Suggestion for CC: vBulletin 3.0.0

[Clipper]

I'm a member of a forum that just upgraded to vBulletin Version 3.0.0. This software is absolutely amazing. Among its many new features is the ability for individual users to choose the way posts are displayed in a thread -- newest first or newest last. I would strongly urge the CC admin folks to consider switching to this software. It's really excellent.

[joyt]

so am i...

some chats give u the option of scrolling ^ or v...different strokes for different folks-- http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/wink.gif

joy
"Now the only healthy way to live, as I see it, is to learn to like all the little every day things."
~ Gus McCrae

[~Patrick~]

very nice! that is what they have on another site I belong to. set it up for each member the way he/she wishes to view the site.

[Andy]

My vote's in for this change too. I love vB.

[Clipper]

Bumping for more people to see....

The new vBulletin software also makes posting a lot more simple -- like you're typing in Microsoft Word. Very easy to bold, ital, etc.

[Wise Young]

clipper, I will ask Jeff to take a look... Wise.

[Jeff]

I checked vBulletin out when I first saw this topic. vBulletin certainly does have more enduser customization.

Here's a link to its FAQ Forum...

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/faq.php?faq=vb_faq

We would need to find a good host. Some have suggested http://www.viperhost.com/ .

OTOH....being a PHP/MySQL solution means we could run it ourselves. The only obstacle being
Rutgers network's uptime.....which isn't as good as InfoPop has been.

I do like the software, though. It seems to have more features and also integrated chat. Of course, I don't know what the administrative features are, yet. But I think the end user experiience is probably topnotch. And it would probably save us money vs. InfoPop....which is the most expensive solution I've seen.

How is reliability for our existing chatroom? That would give some indication for reliability of new forums were we to host them ourselves.

Oh....and making use of the information would be awesome. We could access the database from other applications as we saw fit. http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/smile.gif

~See you at the SCIWire-used-to-be-paralyzed Reunion http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/wavey.gif ~

[Steven Edwards]

Administration/Moderating is pretty much just as good as InfoPop. You can import user and message databases from existing sites, too.

-Steven

[AO]

Looks great to me. There are some fantastic php/mysql solutions out there.

[Scott Pruett]

can vB import the current InfoPop database info? It'd be a shame to port over to a new system without hanging on to the old posts. If it's possible, attempting a transition like this gets my vote.

re: hosts, check out www.insiderhosting.com (http://www.insiderhosting.com) -- they're excellent. I don't use them, but a [geek] friend of mine does, and he's the kind of guy who pays attention to *all* the little details.

______________
There will be plenty of time to rest when I'm dead and gone, until then, 150% straight ahead....

[Steven Edwards]

As long as vB can import XML formatted databases, it sure can. If not, I could write a parser to put it in whatever format is needed.

-Steven

[Wise Young]

I have asked Jeff to purchase the software and see where we can install it in the lab. We have been thinking for some time to do this with the Ultimate Bulletin Board software from infopop, to provide a mirror backup site with most of the features of Open Topic.

While the vBulletin provides several additional features, including local control of the display and better access to the database, we would need to resolve several additional issues before transferring:

1. The vBulletin interface (at least what they are showing with all features and options displayed) seems very cluttered. We would probably need to do considerable work organizing the interface better, simplifying it or at least provide a simpler option for people who are not sophisticated with dealing with bulletiin boards.

2. The reliability of the Rutgers connection to internet is not as good as infopop. At infopop, they have engineers around the clock whose job is to maintain the database, making sure that it is backed up and keeping the serice up. Since July 2001, I think that the site has gone down only twice and for less than a day each time. On the other hand, Rutgers is making substantial progress in firewalling and protecting computer assets within the University. We have not had a breakdown in our router or a denial of service attack for a long time.

3. The movement of database content from one site to another will not be trivial. Because almost 80% of the posts have one or more links in it and most commonly to internal URL's, we need to ensure accurate link translation. It is also important that other people on the outside who may have linked to posts within our site would get appropriate translation of their links to any new site that we set up.

