General > General Technical Chat

Migrating the forum to Discourse

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tautech:

--- 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.

--- End quote ---
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:
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:

--- 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.

--- End quote ---

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:
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:

--- 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.

--- End quote ---

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.

(...)

--- End quote ---

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

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