Our forum migration is coming. Here's some useful information:
What's happening:
We are migrating our forum to new software and a new hosting company. All user accounts, passwords, forum posts, post attachments, private messages, gallery images, the library, and the Wiki will be moved. The goals are to (1) preserve every byte of data, (2) approximate the look, functionality, and appearance that we have now, and (3) minimize inconvenience, disruption, and confusion to our members. It's a huge undertaking.
Why this needs to happen:
We are running a very antiquated version of "vBulletin", one of the first and best forum packages available when we migrated from "Snitz" forum back in 2009. This version is well beyond it's end-of-life, and is no longer supported in any way by the vendor. Security patches have not been supported for years, and I have had to wrap the forum in other security products to keep the black hats out and keep us safe. New features are no longer being developed, so we're missing out on lots of things common to modern software. We need to move to a modern forum package to get vendor support, updates, new features, and regular security updates.
Also, we are one of the last clients on our hosting company's oldest server architecture, which they are abandoning very soon. None of our forum software runs on modern server software, so just moving our community intact to a new server isn't feasible. (It's theoretically possible, but I don't believe it's a good idea for us long term.) You have probably noticed our recent outages, which are symptoms of an aging and failing infrastructure at the hosting company.
Schedule:
I am targeting completion by mid-May 2019. I expect minimal actual forum downtime. It will take some time to get everything tidy and working exactly as expected, but there should be very minimal interruption in the basic function of the forum.
Member Action Needed:
As I said above, one of my top level goals is to make this as easy as possible for everyone. I don't expect that any action will be needed on your part. Your patience and understanding will be greatly appreciated as we all get up to speed on how things work in the new environment, but I promise that any pain and suffering will be well worth it.
More Details:
We will not be using the latest version of vBulletin. That product was purchased by "Internet Brands" several years ago, and "the 3.x series" (we use 3.7) is widely considered to be their last good product. We will be implementing "XenForo", which, after several years of following its development and comparing it to alternatives, I believe is by far the best product for our community. Some of the XF development team are former vB3.x programmers, it has a very active add-on developer community, and it's reasonably priced. If you want to get a rough idea what it looks like, their user forum is a nice example.
XenForo on it's own is a basic forum product. Just like vBulletin, there are add-ons available for every imaginable need. I've selected a photo gallery add-on, a "Content Management System" (the thing that manages the front page columns and widgets), and many other bits and pieces to provide the features we've all gotten used to.
The Process:
Because our forum is so large, and because I've made many code modifications over the years, migration is a complicated process. In some cases, there is no migration path from one of our products to the new equivalent, so custom import scripts need to be written. There is also the matter of redirecting inbound traffic to the old link format, which requires some pretty complicated programming.
I've hired a small company to help me do most of the heavy lifting, but of course I'll be intimately involved the entire time. We're in the final stages of the negotiation on the work package now, and then there's a long process of gathering information, purchasing licenses, configuring servers, etc. There will be a test server set up that closely approximates the final configuration, and I'll be asking a couple dozen of you to test and evaluate before we go live.
Learning New Stuff:
If you're at all like me, our current forum is "comfortable" to you. You know where to find stuff, you know how things work, and you've gotten used to the shortcomings. (That's very true for me on the admin side!) The new forum will take some getting used to, but XF is a very intuitive environment, and we should be able to get used to it quickly.
Final Comments:
I'm very excited about this! I'm proud of the fact that we have gotten along so well for so long with our current software -- it's stable and secure -- but it's time for some new features that are pretty common on social media and elsewhere. Simple things like "next" and "back" buttons to scroll through photos in a post, notification when someone mentions you in a post, and extensive emoji support. And more complex things like a responsive mobile style, embedded media content, and enhanced message styling. These thing will really enhance our forum, make participating easier and more fun, and I hope will bring in members who may have avoided us because we're not as slick and modern as the alternatives.
I welcome your comments (but please don't quote the entire post!)
