I don't care how trendy the interface looks. I'll do it in a pinch when all I have available is a phone, but 99% of the time I want to use it from a computer with a proper keyboard, screw mobile, certainly don't make it the primary focus. It may make sense to focus on mobile if your site is for kids or middle aged women but technical people who wish to contribute meaningfully are overwhelmingly going to primarily use a proper computer.

If you read the rest of my post you will see that I arrive at the same conclusion:

Quote from: Black Phoenix on April 26, 2021, 03:48:28 pm

(...)

Plus the internet points that most of this kind of solutions, a la Youtube, Facebook and Twitter Likes/Dislikes (that I despise, specially Facebook and Twitter that are mainly a Cesspool) that makes what is popular on top, most of the times as the laziest attempt possible, while good technical/informative posts are relegated to the bottom of the barrel because "they are boring" (the attention span of the new generation in full effect). For that reason I have reddit with the New option activated, that means that I see the posts chronologically by publish time and not by votes, like a normal forum is.

The reality is that both solutions fit their role, both have limitations. I think that it should be the kind of "don't change the winning team". Changing just for the fact of being "modern", "in", "trendy", etc means jack shit and will alienate a lot of current users, some who prefer the simplicity of how things are and others that simply don't want to learn a new way because how currently is works and don't need to be changed - and the human being is very reticent to change their way of doing things just for the sake of changing when both get the same end result.

Could look better, yes it could. But will it really matter when in reality we are here for the info and the exchange of knowledge, not for collecting badges or making a competition of who is the most popular.

(...)

I feel fine here, even if the "house" is not as modern as the other ones in the end of the road.

(...)

Just because I mention something doesn't mean I agree with it. It was mentioned as an example and to build my explanation.

ebclr · « **Reply #285 on:** April 27, 2021, 02:20:07 am »

Discord for sure is much better than a forum, forum is a 80's legacy

drussell · « **Reply #286 on:** April 27, 2021, 02:45:29 am »

Quote from: ebclr on April 27, 2021, 02:20:07 am

Discord for sure is much better than a forum, forum is a 80's legacy

In what specific ways is it better? Please elaborate...

Monkeh · « **Reply #287 on:** April 27, 2021, 02:57:42 am »

Quote from: ebclr on April 27, 2021, 02:20:07 am

Discord for sure is much better than a forum, forum is a 80's legacy

Then feel free to use Discord, which is not a forum and not what this thread is about, instead of being oblivious here..

EEVblog · « **Reply #288 on:** April 27, 2021, 04:01:15 am »

Quote from: james_s on April 26, 2021, 11:27:54 pm

That would be a nice perk if one were starting from scratch, but it certainly doesn't justify changing. Migrating over a feature like that is like Trading in your car to buy one with a different cupholder.

Well, of course not, you wouldn change just to get a feature like that.
You would change for long term reasons, and I belong to a couple of forums that have moved from SMF to Xenforo for better long term support.
That being said it can be argued that because SMF is open source and Xenforo is commercial, technically SMF has the better long term support prospects as you can make changes yourself if needed.

EEVblog · « **Reply #289 on:** April 27, 2021, 04:06:24 am »

Quote from: ebclr on April 27, 2021, 02:20:07 am

Discord for sure is much better than a forum, forum is a 80's legacy

That you seem to use a lot, and is handily 100% search indexed on Google.

MarkMLl · « **Reply #290 on:** April 27, 2021, 07:43:07 am »

Quote from: Jackster on April 26, 2021, 10:38:31 pm

There is the argument that if it ain't broke don't fix it.
Obviously not fireproof but this forum just works as it is. Do people here really need better features like what modern forum systems offer?

I think the major justification would be /if/ SMF were unable to scale, and that turned out to be unfixable even given the technical acumen of the extended community of administrators and users.

There are obviously subsidiary issues like potential problems serving to 'phones and tablets, however the WAP/WML debacle demonstrated that many problems can eventually be solved by advances in browser technology.

And competent management, which I think everybody agrees we've got around here :-) , would notice that well in advance and make sure any alternative was properly tested and broken in, not rushed though on the grounds that it "felt really old" as in the case of Arduino.

MarkMLl

Refrigerator · « **Reply #291 on:** April 27, 2021, 10:37:32 am »

Quote from: EEVblog on March 29, 2020, 11:45:24 pm

Quote from: Ranayna on March 29, 2020, 06:38:21 pm
But on a sidenote: Yes, the forum software shows it's age, and migration to some more modern software should be considered. Modern software like Xenforo can introduce a lot of new useful features without loosing it's spirit of what a forum actually represents.

Yes, SMF is showing its age, and I am a member on another forum that moved over the Xenforo (from I think phpBB) and I really like it. There were hardly any complaints from users too.
So I would be certainly open to moving to that, but it's got to be done right and professionally, not something that can be half arsed. I'd have to pay a professional to manage the move.

