IMPORTANT! Board Future

IMPORTANT! Board Future - DISCUSS HERE

Today at 04:06:44 PM

So it's been a decade or so since we moved this board to the current ElkArte software. The reason we have ElkArte is that we needed to move over from the costly (and security-hole-ridden) vBulletin to something else in haste, and this was a good stop-gap solution at the time. Well, now that we've been using it for awhile, it's not modern enough and not keeping up with the expectations of the users.

As an admin, I can say that the software mostly works as intended but we do have some technical issues that are not being resolved with updates. For example, Alex and I jointly spent the better part of a day to move the board software to something that was compatible with a newer required PHP version, and it kept crashing until we did things one step at a time. We are literally one PHP step away from losing a bunch of data and functionality, I'm afraid. While ElkArte is still being currently developed, it's not at a consistent rate, and there are a lot of things that are inexplicably difficult to do on the admin end. I think we can do better.

So this means we have to shop for a different board platform. That in itself isn't terrible, it's that we are also trying to move the current database to the new software, which requires some type of database translation that merges the new structure with the current one. In general, another board's software will have roughly the same structure in its database setup, but each table might be called something different. So this is where translation is needed, whether there's an automatic script set up to do that, or a manual conversion. The ElkArte translation software works good when moving TO it, not FROM it. Hence the need for additional translation work.

We'd need to find someone that knows databases very well and can make this move for us. That will cost money...which is fine, I can probably cover a few hundred dollars or whatever. I have some resources that may work. If anyone knows somebody that can do that, we're willing to take suggestions.

NATO is using MyBB and it seems decent. I've also seen sites use phpBB, XMB, Vanilla, and FluxBB. Those are the free options. We could get into paid software again, something like Xenforo or Discourse. Those setups are sweetness but not something I think would be cost-effective with the relatively few consistent users we have. We don't want to nickel-and-dime you guys.

So...this is where we are. Suggestions, comments, criticism welcome. There is no timetable for this, just throwing around ideas but we would like to get going this year.

Thanks everyone!

Re: IMPORTANT! Board Future - DISCUSS HERE

Reply #1 – Today at 04:17:37 PM

We are still on phpBB for our dirt bike forum, but the forum is open by invite only. I can ask the admin if you have any questions?