Message Forum Upgrade coming

mclemore

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We are getting much closer to a message forum upgrade here! It's been in the plans since at least as early as 2012, though we wanted to wait until new software had evolved enough to make the switch worth the effort for all of us.

We are currently scheduled to transition in May or June 2020. The transition involves finishing up testing and system integration, and then on D-day, importing and converting over 5,000,000 database records, as well as a bunch of manual configuration tweaks. As such, once we begin the migration the forums will be down for an estimated 3 days.

There are two things that still need to get resolved before we migrate: (1) while the main site is able to communicate with the new forums, we haven't completed the integration yet, and (2), we were previously able to rescue tends of thousands of stranded images when a third party image hosting site came down, but haven't restored them to the threads yet. In general we are still exploring how to deal with image hosting here in general.

Also... the admins and mods are trying to understand the nuances (small differences) of the new system.

We have a test system up and running (with all but most recent messages loaded).

The test site can be found at http://betaforums.arcade-museum.com/. If that doesn't work for you, just go direct to: https://q207.webmagic.net/

You should be able to log in with your regular username (or email address now!) and password (assuming you were a member when we loaded the test data a month back). If not, please let me know.

At the bottom left hand corner of the home page, you can change the styling if you wish. There are 2 alternate styles loaded right now, each with a black background.

I know the logo doesn't match the new designs... it will eventually get fixed.

The new software has the same basic development team as created our existing system. The new system is much faster, and with many improvements. We've incorporated a new and fast searching database, which not only measurably increases search speed, but will also give better quality results, especially for shorter words. On our existing site, a search for something like Atari might take 5 seconds. On the new site, much much faster...

Current forum: Search for 'game' (search threads): 9.04 seconds, atari (threads): 4.54 seconds, power supply: 4.05 seconds, ea: rejected (too short), arcade (too common)

New forum: Let's just say it looks like, so far at least, everything is well under a second. And you can search for common and short words if you wish.

We have added a few non-standard features, like a near Feedback system to replace the obsolete iTrader, and as well as a major PM upgrade (now called conversations) that allows you to do thinks like make PM Conversation threads sticky so they appear at the top of your PM if you want for any reason.

Tags: We've retained tags right now. There will be a separate script to provide author info on recent tags. As far as Xenforo itself, we currently have it set up to display the tag name itself instead of author on a hover (yes, a hover to give the same info as displayed is redundant... it's a work in progress).

The next site looks and works a lot better. Especially on mobile phones. I so look forward to dumping Tapatalk. As part of being mobile friendly, there is a 50 character limit on thread titles. In preparation for the move, we changed the limit on this site a few months back. However, older threads will unfortunately likely get their titles truncated after 50 characters.

Also note that the new system doesn't hand user scores the same one the old one does, so it could end up being the last call for the reputation system as it is seen now.

Enjoy, and I hope you like it...

EDIT: Transition launch date pushed back as we discovered complications needing to be addressed, and we decided to incorporate the transition into a larger upgrade project.
 
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Just so I'm following here, this beta site is a dummy site for style and feel only? (i.e., we can't or shouldn't make any posts on the new site, or if so, they're currently separate, and any changes won't impact the old site? Does this include PM's?)

Also, I'm only seeing posts and PM's up through around August 19th or so. You said 'all but most recent messages loaded', but I'm not seeing a month plus worth of data it seems. Not sure if that's intended, but FYI.

Also FWIW, the first link didn't work for me, but the second one did.
 
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I've heard from a few people complaining about the same thing. I see why. The DNS entries haven't propagated to our CDN (content delivery network). So everyone, just check out https://q207.webmagic.net/

Yes, it is about 6 weeks worth of data missing.

This beta site is just a dummy site for style and feel only. Anything posted on this site will be lost when we cut over from the existing system. When we cut over, the existing site will go down while we transfer data and then the new forums will pop back up on the familiar https://forums.arcade-museum.com

Feel free to make posts, send a PM (which may never get read unless your recipient checks out the test system too), try some searching, change templates at the bottom left if you want to see what the site looks like in black, etc.

A just on a phone, try browsing to the old site, and then the new site... the new one is much easier to use on mobile.
 
I'm really going to miss this old style of forum. Its going completely extinct.

Me too... note this is at least the FOURTH time we've changed forum software, though most uses haven't been around long enough to remember the last change.

The time to change is here though... The existing site is beginning to drown under its message load, it isn't mobile friendly, it doesn't rank as well as it could in Google because it isn't mobile friendly, and it's missing more than a decade of improvements that have grown in other software systems.

And we are finding more and more problems with the existing system. Design limitations, bugs, and more.

Oh... and we are committed to upgrading to the newest versions of PHP and MySQL and more, and well...our existing system won't even run on the newest PHP and MySQL versions without --extensive-- modifications that aren't worth doing.

We are also planning upgrades on the main site. We didn't want to make changes there without some changes here first (for a variety of reasons). So there are a lot of things pushing towards a new forum system.