In my opinion, if a mirror site with vBulletin can overcome these three problems, we should go with it because we would have more control over the database. It would not be for saving money. The cost of a transfer will not be trivial. Currently, we are paying infopop about $10,000 per year for hosting our forums. It will take probably more than $10,000 of (wo)man-hours, software, and hardware to host our own site. We are approaching 100,000 page views per day and 2000 unique visitors; this traffic may double by the end of the year and we have to make sure our new site would be able to handle this kind of traffic without glitches. We also have to ensure the security of the site and we have choose the operating system carefully. Hosting our own site would require more manpower. In short, hosting our site would require a significant upfront and long-term investment that may ultimately cost more than our current solution.

Wise.

[This message was edited by Wise Young on 01-16-04 at 11:38 AM.]

[Lewis]

http://www.mediatemple.net/

just my two cents for a hosting company.

-Lewis

[Jeff]

I think uncluttering the interface is possible.

I think translation of links within the system is certainly possible.

I think forwarding carecure.atinfopop.com/4/OpenTopic style URLs from outside to the new forums would be a thornier issue. Would we have to pay InfoPop to do that for us since atinfopop is their domain? I don't think they would maintain that URL after we were no longer subscribing. The good thing is that I dunno how many people have linked to specific forums or topics from outside. We posted one in www.MobileWomen.org (http://www.MobileWomen.org) recently but that was the first time ever for me.

~See you at the SCIWire-used-to-be-paralyzed Reunion http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/wavey.gif ~

[Scott Pruett]

I dunno Jeff, if outside links go bad w/ a domain switch, there's not a lot you can do unless InfoPop would allow you to keep the domain for a redirect or notification page to inform folks about a new server.

Does InfoPop provide detailed webstats of any sort? My host tracks "referrers" -- meaning any site that links to any of my pages is logged.

just a thought.

______________
There will be plenty of time to rest when I'm dead and gone, until then, 150% straight ahead....

[Jeff]

Scott - I agree. I think only InfoPop could do that for us.

There are web site analysis and search engine optimization tools we can buy that would report all the links to our pages. I'm investigating such a tool to help with marketing our site. If we saw any important links that would break after a domain switch we could email the outside sites.

~See you at the SCIWire-used-to-be-paralyzed Reunion http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/wavey.gif ~

[Clipper]

After using the new vBulletin software for more than a month now, I most definitely can say that I prefer it over what is used on this site. In fact, I've noticed the "clunkiness" of the CC software even more. Any news on a possible change?

[PN]

Originally posted by Clipper:

In fact, I've noticed the "clunkiness" of the CC software even more. Any news on a possible change?

If it will due a way with the "clunkiness" then I am in favor of this change.

PN

[Clipper]

Bump

[PN]

Clipper, it is currently being discussed and expect a reply shortly on this issue.

PN

[Wise Young]

Clipper, I think that it might be a little while before we change services or bulletin board software because we need to investigate the differences between the services very carefully. It is not just an upgrade but a change in provider.

Too many people depend on this site and, if we should decide to move the entire database to another program or computer, we have to do it after careful consideration of all the factors.

Wise.

[Jeff]

In case anyone is interested we have a working copy of vBulletin 3 running on our CareCure server. It has one forum with one test post by me. So we can at least evaluate this forum software. But I agree with Wise about making any changes. It will be formidable to make changes without any interruption of what we've grown accustomed to and what we depend on.


~See you at the SCIWire-used-to-be-paralyzed Reunion http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/wavey.gif ~

[This message was edited by Jeff on 03-04-04 at 12:13 AM.]

[Clipper]

I understand about the difficulties in switching to new software and/or a new server. I also understand your concerns about causing disruption to CC members. But I hope these issues don't prevent you from making the switch. You guys provide a wonderful site, and I appreciate all the time and effort everyone puts into making this community so wonderful. But, to be honest, the current software is outdated and, at times, problematic. Please don't take that as a criticism. It's not. I just think that as CC continues to grow, the software needs to keep pace.

