5 replies to this topic

[Ben]

I believe forums are going to go through a revival. Reddit can't cut it and people are waking up to this. And that means that maybe google will too and start to give forums (especially old ones, with good content like this) more ranking power. When that happens (if it isn't happening already), the sticking with IP.Board will mean a potentially missed opportunity. 

 

The current forum software keeps people away. It's dated and doesn't look good. I recommend switching to xenforo: https://xenforo.com/...ase/self-hosted.

 

Its per month pricing isn't too bad but you can also buy a license for a small amount and then update every couple of years (rebuying the license on a bi / tri yearly schedule).

 

Of all forum software it's the one that is currently most popular and gets the most updates. 

 

I believe it's really time to update. 

 

@Mind caliban reason

Edited by Ben, 09 August 2023 - 10:11 PM.

[Mind]

Thanks for the suggestion. We will look into it.

 

We definitely need to upgrade forum software. My main concern is the stability of the company that provides the software.

[geo12the]

Thanks for the suggestion. We will look into it.

 

We definitely need to upgrade forum software. My main concern is the stability of the company that provides the software.

 

 

My opinion is that the way the different discussions are organized is unnecessarily layered and overly complicated. It makes it difficult and unintuitive to navigate.  Lots of layers of unneeded complexity and subforums  of subforums and too much redundancy. It would be good to consolidate, for instance make a "Brain Supplements" discussion that would incorporate the discussions in "Brain health" forum and it's subforms like " Nootropic Stacks". 

[MaximilianKohler]

I recently set up a Xenforo forum and looked into all the alternatives too. I wrote a detailed guide here and have some info about the other options too: https://gist.github....c1f1422f9626947. There's also info there on hiring people to migrate from one provider to another (IPB to XF, etc.).

 

IPB/Invision is not bad. It just seems like you're using an older version of their software.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. We will look into it.

 

We definitely need to upgrade forum software. My main concern is the stability of the company that provides the software.

 

IPB and Xenforo are the two biggest companies. Both are stable. But their stability isn't really important unless you're paying them to host the forum for you. If you simply purchase their software and install it on your own server you can use it indefinitely, even if the company goes down. And you can always migrate from one type of software to another.

 

Since you're on an older version of the software I'm guessing that you purchased it and are hosting it yourself?

[Mind]

After discussing this more with MaxmillianKohler, I looked more into the different forum options. I would lean toward upgrading to the latest version of IPB (vs Xenforo), just to keep the look and feel similar for the users, and keep some of the add-ons, mods, etc...

 

It looks like the cost is not too bad. I saw one group of devs that would migrate/upgrade a forum for $500 (under 1 million posts). I think we have more than a million posts.

 

LongeCity has its own free server, so no need to worry about that.

 

It has been argued "why upgrade" if everything is stable? Well, there have been at least 3 outages this year due to database problems. If upgrading would fix these issues then I think we should upgrade.

[MaximilianKohler]

For me, the main reason to upgrade would be to update the UI.

• There's so much whitespace.
• It results in poor formatting of the email notifications making them hard to read.
• It would be nice to merge some of the subforums into tags/prefixes.

These could probably be done without upgrading. However, it might be more difficult and may cost as much or more.

 

The other major issue I have is email notifications not being received, likely due to missing DMARC. But that can probably be done without upgrading the software.