Your chance for a say in Silvertails future

[Dan]

So during the last few weeks we had a major upgrade become available for the website. Which is great, but also difficult as the upgrade breaks a lot of things.

This leaves me with several options.
Either stay where we are, upgrade and fix the things that are broken, or look at moving to an entirely new solution.

It looks like the most likely scenario at the least will be a change in the forum software, this is where I would like your input.

I really quite like IP.Board but programatically it is a nightmare for me to reprogram the tipping competiton and other features around that. This means I could go for that software and choose to use footytips but means I will have an uphill battle adding new features going forward. So we will likely stay in a situation where we keep wordpress to handle the content side of the site.

Therefore I have narrowed the solutions for the new forum software down to 4 options maybe 5 but the 5th I am not keen on.

So I want you guys to try out all of the options and then provide me with the your preferred option.

Forget look because we can adapt that and I have a designer who will make a best matchup for us on this. Price is not a concern either I have a kitty available of money that I can cover costs that my wife doesn't know about.

Your options are

1 - https://xenforo.com/community/
2 - http://vanillaforums.org/discussions
3 - http://try.discourse.org/
4 - http://community.mybb.com (what we currently use but upgraded)
5 - http://www.vbulletin.com

Now that is no particular order apart from 5.

Vanilla will allow direct embedding within wordpress, the others will require some dev time. No matter how we look at it I will need to do some development. The lest development is with mybb but I honestly see that as a poor solution given their dev team is shrinking and all the other solutions actually have a corporate backing for their software. Discourse really changes the way that we think of forums, and is a new technology stack but I can learn whatever we need if it is the right solution.

So I ask that those who feel inclined to play around with the communities that exist above and see which one feels the best to them going forward. What would make the experience of posting on silvertails better etc.

Lets take the site to the next level and I want you all to be a part of it.

Dan

 

[manlyfan76]

As long as it works on my sony tablet the rest is just it talk to me, since the move to the new server it seems to run well for me.

 

[Jerry1]

Mybb looks horrible on an iPhone - not iPhone friendly at all.

 

[voicefromthehill]

Visually I prefer xenforo, ultimately though, as long as the site is stable I am content.

 

[Frank]

I would pick the "In Dan we trust" option.

Someone forgot to put it there.

 

[globaleagle]

I believe vbulletin is the best (and have mentioned this previously).

It's a pity the link above doesn't take you to an actual page as many on here may....may just go off what the links looks like with digging further even though Dan says forget the look.

I don't like options 2 and 3 (it's not the 90's anymore) and we should move on from mybb.

Without going into why I work mainly on my laptop whilst flying around the world posting silly pics of my hat pretending to be a semi retired trillionaire....In my humble experience vbulletin is the best - probably for Dan and us.

Mr Dan may have a differing view (but he'd be wrong...lol see what I did there??) and as most of us would agree.....probably has a greater knowledge of the intergooglyweb programmy thingies than most of us mere mortals. Ultimately it's his decision.

Anyway, as Mr Dan says, have a look and play around (on the sites, perverts) but my vote is for vbulletin which can also look like:.......

 

[anthonyb1965]

vBulletin works and seems the best, imo.

 

[torana355]

vBulletin is used by alot of my favorite forums and i really like it.

 

[Jethro]

@"Dan",

Will any of the options allow RiverEagle to delete his account?

 

[mozgrame]

NFI! As long as it works. I'll let you high tech wizards do your magic!

 

[globaleagle]

 

[Mark from Brisbane]

NFI! As long as it works. I'll let you high tech wizards do your magic!

I'm with you, that whole post at the start is like Swahili to me, @Dan "just do it"

 

[Dan]

Vbullerin is far from the best it used to be back in 2008 but they were bought by IB and then it went horribly down hill the guys who made bulletin went on to make xenforo.

Vbulletin will be the most difficult to move to.

Funny your should say vanilla and discourse are 90's they are considered the most next generation of all of them in geek circles because they are rethinking how discussions should work

@globaleagle.