I've had 6 weeks to play with the new system. It's running the greatest and latest systems. And we added Elasticsearch to help improve search.

At first, the new system seemed half very familiar and half new and unfamiliar. It took a while to figure out that some things like 'Conversations' on the new system are the same as 'PM/Private Messages' on the current system'.

But then I kept running into things to which I noted 'Wow...that's need'. or Wow...that's really fancy programming. or 'wow'... that's a neat feature.

We are still learning what settings we can adjust in the core software, what via software modifications, and what not-at-all.

Our exiting vBulletin system is dead...development has been dead for a very long time. The new system has quite active development. Not only for the core (which I expected), but also for plug-ins, themes, and more. As I get exposed to all this, it really reinforces how dead the exiting vBulletin ecosystem is...
 
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BTW: I've added two alternative styles (aka skins) to the new system that can be selected from the bottom left corner of the screen. Both the alternatives have black backgrounds.

There are styles that make the site look visually a lot like the old one. I'm happy to buy and install such a style, however, I haven't found the perfect one yet. Many of the available styles don't just change colors and fonts etc but the entire functionality of the pages, and that make big changes to the page templates. I don't want to go down that road for a variety of maintenance reasons. The two styles I added already just change the look of the site without making any changes to the templates.

So... if someone out there knows of a forum system that keeps things simple (by not modifying templates) but makes the site look like vBulletin 3.x, please let me know.

From what I can see, people made vBulletin style skins for other forum systems such as Xenforo 1.x for years, but most of them stopped being supported in the last two or thread years...
 
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(EDIT: I see you already answered some of these above.)

Thanks for the reply. A few more questions, mainly regarding PM's:

- What is the difference (if any) between a PM and a Conversation?
- Are the limits on inbox sizes going to change?
- Is there (or will there be) a way to download/archive PM's offline? (I looked and didn't see one.)

I use this forum for business, so the PM system is critical to me. I have had my own system for periodically downloading and archiving old messages, to keep for my own records, so I'm interested to know what the changes/limitations of the new system are.

Also, you had mentioned via PM a while back that there was a vBulletin 'skin' for Xenforo. Is this what's being used now, or might that be a possibility?

Also, I get that the backend of Xenforo is better for admin purposes, support, etc, and that change is necessary. I'd also be interested to know what front-end features are new, and what problems they solve, or how they make things better compared to vB. I think a little education will go a long way toward getting everyone on board.
 
andrewb,

First, I don't claim to have all the answers, at least not yet, so other users may be in a better position to answer some of your questions.

To your questions

1) Differences between a PM and a conversation: I'm still figuring that out. The purpose of both are about the same, though I think we will like the new system much better. The new system goes out of its way, much more than the old system, to show you who is on a PM/Conversation. On the old system it was really easy to miss the fact that a PM sent you you was also sent to someone else. The biggest difference seems to be that the current system treats every PM as an individual piece of mail, though when you send a message, you might quote some of the message before it.

The new system looks much more like a message thread. I haven't actually sent or received a message yet but it looks like it just adds it like a post to a thread. I see in my PM/Conversation box that under each message that it shows number of replies at 0. So it looks like a thread. Of course, on the existing system every PM was independent, so when imported, every single message and response show up as different threads.

In the existing system, the view defaults to the inbox though you can change it to sent box. In the new system, it defaults to a list of both mixed together but you can be more selective by hitting the Filters button at the top right.

There are some odd things, like possibly having the ability to boot someone from a conversation you started. In short, the new system seems easier to use for 3+ party conversations.

We've made numerous modifications to the conversation that allow you to do extra things in PM, like search through them (big improvement), and actually make a conversation sticky so it shows up at the top of a list. We've also added functionality for distribution groups, like if you often send messages to the same 5 people together.

2) There will still be limits to private message/conversation message storage, but we are still working on them. It is my hope to expand them. Total storage limit is likely to still be greater for donors than non-donors

3) Xenforo seems to lack any kind of conversation download system. I find it very odd. We have been working on a solution and should find one. It wouldn't hurt to do a download now though.

4) vbulletin skin for xenforo. I just answered in an above post. In short, there used to be, but they now seems as obsolete (and more dead) then vbulletin itself.
 
Interesting. I don't think I've ever sent a PM to multiple people here (even though I've always known the feature existed.) I'd be interested to hear if anyone here used multi-person messaging regularly.

I wonder if the lack of download capability is related to the threading of PM's, as that seems like it would complicate downloading, vs a system where every message is a distinct entity.

Not being able to archive/download would be an issue (for me anyway), so I'd welcome a solution there. I warranty all boards I sell and repair here for a year, and support customers indefinitely, so I'm frequently searching through PM's to get details of past discussions, backgrounds on boards, machines, etc, going back multiple years. I have five years of PM's archived and organized locally in text files, which I can search in seconds via Windows.
 
