Should We Move To A New Forum Platform?

[Gary Lewis]

Gary, when you’ll have a chance, take a look here.

Jeff - I see that post but I'm not 100% sure I understand. I think what you are telling me is that you are looking for lots of improvement plugins and while doing that you may have found one for going to a given page in a long thread. Is that right?

I think that's right, but when I first read your post I thought you were saying that you've compiled a list of things we should look at. But there are 24 things per page and 78 pages, so I'm guessing that's not your list but the whole list.

Anyway, back to the jump-to-page button. I searched for that function but didn't find it. And I looked to see if that is something that can be turned on in the phpBB setup, but didn't find it there, either. I'm missing something.

[BigBrother-84]

... AHA! The issue is the resize tool, as it stripped the metadata. Nabble's issue isn't that it can't handle metadata when viewing, but that the resize tool strips the data off.

I remember now that Nabble has the same issue with animated GIF.

If posted using “resize”, the GIF turns to still image, no more animation.

[BigBrother-84]

... AHA! The issue is the resize tool, as it stripped the metadata. Nabble's issue isn't that it can't handle metadata when viewing, but that the resize tool strips the data off.

I remember now that Nabble has the same issue with animated GIF.

If posted using “resize”, the GIF turns to still image, no more animation.

Gary, I had a “testing” break last week, I’m a bit lost…

Please remember me why we are giving a try to InVision and phpBB, but not to Discourse?

I don’t remember why it was discarded. No reason listed in the comparison chart.

[Gary Lewis]

Gary, I had a “testing” break last week, I’m a bit lost…

Please remember me why we are giving a try to InVision and phpBB, but not to Discourse?

I don’t remember why it was discarded. No reason listed in the comparison chart.

Jeff - Yes, I certainly DID have fun with the grandkids! Unfortunately they left this morning.

And thanks for doing all of that research.

Your question about Discourse is answered with these statements from this post:

Discourse has the ability to embed the comments from a topic in a remote site using a Javascript API that creates an IFRAME. For an example of this in action, check out Coding Horror’s blog 5.4k. The blog is run via Ghost 908 but the comments are embedded from his Discourse forum 858.

One important thing to note with this setup is that users have to navigate to your forum to post replies. This is intentional, as we feel that the posting interface on a Discourse forum is currently much richer than what we could embed via Javascript.

That means that we can't make it look like the forum is part of the website. So while you are posting you won't have access to the menu that has links to all of the documentation. Not acceptable.

As for your questions in email:

Gary, I am wondering about the phpBB version we are testing. I saw somewhere that phpBB 3.2 will be deprecated next August 2024, and is already replaced by phpBB 3.3. What version are we testing?

We are running version 3.3.11.

Also, a lot of these extensions are no longer supported by their author. I am wondering about the fact that one (or more) of them could be attractive for our needs now, but someday will stop to work on a future phpBB upgrade…

I read some extensions "discussion/support“ tabs where users are complaining about extensions that were working on v3.0.x and ceased to work since v3.1.x.

My fear: If phpBB will be ok for our needs but ONLY with some add-ons, there are chances (risks) that future upgrades of phpBB will make us losing some essential features that rely on theses famous extensions.

Yes, that is certainly a possibility. That is something we will have to think about, for sure.

[BigBrother-84]

That means that we can't make it [Discourse] look like the forum is part of the website. So while you are posting you won't have access to the menu that has links to all of the documentation. Not acceptable.

Ok, thanks Gary for the reminder, that's a very good reason!

[Gary Lewis]

That means that we can't make it [Discourse] look like the forum is part of the website. So while you are posting you won't have access to the menu that has links to all of the documentation. Not acceptable.

Ok, thanks Gary for the reminder, that's a very good reason!

Time for an update, and boy is it a good one! Chris has gotten InVision embedded on a Weebly page like Nabble!!!!! You can see it and even kick the tires here. Thanks, CHRIS!!!

Yes, there's cleanup to do and details to work out. I hope to spend some time working on some of the details, like the joining process, today. And at this point the link in the email you get when someone posts on a thread to which you are subscribed doesn't take you to the post, just the thread. But these are cleanup things that we should be able to address.

