Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
New forum software
Linc
Site ownerDetroit Moderator
To give you all a heads-up, this fall I will be migrating NewBuddhist from vBulletin forum software to a newer product, "Vanilla".
I regard Vanilla as being a much easier to use for new members and have a much lower learning curve. I hope it helps us attract new members more easily, and I'm really looking forward to being on board with this product moving forward. I plan to be a contributor to the project and moving Icrontic.com (the other site Brian and I run) to it as well.
I'll post more information as it gets closer to time. For now I'm still working on just getting to work on our development server
I regard Vanilla as being a much easier to use for new members and have a much lower learning curve. I hope it helps us attract new members more easily, and I'm really looking forward to being on board with this product moving forward. I plan to be a contributor to the project and moving Icrontic.com (the other site Brian and I run) to it as well.
I'll post more information as it gets closer to time. For now I'm still working on just getting to work on our development server
0
Comments
Palzang
~nomad
- It would be nice if in the new posts page, the link to the last post included an excerpt from said post in the tool tip (like the link to the first post does.)
- Also in the new posts page, it would be nice to see the date of the first post. Long-running threads tend to mostly involve interminable discussions of unresolvable issues, and I prefer to avoid them. Being able to filter them out without going into them would be convenient.
You can see the basic format of the software here: http://vanillaforums.org/discussions
However, I will be making several adjustments to the default and have indeed been thinking of a way to reveal an excerpt from the most recent post in a discussion.
I'll think on the idea of showing the date of first post. It's an interesting thought.
Yikes! That design is horrid, Matt. I hope that you guys deliver some serious CSS Kung-fu like you have here on the current boards to spice it up. If that is the case, we could all be in for a huge treat! I also like the idea of having excerpts from the most recent posts on the front page. Does the software have an e-mail notification feature like the one currently in use? I enjoy getting notices of new replies in email. I makes it easier to keep track of how many discussions I'm in.
~nomad
As for its design, it will either be very similar to what we have now (color scheme and texture-wise) or I'll be creating a new design from scratch. Depends how much time I have to put into it
The email replies aren't in the product yet, but I'm told that feature will be added before the final release. It's an essential feature to many members, so I will make sure it's there before we switch.
I pull up the list of new posts and then open each thread in a new tab. I right click on the circle with the arrow in it at the beginning of the title on the list page so it brings me right to the first unread post instead of to the beginning of the thread.
That way I have all the threads with new posts neatly lined up in my tab bar.
I've been using the site this way for 2 years because it's so fast and easy.
Definitely
Wonderful to hear. We really get some first class service on this forum. Kudos to you and the rest of the team that manage the site.
~nomad
That's great, Lincoln! Even faster and easier!
It's probably a moot suggestion, but please consider MyBB - http://community.mybboard.net/ I've used it for several projects and it is incredibly lightweight and fast. I personally wouldn't use anything else...
I'm getting heavily involved with Vanilla 2 and will make sure we have the issues ironed out before we make the switch. I really think you're going to be pleasantly surprised at what you find when you start using it.
A forum is only as eye-friendly as its theme; I suspect you're comparing apples to oranges.
I actually want to ditch vBulletin because it's so feature "rich" (not the adjective I'd use). The admin panel is a maddening tangle and it's impossible to customize efficiently. All those doodads take time to learn how to use, which scares off casual users. I've come to believe the cost of vBulletin is its mess of features.
You got me there. I don't click "new posts" first. I go into each category and choose what I want to look at and respond to. I'm different or dumb like that.
Having the index page show you the categories, is more friendly to the forum newcomers. Rather than seeing a listing of threads they know nothing about and don't know what nearly-invisible category they came from, they get to choose and specify their searching into one category as a start.
I agree that "new posts" is helpful, but not to newcomers. And if I understand you right, you are wanting to attract new members, so this might be something you want to take into account.
Opening a forum site and being blasted with a list of threads in a seemingly random order, is not what I'd call newcomer friendly.
You are right. I think I just feel so "at home" with vBulletin, that I see it as more eye-friendly than anything else.
I've seen cases of great looking and functioning customization with vBulletin. As an example, I used to be active in the "iLounge.com" forums, as I own a couple iPods and use iTunes, and I've seen them customize and modernize the forums to a huge degree over the years. I think their forums look great and have all the great features vBulletin offers, that I haven't seen in other software.
That may very well be true, but if you reduce the features the more established users can access, then you might see a reduction in the number of active members who can't be bothered to downgrade their experience.
You might get more casual users, who post once or twice and then never return tho, that's true. Everything in life has a learning curve, and if the casual user, as you call them, can't hang around long enough to learn how to use these features, then do we even really want him/her here?
Are we actually giving more weight to the random person who posts once or twice and then never returns, than to the established members who post often and MAKE this forum what it is?
Is this software change up for debate? or as an Admin you make the call and no one else gets a say in it? Just curious to see what would happen if it's put to a vote, that's all.
I think you overestimate the importance of this feature list and underestimate what a barrier they are to actual participation.
