Your Help Needed - Evalutating NEW Forum Software

[Nifty]

Hi Friends!!!

We need your help!

We've been running the Nifty-Stuff Forum on some pretty old software. Over the years there have been some great advances in forum software. We've tried to keep up by hacking away at this software, but that's proving harder and messier as time goes by. We want to do all we can to support our wonderful community and our amazing staff and make everything easier for everyone in the long term.

I'm personally VERY involved in the forum software space and have kept a close eye on the changing landscape for years. We've been evaluating another forum platform that is very popular and robust. The forum system we're looking most closely at is called XenForo and is not the same platform that BYC is on. We've been playing with it for a while and we think it looks great!

Here's where you come in: I recently purchased a forum that is running the Xenforo software so we could kick the tires. So far we're really impressed with the software, but we need your help to do even more robust tire kickinating!

Here's what we'd like you to do:

1) Go to http://RemodelForums.com/
2) Browse around and create an account
3) Start a new "introduction thread", maybe upload a picture or three
4) Play around with all the various features, PM's (called conversations over there) etc.
5) Come back here and tell us what you think, ask questions, etc.

We've done a test conversion and so far it's worked great! Users, passwords, threads, posts, PMs, etc. all converted. There are some things that may be frustrating with a move and we know change is hard and very few people like change... but we're pretty confident that this has the potential to be a HUGE benefit to our community and we'd love your feedback and support!

Thanks everyone, we look forward to your replies!!!

 

[websnail]

I did a quick mosie over there and the biggest problem there was, was in relation to some script or other that was trying to track the link. It slowed down things something fierce but a quick check with Yslow indicated it wasn't the forum script itself.

My primary concern though isn't with the forum front-end as I'm pretty sure it'll be fine but more with the finer points such as support for protection against spammers, etc... If you haven't looked already I'd strongly recommend checking how effective it is in that arena, what protection there is against brute force login attempts, etc... I did a quick look at there's something call "Stop Spam Here" which looks like it handles much of this but worth highlighting it as it quickly kills a forum if spammers can run amock

As for my change, can I have it in Pounds and Pence please... Oh and I gave you 50.. ok?

 

[Nifty]

Thanks for testing it Websnail!

Actually one of the big reasons we're looking into that system is that it has WAY more robust spam blocking! See some of the features we have available here:
http://xenforo.com/help/spam/

Also, when a spammer does sneak through, the process of removing them, banning them, and removing all their posts is WAY WAY easier and faster!

 

[websnail]

Something else occurred to me that I wanted to check... Will thread subscriptions be carried across to the new format?

 

[Nifty]

Great question! In our testing so far, they all get carried over!

 

[Nifty]

Hey all!

So far the feedback on the other forum platform has been excellent! From an admin/moderator perspective I'm LOVING it!

My favorite features from a user perspective:

1) SUPER easy image uploading
2) Much easier text formatting (bold, hyperlinking text, etc.)
3) Auto-save of replies while typing. If I "fat finger" off the page I can come back and my post response has been saved!
4) The ability to subscribe to entire forum sections
5) Better control over what types of notifications and how often I receive them.
6) Threaded "conversations" (PM's) that make it way easier to follow a conversation between two (or more) people.
7) Ooodles of other cool features & stuff that makes using the site easier.

We've done multiple test conversions of the forum information from the site and from what we can tell, all the forums, topics, posts, users, passwords, PMs, subscriptions, etc. have all transferred over perfectly!

We're very confident that a move will be best for the users, moderators, admin, and community as a whole, and we expect to move forward on the conversion barring any huge roadblocks. We don't have a time schedule yet, but we expect to do the conversion in the next few weeks.

If you have any questions or concerns, please post them here!

 

[fotofreek]

Rob - One quirk that I would like to see fixed if the new software permits it. After posting a reply message and submitting it you can not use the "back" button to return to the other new posts. I've had to click on "index" and then the new messages link top right. Is that the forum software or is it my browser?

 

[Nifty]

Hmm... I've not experienced this. Which browser and version are you on?

 

[The Hat]

Rob - One quirk that I would like to see fixed if the new software permits it. After posting a reply message and submitting it you can not use the "back" button to return to the other new posts. I've had to click on "index" and then the new messages link top right. Is that the forum software or is it my browser?

Thats ditto for me also for as longs as I can remember, it is a pain to have to return to index.
I use Explorer..

 

[pharmacist]

What about upload limit for pictures ? it is now limited to just 20 MB, for me far too low. Writing reviews is quite crippling to me and reducing jpg size als reduces quality significantly in order to save precious upload space.