Given that, I'm inclined to say we should move to InVision. It is a commercial platform that is maintained and works very nicely with all the features I think we want. phpBB can be made to work but that will take Chris making coding changes that may need to be redone each time phpBB is updated, and I don't think that is a viable alternative.

But there is a cost. Right now it is running about $55/mo and that may go up some as we really start using it. However many of you have said you'll help, so I don't think that's a big deal.

However, what IS a big deal is the cost of porting this existing forum over to InVision. They said that starts at $1800 but I'm sure it'll go up some from there. Some have suggested we start a Go Fund Me account to make that happen, but the question to y'all is whether it is worth it to have all of our stuff in one place? And, do you think we can do it?

[BigBrother-84]

Time for an update, and boy is it a good one! Chris has gotten InVision embedded on a Weebly page like Nabble!!!!!

[…] Thanks, CHRIS!!!

Oh yeah, what a HUGE job you’ve done for us Chris! So many thanks!!

Given that, I'm inclined to say we should move to InVision. It is a commercial platform that is maintained and works very nicely with all the features I think we want. phpBB can be made to work but that will take Chris making coding changes that may need to be redone each time phpBB is updated, and I don't think that is a viable alternative.

Having played with the two, I FULLY agree Gary.

However, what IS a big deal is the cost of porting this existing forum over to InVision. They said that starts at $1800 but I'm sure it'll go up some from there. Some have suggested we start a Go Fund Me account to make that happen […]

That a nice idea. Why not try it?

As I already said, I’m ready to absorb part of this transfer, sure I’m not alone.

[…] but the question to y'all is whether it is worth it to have all of our stuff in one place? And, do you think we can do it?

Oooops, you lost me… Not sure I understand your questions. Can you re-formulate Gary?

Right now it is running about $55/mo and that may go up some as we really start using it. However many of you have said you'll help, so I don't think that's a big deal.

Twelve guys at one month each, and that’s it.

Hey, my TV+Netflix+etc costs largely more than a 55$-60$ yearly donation to this Forum.

This part could be as simple as a shareware is, no fix price but a voluntary donation based system.

I’m confident that the maintenance fees could be easily paid by members this way.

[Gary Lewis]

[…] but the question to y'all is whether it is worth it to have all of our stuff in one place? And, do you think we can do it?

Oooops, you lost me… Not sure I understand your questions. Can you re-formulate Gary?

The question is whether it is worth ~$2000 to have our last almost 7 years of the Bullnose forum migrated over to the new forum as if everything was on InVision from the start. I don't yet know what the cost will be nor how complete/accurate the migration might be, but if it was complete would it be worth that?

The alternate would be to lock the existing Nabble forum and just use it for history - as long as it is available. But at some point I suspect it'll go away and we won't have it to refer to. Or, it'll be part of the Way Back machine and we'll have to get to it that way.

Wouldn't it be nicer to have all of our history as part of the new forum and not have to go elsewhere to find our comments?

[grumpin]

[…] but the question to y'all is whether it is worth it to have all of our stuff in one place? And, do you think we can do it?

Oooops, you lost me… Not sure I understand your questions. Can you re-formulate Gary?

The question is whether it is worth ~$2000 to have our last almost 7 years of the Bullnose forum migrated over to the new forum as if everything was on InVision from the start. I don't yet know what the cost will be nor how complete/accurate the migration might be, but if it was complete would it be worth that?

The alternate would be to lock the existing Nabble forum and just use it for history - as long as it is available. But at some point I suspect it'll go away and we won't have it to refer to. Or, it'll be part of the Way Back machine and we'll have to get to it that way.

Wouldn't it be nicer to have all of our history as part of the new forum and not have to go elsewhere to find our comments?

Ignorant question.

Can you save all the info on the Nabble forum somewhere you control, as in a disc, computer hard drive etc.?

Or is it just too much to handle or tackle?

I don't know how or if it could be accessed.

[Gary Lewis]

Ignorant question.

Can you save all the info on the Nabble forum somewhere you control, as in a disc, computer hard drive etc.?

Or is it just too much to handle or tackle?

I don't know how or if it could be accessed.

Yes, I can save it. But I can't really access it. I back the forum up weekly and it is now up to 7.2 GB in size. But the only way I know of to use it is to have Nabble put it back on the server. And if they go away, which is anticipated at some point, we won't be able to use it.