Eldarion
Staff member
Herald
Assembly Speaker
D. Minister
Councillor (CLS)
Internal Affairs
Citizen
Lazarene
Verified
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2018
- Messages
- 3,370
- Feather
- ƒ5,256
First off I would like to say we have had a good run with myBB.
However, there are plenty of issues with myBB that have convinced me that it is time to move to something more stable and feature rich.
It is something I wanted to avoid, as I cringe at the yearly software upgrade cost i.e. $55, which will mean we do have to fundraise a little each year.
It is fair that I list those here:
- MyBB 1.8 is going to transition to 1.9 sometime late this year, or early in the next, and many of the plugins will not be compatible.
- MyBB has a very unstable text editor implementation, and it is dated. The myBB developers seem to be sticking with a clearly buggy editor or can't decide on a new one.
- MyBB crashes a lot database wise, and can't seem to handle even minor glitches with plugins, and the recent crash we had recently of the forum was not the first.
- MyBB is losing a lot of plugin developers, crucially ones that made the money scripts, and there is no dice roller plugin developer. So once the 1.9 switch is made, we lose those plugins, as the developers won't be there to update them.
- If we lose those plugins, then our opportunity to do D&D style RP or have a forum based economy dies with them.
- Forum templates will be changing, so we are going to be losing much of our theme work.
Then, the next question to be asked, is why not other free software?
- SMF is good, but then it is also fairly dated.
- phpBB doesn't really provide anything we wouldn't get with myBB, and it does not solve the editor issue.
- Tapatalk, Vanilla, etc are basic and really boring to look at. Even if they might be 'modern' in style and software.
So paid software became the best bet, and Xenforo vs IPB vs vBulletin.
These aren't necessarily better than one another. So ultimately it came down to features, modification ability, and plugins and add-ons. IPB has no dice roller plugin really on offer, let alone for free, and it charges more aka $160 vs $200. Plus there is less CSS editing flexibility.
So going forward, the old forum will remain active while we transition. No posts or accounts will be lost, as these will be moved to the new forum.
This should be completed by the weekend.
However, there are plenty of issues with myBB that have convinced me that it is time to move to something more stable and feature rich.
It is something I wanted to avoid, as I cringe at the yearly software upgrade cost i.e. $55, which will mean we do have to fundraise a little each year.
It is fair that I list those here:
- MyBB 1.8 is going to transition to 1.9 sometime late this year, or early in the next, and many of the plugins will not be compatible.
- MyBB has a very unstable text editor implementation, and it is dated. The myBB developers seem to be sticking with a clearly buggy editor or can't decide on a new one.
- MyBB crashes a lot database wise, and can't seem to handle even minor glitches with plugins, and the recent crash we had recently of the forum was not the first.
- MyBB is losing a lot of plugin developers, crucially ones that made the money scripts, and there is no dice roller plugin developer. So once the 1.9 switch is made, we lose those plugins, as the developers won't be there to update them.
- If we lose those plugins, then our opportunity to do D&D style RP or have a forum based economy dies with them.
- Forum templates will be changing, so we are going to be losing much of our theme work.
Then, the next question to be asked, is why not other free software?
- SMF is good, but then it is also fairly dated.
- phpBB doesn't really provide anything we wouldn't get with myBB, and it does not solve the editor issue.
- Tapatalk, Vanilla, etc are basic and really boring to look at. Even if they might be 'modern' in style and software.
So paid software became the best bet, and Xenforo vs IPB vs vBulletin.
These aren't necessarily better than one another. So ultimately it came down to features, modification ability, and plugins and add-ons. IPB has no dice roller plugin really on offer, let alone for free, and it charges more aka $160 vs $200. Plus there is less CSS editing flexibility.
So going forward, the old forum will remain active while we transition. No posts or accounts will be lost, as these will be moved to the new forum.
This should be completed by the weekend.