Ok... you should now have the ability to download conversations in either HTML, TXT, or XML format. that is the good news. However, there is a limit to 25 max at a time, and for technical reasons it can't easily be expanded.
 
I think you're looking for differences/comments/feedback in this thread as well, if not just ignore me and I'll say sorry up front! None of this is a gripe and I'm happy to see you folks investing in this forum and appreciate your personal efforts in that regard. In the end if you think it's going to be a better, or even if it's the only solution, I'm fine.

The PMs (conversations) are essentially threads and not old school listed emails. Other car forums I'm on have this style. Not sure if I care, context is nice though.

I'm old, if you can find a more "compact" skin that would be cool. I think others mentioned this - reads more like lines of text rather than posts. Any way to loose the circular window on Avatars? Gawd I hate that.

In the "reactions received" section the reputation/reaction no longer links to the post, just the thread where you received the reputation. So those 30 page threads will obscure all of it. It was nice to see where folks had positive reactions.

Are all responses in threads going to go through the approval cycle? "This message is awaiting moderator approval, and is invisible to normal visitors."

There doesn't appear to be a "Multi-quote this message" option in threads.
 
Xenforo does support multiquote and from what I see online in help forums, it should be there. Perhaps it is simply not enabled.

I do not have the ability to see the backend config; just the user admin stuff so I cannot tell off hand.

Tom
 
Are the REPs getting lost or are they displayed somewhere differently?


I don't like that there doesn't seem to be a way to find "all posts by user" and "all threads started by user" (Unless I'm missing it)


I also really don't like how PMs show up like threads and show up when you look at your own post history.
 
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Suggestion:

In the General and Repair forums, how about boldface type stating "Post all MONITOR topics in the MONITORS forum". Too many times lately people are posting monitor stuff everywhere except in the monitor forum.
 
Lots of things in the above 3 posts...

re: compact skin. I'm open to trying more, I just haven't found many. I'm not sure what you mean by 'reads more lines of text rather than posts'.

re: Circular avatars. This was announced as an upgrade in Xenforo 2.1 over previous versions. I was curious what they would look like square instead of circle, so I made a new skin variant. At the bottom left of the screen, click on 'Original Style', and then click on 'Original Square' in the Style Chooser. I personally like the concept of the square avatars better than how it looks in the XF style. The square might look better on a different skin.

re: reactions received linking to a thread instead of a post. Apparently this is a behavior change, and quite possibly a bug, in the latest Xenforo 2.1.4. According to others, it links to posts in 2.1.3. I submitted a bug report. Let's see where it goes.

re: message moderation. This was tied to settings in the system. It shouldn't do that any more, at least for most people. If anyone still experiences post moderation, please let me know.

re: multi-quote. For some reason, the default in Xenforo for this is 'off'. I just turned it on.

re: reps. they aren't getting lost, they are still seen under a members menu, which may or may not be available for all to see right now. When I have more time, I'll dig into this. It appears we have some options on this, though the system seems to keep track of multiple rep kind of things, so I really don't understand how it all works myself yet.

re: all posts by user, etc. It's there, it's just tricky to find. If you see a post and click on a username of an author, a small box pops up with some basic info. On that box you have to click on the username again, and then it takes you to a fuller page.

re: not liking how PMs show up like threads? Nothing I can do about that. not liking how PMs show up when you look at your own post history? That is a side-effect of adding an improvement to the PM system which adds a number of features, the most important to me being the ability to search PMs. I'll submit some feedback suggesting it would be nice to make a choice about one without the other, but even if they implement that it would likely be on a board level and not user level. I sort of agree with you-- I'd be inclined in activity list not to combine the two.

Ken -- the forum section already has a sub-title for people to post monitor stuff in the monitor section. I just added a notification (current system) so when people go into the general tech section further reinforcing that, at least for now.
 
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Thanks mclemore.

I could see the find "Postings" under my username (I can't click on anyone else's profile as it gives a you don't have permission error)

That gives results of all posts, and in my case my PM conversations as well.

I really like the "Find all threads started by ___" under the current system, if someone is selling something I can quickly hit that to see if they happen to have any other FS threads for stuff I might be interested in to combine shipping.
 
A dark mode would be nice. I love black slick on the current site.

Changed the avatar back to square, looks like my avatar and some others will need to be adjusted to fit properly on the new site.

What about animated avatars? I noticed that they were no longer animated.

Going to take some getting used to, but I am glad to see that you are looking forward and making improvements to the site.
 
Thanks for looking into and making changes for all those items!

re: compact skin. I'm open to trying more, I just haven't found many. I'm not sure what you mean by 'reads more lines of text rather than posts'.

Sorta the difference between the "Display Density" option in Gmail... Default vs Comfortable vs Compact.
 
Is there a reason why I can't change my signature on the new site? :confused: It's got a placeholder I had when I thought I was out of the hobby a while back instead of my current one and I don't see a way to change it, I've looked everywhere.
 
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