I agree that i Xenforo is not too bad. I wouldn't mind if EEVBlog moved over to Xenforo, but i think it is good as-is currently.
I'm a member at the SaabCentral forums, which moved to Xenforo and before that i think they had the same look as EEVBlog forums do now (same platform?).
So far i've noticed the only thing that doesn't work after the big move to Xenforo are the old smiley faces, but the very old ones, the kind that make you feel nostalgic. I'm sure something like that can be fixed if need be.
The general look and layout of the forum is the same, adding images to the post has become easier and posting in general has not changed much.
I like it when an image can be inserted along with the relevant text, it makes it easier to reference the image and doesn't require you to keep scrolling down and back up everytime you want to look at what's on the image, especially on long posts or posts with many images.
So far my favorite feature is the dark mode

Included image is the general look of the forum boards, so that you can see what i'm talking about.

Refrigerator · « **Reply #292 on:** April 27, 2021, 10:53:55 am »

Also i checked the Discourse-based forums linked by others and they're SO BAD.
Like, why do people approve this, why do they think this looks good?
Imagine thinking that a highly technical forum full of members, who spend their time reading datasheets and other sources of information that are jam-packed with data will want to move to some dumb floaty whitespace burn-your-eyes-out horror show.
Some people might think Discourse is good because it's "modern", it's "clean", it's "minimalistic" but in reality it's even messier, run by an even yet messier code in the background.
This forum is not some fashion item you replace just because some "new" thing came out.
This discussion holds no ground here, because i trust both Dave and the members involved will never allow a move to discourse or any similar platform.

But that also makes me feel sorry for the forums that did. $:-\$

MrMobodies · « **Reply #293 on:** April 27, 2021, 10:55:23 am »

Quote from: MarkMLl on April 27, 2021, 07:43:07 am

I think the major justification would be /if/ SMF were unable to scale, and that turned out to be unfixable even given the technical acumen of the extended community of administrators and users.

There are obviously subsidiary issues like potential problems serving to 'phones and tablets, however the WAP/WML debacle demonstrated that many problems can eventually be solved by advances in browser technology.

Which I find would be a shame if it could not longer scale but I just remembered this over Eevblog IRC during the outage:

Quote

Quote from: gnif@irc.austnet.net on April 09, 2020, 10:09:00 pm
[10:09] <gnif> The eevblog server is a mix of legacy and new software, which means we have to do things that today wouldn't even be considered
[10:09] <gnif> ie, SMF for a forum, where SMF (last I checked) are lucky to support PHP >= 5.6

Nice to have gnif here to make it work.

For serving phones and tablets I have no issue at the moment viewing this over a phone in the desktop site which I prefer than the mobile where I find I can do a lot more.

MarkMLl · « **Reply #294 on:** April 27, 2021, 11:12:26 am »

Quote from: Refrigerator on April 27, 2021, 10:53:55 am

Imagine thinking that a highly technical forum full of members, who spend their time reading datasheets and other sources of information that are jam-packed with data will want to move to some dumb floaty whitespace burn-your-eyes-out horror show.

Some people might think Discourse good because it's "modern", it's "clean", it's "minimalistic" but in reality it's even messier, run by an even yet messier code in the background.

...or because it supports 'phones and tablets better. But if somebody's hit a problem while actively writing code for something like an Arduino, is he really going to be working a 'phone or a tablet, or if he is is he really going to be using Android with its limited multitasking?

I'm very dubious about all of these development platforms that try to get everybody to do stuff "in the cloud", particularly while "share your projects with the community" is a vast distance from "work collaboratively with other members of the community". I really do have to wonder what business model they're cooking up.

MarkMLl

daqq · « **Reply #295 on:** April 27, 2021, 11:53:07 am »

Quote from: ebclr on April 27, 2021, 02:20:07 am

Discord for sure is much better than a forum, forum is a 80's legacy

Yes, forums in their current form are an old concept. And circular wheels are even older.

While there some areas that actively resist change even though new and better things are available, there are also things that were simply good ideas from the start. New and better are not the same.

pardo-bsso · « **Reply #296 on:** April 27, 2021, 12:07:39 pm »

Quote from: Refrigerator on April 27, 2021, 10:53:55 am

Also i checked the Discourse-based forums linked by others and they're SO BAD.
Like, why do people approve this, why do they think this looks good?

Why not?
I remember fondly when The Daily WTF / Worse Than Failure used community server as they forum platform. We had lots of fun abusing that system. Then the golden trio got bored and created Discourse.
Go figure.

(besides this single horror, Spolsky, Alex and the other one that I always forgot are terribly brilliant engineers)

Refrigerator · « **Reply #297 on:** April 27, 2021, 12:38:50 pm »

Quote from: pardo-bsso on April 27, 2021, 12:07:39 pm

Quote from: Refrigerator on April 27, 2021, 10:53:55 am
Also i checked the Discourse-based forums linked by others and they're SO BAD.
Like, why do people approve this, why do they think this looks good?

Why not?
I remember fondly when The Daily WTF / Worse Than Failure used community server as they forum platform. We had lots of fun abusing that system. Then the golden trio got bored and created Discourse.
Go figure.

