General > General Technical Chat
Migrating the forum to Discourse
MarkMLl:
--- 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?
--- End quote ---
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:
--- 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.
--- End quote ---
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.
--- End quote ---
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 :D
Included image is the general look of the forum boards, so that you can see what i'm talking about.
Refrigerator:
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:
--- 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.
--- End quote ---
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
--- End quote ---
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:
--- 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.
--- End quote ---
...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
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