Jeff
What's happening:
We are migrating our forum to new software and a new hosting company. All user accounts, passwords, forum posts, post attachments, private messages, gallery images, the library, and the Wiki will be moved. The goals are to (1) preserve every byte of data, (2) approximate the look, functionality, and appearance that we have now, and (3) minimize inconvenience, disruption, and confusion to our members. It's a huge undertaking.
Why this needs to happen:
We are running a very antiquated version of "vBulletin", one of the first and best forum packages available when we migrated from "Snitz" forum back in 2009. This version is well beyond it's end-of-life, and is no longer supported in any way by the vendor. Security patches have not been supported for years, and I have had to wrap the forum in other security products to keep the black hats out and keep us safe. New features are no longer being developed, so we're missing out on lots of things common to modern software. We need to move to a modern forum package to get vendor support, updates, new features, and regular security updates.
Also, we are one of the last clients on our hosting company's oldest server architecture, which they are abandoning very soon. None of our forum software runs on modern server software, so just moving our community intact to a new server isn't feasible. (It's theoretically possible, but I don't believe it's a good idea for us long term.) You have probably noticed our recent outages, which are symptoms of an aging and failing infrastructure at the hosting company.
Schedule:
I am targeting completion by mid-May 2019. I expect minimal actual forum downtime. It will take some time to get everything tidy and working exactly as expected, but there should be very minimal interruption in the basic function of the forum.
Member Action Needed:
As I said above, one of my top level goals is to make this as easy as possible for everyone. I don't expect that any action will be needed on your part. Your patience and understanding will be greatly appreciated as we all get up to speed on how things work in the new environment, but I promise that any pain and suffering will be well worth it.
More Details:
We will not be using the latest version of vBulletin. That product was purchased by "Internet Brands" several years ago, and "the 3.x series" (we use 3.7) is widely considered to be their last good product. We will be implementing "XenForo", which, after several years of following its development and comparing it to alternatives, I believe is by far the best product for our community. Some of the XF development team are former vB3.x programmers, it has a very active add-on developer community, and it's reasonably priced. If you want to get a rough idea what it looks like, their user forum is a nice example.
XenForo on it's own is a basic forum product. Just like vBulletin, there are add-ons available for every imaginable need. I've selected a photo gallery add-on, a "Content Management System" (the thing that manages the front page columns and widgets), and many other bits and pieces to provide the features we've all gotten used to.
The Process:
Because our forum is so large, and because I've made many code modifications over the years, migration is a complicated process. In some cases, there is no migration path from one of our products to the new equivalent, so custom import scripts need to be written. There is also the matter of redirecting inbound traffic to the old link format, which requires some pretty complicated programming.
I've hired a small company to help me do most of the heavy lifting, but of course I'll be intimately involved the entire time. We're in the final stages of the negotiation on the work package now, and then there's a long process of gathering information, purchasing licenses, configuring servers, etc. There will be a test server set up that closely approximates the final configuration, and I'll be asking a couple dozen of you to test and evaluate before we go live.
Learning New Stuff:
If you're at all like me, our current forum is "comfortable" to you. You know where to find stuff, you know how things work, and you've gotten used to the shortcomings. (That's very true for me on the admin side!) The new forum will take some getting used to, but XF is a very intuitive environment, and we should be able to get used to it quickly.
Final Comments:
I'm very excited about this! I'm proud of the fact that we have gotten along so well for so long with our current software -- it's stable and secure -- but it's time for some new features that are pretty common on social media and elsewhere. Simple things like "next" and "back" buttons to scroll through photos in a post, notification when someone mentions you in a post, and extensive emoji support. And more complex things like a responsive mobile style, embedded media content, and enhanced message styling. These thing will really enhance our forum, make participating easier and more fun, and I hope will bring in members who may have avoided us because we're not as slick and modern as the alternatives.
I welcome your comments (but please don't quote the entire post!)
Jeff