(besides this single horror, Spolsky, Alex and the other one that I always forgot are terribly brilliant engineers)

Then either i lack context or have only seen the worst examples, because it Discourse doesn't look good to me. (IMO)

Ranayna · « **Reply #298 on:** April 27, 2021, 01:20:12 pm »

Quote from: Refrigerator on April 27, 2021, 10:37:32 am

Quote from: EEVblog on March 29, 2020, 11:45:24 pm
Quote from: Ranayna on March 29, 2020, 06:38:21 pm
But on a sidenote: Yes, the forum software shows it's age, and migration to some more modern software should be considered. Modern software like Xenforo can introduce a lot of new useful features without loosing it's spirit of what a forum actually represents.

Yes, SMF is showing its age, and I am a member on another forum that moved over the Xenforo (from I think phpBB) and I really like it. There were hardly any complaints from users too.
So I would be certainly open to moving to that, but it's got to be done right and professionally, not something that can be half arsed. I'd have to pay a professional to manage the move.

I agree that i Xenforo is not too bad. I wouldn't mind if EEVBlog moved over to Xenforo, but i think it is good as-is currently.
I'm a member at the SaabCentral forums, which moved to Xenforo and before that i think they had the same look as EEVBlog forums do now (same platform?).
So far i've noticed the only thing that doesn't work after the big move to Xenforo are the old smiley faces, but the very old ones, the kind that make you feel nostalgic. I'm sure something like that can be fixed if need be.
[...]

A list, in no particular order, what i like about XenForo:
- The inline WYSIWYG editor. It is no longer required to have the thread open in another tab to see the images. You can be on any page of a thread to post, you can even switch pages without losing anything
- The automatically saved drafts. Start writing a post on your mobile, finish it on the evening on the PC
- Just copy-paste images into the posts, the image is automatically inlined
- The notification system, though i can see that this may get overwhelming for users that are significantly more active than me
- seamless reponsive design. I was sceptical about this at first, since i am primarly a desktop user, but in my opinion this works great without sacrificing style or usability in the desktop view

The old-style smilies can be made working. The forum that i am a member of has quite a lot of old style smilies available.
I am still thinking about suggesting to them to import a couple from here, but i have no idea about the required permissions...

But anyway, as long as no migration away from SMF is planned, i have to agree that change for the sake of change is not something that should be considered. And i have to admit that i do not know what the next version of SMF can or cannot do.
I just wish, as the majority of the users here i think, that the style of being a forum is not lost.

MrMobodies · « **Reply #299 on:** April 27, 2021, 09:51:58 pm »

Quote from: Ranayna on April 27, 2021, 01:20:12 pm

Quote from: Refrigerator on April 27, 2021, 10:37:32 am
Quote from: EEVblog on March 29, 2020, 11:45:24 pm
Quote from: Ranayna on March 29, 2020, 06:38:21 pm
But on a sidenote: Yes, the forum software shows it's age, and migration to some more modern software should be considered. Modern software like Xenforo can introduce a lot of new useful features without loosing it's spirit of what a forum actually represents.

Yes, SMF is showing its age, and I am a member on another forum that moved over the Xenforo (from I think phpBB) and I really like it. There were hardly any complaints from users too.
So I would be certainly open to moving to that, but it's got to be done right and professionally, not something that can be half arsed. I'd have to pay a professional to manage the move.

I agree that i Xenforo is not too bad. I wouldn't mind if EEVBlog moved over to Xenforo, but i think it is good as-is currently.
I'm a member at the SaabCentral forums, which moved to Xenforo and before that i think they had the same look as EEVBlog forums do now (same platform?).
So far i've noticed the only thing that doesn't work after the big move to Xenforo are the old smiley faces, but the very old ones, the kind that make you feel nostalgic. I'm sure something like that can be fixed if need be.
[...]
A list, in no particular order, what i like about XenForo:
- The inline WYSIWYG editor. It is no longer required to have the thread open in another tab to see the images. You can be on any page of a thread to post, you can even switch pages without losing anything
- The automatically saved drafts. Start writing a post on your mobile, finish it on the evening on the PC
- Just copy-paste images into the posts, the image is automatically inlined
- The notification system, though i can see that this may get overwhelming for users that are significantly more active than me
- seamless reponsive design. I was sceptical about this at first, since i am primarly a desktop user, but in my opinion this works great without sacrificing style or usability in the desktop view

The old-style smilies can be made working. The forum that i am a member of has quite a lot of old style smilies available.
I am still thinking about suggesting to them to import a couple from here, but i have no idea about the required permissions...

But anyway, as long as no migration away from SMF is planned, i have to agree that change for the sake of change is not something that should be considered. And i have to admit that i do not know what the next version of SMF can or cannot do.
I just wish, as the majority of the users here i think, that the style of being a forum is not lost.

I suppose I wouldn't mind if the appearance or skin can be made to match this forum and in size onto the next without the white spaces, convert any fixed element to absolute or a setting, get rid of eye hurting dimming or any overlay stuff on dialogues and loading spinners/animations to a point where I am going to notice 'much difference and don't have to do any work hidng the above elements that annoys me.


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