Vbulletin 5 has such terrible reviews that I am surprised they can still operate

 

[torana355]

Vbullerin is far from the best it used to be back in 2008 but they were bought by IB and then it went horribly down hill the guys who made bulletin went on to make xenforo.

Vbulletin will be the most difficult to move to.

Funny your should say vanilla and discourse are 90's they are considered the most next generation of all of them in geek circles because they are rethinking how discussions should work

@globaleagle.

Vbulletin 5 has such terrible reviews that I am surprised they can still operate

I have a feeling the vBulletin backend may be a pain in the butt but the front end seems to work well for me at least. I would go for what ever is easiest for you Dan.

 

[Dan]

Not so much a pain as poorly written hackable and slow. It's fast on their servers because they have uber crazy servers outside our price range.

With that said I will be looking at a cloud hosted solution for mid next year to offload the pressure on our servers

 

[globaleagle]

FINE THEN!!!!!

At least I can tag correctly!


(lol) - see need to put that in so no one gets offended!


Pfffft geeks just want everything to look like reddit! They don't live in the world of 40+ year olds who don't understand programming just to log onto a site! Damn friggen geeks. "Oh there's a problem....it's going to be the hardware....bye bye" *click*


As always, interesting to get your insight as it's what you do (for part of the day). And we'll all go with whatever you choose (obv - der)

vbulletin and IPB were the least hackable *a few years ago* but that may have changed - like using uber and hella (which I still use)

I can't post on the cloud...what about all my naked pics??????

Damn, it's uber early in Amsterdan! (glad you didn't get hit by that monster truck)

meh, I still like vbulletin, but you are more advanced (obv) down the line than me.

And if, as you say, you can customise the looks of all the sites...then I guess the 90's crack doesn't count.


*end transmission - mind is everywhere!*

 

[Dan]

FINE THEN!!!!!

At least I can tag correctly!


(lol) - see need to put that in so no one gets offended!


Pfffft geeks just want everything to look like reddit! They don't live in the world of 40+ year olds who don't understand programming just to log onto a site! Damn friggen geeks. "Oh there's a problem....it's going to be the hardware....bye bye" *click*


As always, interesting to get your insight as it's what you do (for part of the day). And we'll all go with whatever you choose (obv - der)

vbulletin and IPB were the least hackable *a few years ago* but that may have changed - like using uber and hella (which I still use)

I can't post on the cloud...what about all my naked pics??????

Damn, it's uber early in Amsterdan! (glad you didn't get hit by that monster truck)

meh, I still like vbulletin, but you are more advanced (obv) down the line than me.

And if, as you say, you can customise the looks of all the sites...then I guess the 90's crack doesn't count.


*end transmission - mind is everywhere!*

The landscape has changed since about 2011 xenforo are really the leaders now.

Yes it's early here 4am insomnia is a bitch of a thing!

 

[mozgrame]

FINE THEN!!!!!

At least I can tag correctly!


(lol) - see need to put that in so no one gets offended!


Pfffft geeks just want everything to look like reddit! They don't live in the world of 40+ year olds who don't understand programming just to log onto a site! Damn friggen geeks. "Oh there's a problem....it's going to be the hardware....bye bye" *click*


As always, interesting to get your insight as it's what you do (for part of the day). And we'll all go with whatever you choose (obv - der)

vbulletin and IPB were the least hackable *a few years ago* but that may have changed - like using uber and hella (which I still use)

I can't post on the cloud...what about all my naked pics??????

Damn, it's uber early in Amsterdan! (glad you didn't get hit by that monster truck)

meh, I still like vbulletin, but you are more advanced (obv) down the line than me.

And if, as you say, you can customise the looks of all the sites...then I guess the 90's crack doesn't count.


*end transmission - mind is everywhere!*

The landscape has changed since about 2011 xenforo are really the leaders now.

Yes it's early here 4am insomnia is a ... of a thing!

Fcuk it then! lol