Forum Platform

Admin · Aug 11, 2015

I just read this from AV Forums and thought it would be worth sharing here, this was their considered opinion (....2 years ago).

https://www.avforums.com/threads/vbulletin-is-dying-no-vbulletin-is-dead.1793735/

Acorner's opinions are very much welcome on subjects like this, this is an area where consultation is appropriate and appreciated.

I have two main lines of thought:

1. vbulletin is a dinosaur and extinction might be on the horizon, we can stay as we are for a while but it's a ticking clock. It is old tech and the new vbulletin versions are not well regarded making upgrade look like a poor choice.

2. we need the forum to be responsive and mobile friendly without a 3rd party app

Admin.

ChrisMM · Aug 11, 2015

I think an eventual migration over to Xenforo would be a step in the right direction for this community personally. Would greatly modernise the website/design and might give that feeling of a "clean slate" for the community if that makes sense.

But there's certainly no rush. I'm not upto date on the latest vbulletin development, but I assume the version Acorn runs is sound in terms of security updates etc?

I do think you have time on your side, I don't see a need to rush out a migration asap. So it might be prudent to setup xenforo on a private server - have a play, and use that as a test bed to really iron out any bugs in terms of getting Acorn ported over to Xenforo. Hell, if you wanted to, you could even post updates of how the dev is going and get feedback from here on potential changes/improvements etc.

Features like http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/vbclassified.php will most likely get scrapped - but how often is it used?

In a nutshell: Move to Xenforo eventually, but take your time.

Adam H · Aug 11, 2015

Xenforo is your best option by a considerable mile, VB3 has been past it for many years but remained a great bit of kit, vbulletin 4 was horrible when first released and really only become stable and a real Gold release when they had made it end of life. vbulletin 5 is the biggest pile of shite you will ever have the displeasure of working with, total rebuild which went completely wrong with a horrible code base, most service providers and developers vbulletin used to have in the community left for xenforo in the early beta stages.

Alot of whats here can be migrated or rebuilt, but to be honest alot of the features that are on Acorn are not used enough to warrant worrying about but most can be saved and improved upon.

Providing the upgrade is planned well it can be pretty seamless with many of the creature comforts the old guard are used to being migrated too.

Just take your time and do it properly, there are plenty of forums out there which jumped the gun and killed their forum in the process.

martin-s · Aug 11, 2015

While moving to a new platform, it would be worth combining some of the better threads into how-to content which answers common questions.

monaghan · Aug 11, 2015

I'm not bothered on the platform, however, there do seem to have been a lot of migrations from vB to Xenforo so it looks like the right thing to be doing on a technical level.

As suggested by others, there's no rush, take your time and get the migration running nicely and then we can switch over with minimal "moans".

The only issue I've seen on xenforo is the amount of space taken up by the headers (including the post headers), there seems to be a lot of "white space" often over half ot my 24" monitor is lot to page headers on some forums, but I guess this can be designed out in the theme

Something that moves seamlessly between desktop, tablet and phone seems to be the order of the day and if it doesn't nag you to install yet another app on my tablet/phone would probably lead me to use the forum more on mobile devices.

spiderspider · Aug 11, 2015

Its been long enough now, for the dust to settle on the VB XF court action, and all the uncertainty that was caused by that, to see that the clear winner is XF.

If only by looking at the number of other forums who have switched, and stuck, with XF.

The issues are well known with VB, and their updates. I'm sure it won't vanish any time soon, however I would see it more as a Blockbusters store, in the digital age.

XF has so much going for it. I use some forums that have stuffed so much in, that its hard to know where to go. Others have it just right, and have all the options, bells and whistles that VB (and this forum) haven't got, or don't do very well (take the POST ratings thread from last week as an example).

I would say its a no brainer, but I'm not the community, just a voice in it

Adam H · Aug 11, 2015

You only have to look at the "commercial forum software migrations" cookie tracker to see the kind of market share vbulletin has lost to xenforo. Combine that with some of the biggest, busiest forums taking the plunge you'd have to be silly to think this forum can compete on the same level with out progression. Im afraid its more than just being responsive and mobile friendly.

Commercial Migrations and market share as a rough guide can be seen on one of the graphs at DP : https://tools.digitalpoint.com/cookie-search