Test post, forum software discussion

[eben]

Test post

[SlayingDragons]

I thinks it be working my good sir.

[liz]

Triffic. Sorry about that, guys - entirely my fault. I really ought not be allowed anywhere near update buttons - they\'re just so *tempting*.

[ukscone]

[quote]Quote from liz on September 30, 2011, 00:11
Triffic. Sorry about that, guys - entirely my fault. I really ought not be allowed anywhere near update buttons - they\'re just so *tempting*.[/quote]

that\'s the real reason they are removing the buttons from the raspi for the final board. it\'s not because of cost really it\'s because you\'ll press them and probably blow up the universe

/me wanders over to the naughty step for a time out for being rude

[liz]

It\'s OK - I deserve it.

I\'m looking at migrating things over to Simple Press some time in the near future if at all possible - Mingle\'s clearly not suitable for our needs, and it\'s a bit fragile. Does anyone have any experiences, good or bad, of Simple Press that they\'d like to share?

[Bacan]

Here I thought it was because I explained how Pixie Dust kept the Gremlins away!
I was thinking that the Gremlins were locking me out from Posting to the Forum.

[hippy]

[quote]Quote from liz on September 30, 2011, 00:11
Triffic. Sorry about that, guys - entirely my fault. I really ought not be allowed anywhere near update buttons - they\'re just so *tempting*.[/quote]

I\'m not sure if it\'s related, but all the links on the Wiki to this forum are broken.

[liz]

Ignore this - I\'m messing with the cacheing software in an attempt to deal with our most recent Slashdotting while still having a functional forum. Test!

[liz]

It worked! Move along, nothing to see here. 8)

[mikeanthonywild]

Is there any reason to go with a Wordpress forum? I would recommend going with a Gravitar-enabled forum as anyone with a Wordpress account (local or Wordpress.com hosted) will have a Gravitar. I would definitely recommend FluxBB as used by Arch Linux.

[abishur]

It was a quick and easy solution when they first got things running, and now that it\'s really moving along, transferring to a new forum is inherently difficult because no one wants all these posts to go *poof*! It\'s on their bucket list from what they\'ve told us, but right now getting the device out and into our hands is pushing everything else to the side for now.

That said, if you know of a script that would transfer everything (posts, messages, user accounts) from this forum to a different, more powerful forum (say phpbb or some such) there\'s no reason not to send it their way.

[mikeanthonywild]

Sorry, my intention was not to bash the choice of a Wordpress forum, I know very well that when you\'re trying to get something up and running the best solution is the one which involves least effort.

Database migration is a pain, I remember transferring an 80,000 member forum over from phpBB to vBulletin to IPB, it was pretty tense stuff!

As far as transferring goes I doubt you will find a Mingleforum => FluxBB (or any other small package) converter. If you do decide to change software then I would recommend doing:
Mingle => Simplepress => phpBB => [insert BB software here]
Personally I don\'t have any major gripes with the current setup, just it could do with a bit of fine tuning and optimising.

Though if you do change, change now and not when you have 80,000 members - trust me on that one!

I only suggest FluxBB as it is very lightweight and minimalistic, yet highly featured, well supported and has a plugin system.

[abishur]

No need to apologize! You asked a legit question and I was just giving the reasoning. I usually add more smiley faces though so people know my response is light instead of \"Gosh how don\'t you know this?!?!?!111!\"

[mikeanthonywild]

Heh, it\'s quite amusing the amount of things that can kick off when someone forgets the smily face xD

( )

[Nexy]

Would it be possible to create a second forum, duplicate the user accounts only, deprecate this old one and just have a link to it in the new one? There\'s barely more than 1000 topics (heck, it\'s only one post more than 1k if you\'re using 1024 ) and a lot of those are now obsolete. Heck, it seems like many of them are effectively duplicates or have been resolved with a \"Read the FAQ before you FAQing post\" post. Encourage people to start new threads on the new forum with summaries of the old topics if needed, with a lockdown of this older forum just before release of the board itself?

If you\'re going to do it, now would be the time. I mean, dear god, can you imagine this forum once the board release date hits Slashdot, El Reg, Reddit and Hack A Day? *shudders* We can\'t even view a list of our own posts, can you imagine trying to keep track of things when this forum starts getting really busy? It\'d be like trying to read a book while sitting in the output of an industrial shredder as someone shreds their way through a library.

Don\'t get me wrong, this forum software has certainly served it\'s purpose and regardless of what software it\'s running on, the members have made this a fun and interesting place to learn and explore what is shaping up to be a groundbreaking project. My concerns are that users like myself will struggle to continue to use the forum when RasPi hits prime time.

I\'m not saying it will, but what if there\'s suddenly a vast number of \"omg awesome I just saw RasPi on YouTube, bought one but I can\'t get my BF3 to run, omgwtfbbq this sux like ps3 lololol\" people turning up and posting? There isn\'t the price barrier to entry and that\'s an awesome thing. It may have the unintended consequence of flooding this \"pleasant to look at\" but presently unprepared forum software with a flood of drivel from people who can\'t read the FAQs and stickies. We\'ll need good search and post tracking more than ever if the signal-to-noise ratio drops. We\'ve all been to YouTube and Digg, you\'re about to launch a computer that costs less than a large takeaway pizza. Call me a cynic but...

I do appreciate I probably sound like an elitist pretentious jerk and I do genuinely intend to continue using this forum regardless of the software it runs (even if it means I have to keep my own spreadsheet of my own posts). I don\'t think I\'ve made much of a contribution yet but I hope to help at least a bit. I am pathologically helpful and I am happiest when helping others; I get the impression that once RasPi launches, there are going to be a lot of people with relatively simple problems that even I can help with. That will not go as smoothly as it might if I can\'t keep track of threads I post in, I don\'t think I\'ll be alone in that.

I understand that everyone has more pressing demands on their time, especially as there\'s only a month and a half of Q4 left, but I think it would benefit everyone involved if this forum were made easier to use and we moved forward to a better forum platform. Especially before we see a lot more activity here.

EDIT: Commas, commas everywhere! My English teacher would hunt me down if he saw how I write now. :\'(
2: SnR level -> signal-to-noise ratio (you\'d never believe I did A-Level electronics. :O )

[mikeanthonywild]

I would agree with the post above. I don\'t mean to hound, but this software is not ready for prime-time. With the launch of the device imminent then now really is the time to move.

[hippy]

[quote]Quote from Nexy on November 10, 2011, 22:54
Would it be possible to create a second forum, duplicate the user accounts only, deprecate this old one and just have a link to it in the new one?
[/quote]

I would agree with that course. This forum has served its purpose but I don\'t think there\'s that much content which is essential to migrate.

[Skygod]

Just my 2p (not American), but this forum software is okay for a small scale operations, but the functionality is damned annoying at times ( Like stated above, I cannot view the threads I\'ve posted in or even created).

You really have to scale up to a \'proper\' BB to make the \'user experience\' acceptable.

At present, you just get used to the current setup and you sort of get used to it, but unless you read the \'older\' posts, you could easily believe that you\'re dealing with a bunch of enthusiasts rather than a fully funded organisation with a serious plan.

I just get the feeling that the whole thing is going to move from being a \'club\' to having to be a full support centre and the current software is not up to the task, so I\'d suggest that you get a \'heavyweight\' forum in place and maybe just migrate the \'sticky\'s\' and most active threads.