Yes. You shouldn't have to even think about the software. You should just talk.
Here you're creating some sort of correlation between people who master vBulletin and people with worthwhile opinions. I'm here to tell you there is none.
I'm not that curious because I expect few (if any) members know Vanilla well enough to make a comparison, and you only see half the story (the front end).
Here's my position: There's a LOT I want to do for NewBuddhist and my other site, Icrontic. I will do none of it so long as we're running vBulletin. I hate it and its parent company with unbridled fury for reasons too numerous (and exhausting) to list here. The very fact that we're still running vBulletin irritates me every time I visit.
The decision to move software was made long ago, but that doesn't mean you don't get a say in what happens after that.
Lightwithin, CSS has amazing powers of reskinning! Funny enough, the site demonstrating this is called the CSS 'Zen' Garden
I admit I don't know Vanilla well enough to complain about it yet, but somehow I have the feeling vBulletin is so widely used because its better than the rest, or else everyone would have front pages with random content.
Before someone says "oh no, untested software!" - I'm one of the contributors and have a close watch on its progress; it's ready for prime time.
I'm not explaining this because I'm proud; rather, I want you to understand my confidence. This isn't something I woke up one day to decree. It's a careful process of consideration that's close to finally being realized.
I don't think there's any "law" to conform to here. You'll not like the Vanilla for the first 2 weeks because it's different and you're invested in understanding vBulletin. At the end of a month you'll start to warm to it, and after 2 months or so you'll hate browsing vBulletin forums. At least, that was my experience.
Generally, the more features software has, the harder it is to learn to use it. If forum software is like other server software, the big problem is configuration. You spend countless hours pouring through the documentation and posting questions on user forums trying to figure out how to get everything set up properly. The more complex the software, the more time you spend. Once the server is up and running, you're going to need to make occasional changes in the configuration. Since you don't do this very often, you're going to have to grovel through the documentation again and post more questions on user forums in order to figure out how to make the configuration changes.
The more complicated the configuration, the more likely you are to make a mistake that creates a security hole. You probably won't be aware of the hole at first. It could lie in wait for years as your forum becomes more popular, and then some cracker may discover the hole right when you've developed a big pool of participants and a security exploit can do the maximum amount of damage. This is apparently what happened to E-sangha.
Also, the more bloated the software is with features, the more bugs it contains. All bugs are potentially security holes, and all software has bugs. It's just a matter of finding them. The more popular software is, the more people there are looking for ways to break the security and do damage. The feature rich software used at the big commercial sites is also more likely to be a target for security exploits. Smaller sites that don't need a lot of features are better off using smaller, simpler software both because it is likely to have fewer bugs, and because there are likely to be fewer bad guys trying to find security holes. For conscientious admins who keep up with security patches, simpler software also means less work.
As I said, I'm not familiar with forum software. I'm just pointing out the logic that drives admins to use smaller, simpler servers where possible. Lincoln may have other reasons specific to this site.
Where the hell is this mythical button? :[
Well, couldn't it be different if the forums were customized (within the vBulletin template) to have easier access?
The way you say it, you make it sound like the "new posts" button is on the same spot on ALL vBulletin forums.
Palzang
Yes, I prefer to browse through thread titles that interest me and not all new posts, but I'm down to see what Vanilla 2 can do.
NOT good I'd say.
I know what you mean. This is the way I browse the forums too. Pick a category you're interested in at the moment, and then go from there.
1) THE CATEGORIES WILL STILL BE LISTED ON THE FRONT PAGE IN THE SIDEBAR
2) THE POSTS WILL NOT BE IN RANDOM ORDER
I'm cool with discussing merits of forum software; I'm not cool with spreading disinformation.
Have you ever themed a vBulletin site? It's a collection of 150-200 poorly-named templates (any guess what "shell_blank" does?) that you can only edit using a web form text box (like the Reply box). It was cool in 2002. In 2010, it's pathetic.
More from me on vBulletin vs. Wordpress and vBulletin's atrocious blog plugin.
I realize there are gonna be categories on the sidebar, but the main thing that your eye will be drawn to when you open the page will be the list of postings. Right?
The posts will be in "latest first" order, I know. Not random. Sorry. It just LOOKS random to someone new to the page that's what I was getting at.
But anyway. I think it's pretty pointless to discuss this any further, since the option to stay with vBulletin has been discarded already and the decision has been made to go with Vanilla, which we as forum members have no say on.
I won't be making any more waves here and I'm sorry if I got a lil annoying there for a second Lincoln. I'll stay out of your hair now.
This is actually a good reminder for this particular situation. It's just hard to go with the flow sometimes for me, but I'll do my best.
And Lincoln, trust me, I WANT to be able to come back and EAT my tradionalist words when we start using Vanilla and I actually LIKE it, but change is hard for me, so maybe that's why I'm kicking and screaming so much about this.
That truly is the crux of the matter, which is why I continue responding... even if I get a bit perturbed.