My company currently operates more than 40 Web sites. This includes 36 "dark" Web sites whose content is stored offline. The nature of our business requires these sites to be available 24 hours a day -- without service disruptions. The potential for a single-point failure caused us to migrate all of our sites (active and dark) to a new hosting company that has redundant servers all over the world. We successfully made the transition without experiencing downtime, and without losing data.

We, too, were hesitant to make the switch. Those sites are the lifeblood of our business. There were financial considerations involved, but overall we wanted to make sure our product was available to our clients. We made the switch in small increments. The "dark" Web sites are operated by a unique software that is prone to bugging out if even the smallest glitch is introduced.

Thanks again for your work on this site.

[Wise Young]

Clipper, as Jeff pointed out, we have bought the software and he is currently in the process of testing it. We have two options at the present. One is to move the database from Infopop Open Topic to vBulletin or to move it to the Ultimate Bulletin Board (which is produced by Open Topic). The advantage of the latter is that they will help us with the transfer of the database and presumably the transfer will be less troublesome.

My major worry right now is that a huge number of posts directly reference other posts within the database. This is of course based on internal URL's of the site. All these links have to be transferred and I am afraid that it will not be easy to ensure that all the internal and external links will be accurate. We also have thousands of attachments (pictures, etc.) stored in the current database and appropriate transfer of these attachments (although not difficult) must be carefully done. Finally, we will need to test the links and the resultant database very carefully before letting go of this site.

Wise.

[Steven Edwards]

Originally posted by Wise Young:

My major worry right now is that a huge number of posts directly reference other posts within the database. This is of course based on internal URL's of the site. All these links have to be transferred and I am afraid that it will not be easy to ensure that all the internal and external links will be accurate.

Wise. *cough* Updating those links will be easy. */cough* http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

-Steven
"Sometimes, its enough to plant the seed, walk away, and let the flower grow on its own."

[Lewis]

Originally posted by Steven Edwards:

Originally posted by Wise Young:
My major worry right now is that a huge number of posts directly reference other posts within the database. This is of course based on internal URL's of the site. All these links have to be transferred and I am afraid that it will not be easy to ensure that all the internal and external links will be accurate.

Wise. *cough* Updating those links will be easy. */cough* http://sci.rutgers.edu/forum/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

-Steven
"Sometimes, its enough to plant the seed, walk away, and let the flower grow on its own."All hail mod_rewrite!

-Lewis

[Malamber]

vBulletin definitely has a number of problems. there are some smaller implementations that have a better security track record for sure. I would urge that we consider some of these before actually making a decision.

[Lewis]

Originally posted by Wise Young:

Clipper, as Jeff pointed out, we have bought the software and he is currently in the process of testing it. We have two options at the present. One is to move the database from Infopop Open Topic to vBulletin or to move it to the Ultimate Bulletin Board (which is produced by Open Topic). The advantage of the latter is that they will help us with the transfer of the database and presumably the transfer will be less troublesome.

My major worry right now is that a huge number of posts directly reference other posts within the database. This is of course based on internal URL's of the site. All these links have to be transferred and I am afraid that it will not be easy to ensure that all the internal and external links will be accurate. We also have thousands of attachments (pictures, etc.) stored in the current database and appropriate transfer of these attachments (although not difficult) must be carefully done. Finally, we will need to test the links and the resultant database very carefully before letting go of this site.

Wise.Is this a dead issue? Or has there been progress made?

-Lewis

[Jeff]

Some time this Summer I'll think about loading a large number of posts from our Infopop export file. That would make testing more interesting and informative.

~See you at the SCIWire-used-to-be-paralyzed Reunion http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/wavey.gif ~

[This message was edited by Jeff on 05-18-04 at 03:08 PM.]

[betheny]

CC is making the move to vBulletin!

"...I mean the wheelchair would be a thing in the past
And us quads can talk about the past and laugh"-Professirx
http://unite2fightparalysis.org/