Museum of the Game® & International Arcade Museum® Forums
READ: Message Forums: Upgrades, Splits, Changes, Decisions 2 Make
We planned on upgrading the forums in August 2007, and set up a whole new version that neared launch. The import scripts designed by the forum had some flaws (like not importing 'Real Name' to the new system since the new system didn't track it). We were told by the developer that our issue would be addressed within a few months. It has not been, but we can address it ourselves in an hour or two of programmer time. A year has gone by, and it is now time to move on.
Upgrading the message forums takes a lot of work. We have a decision to make as to whether or not to stick with ubbThreads (a new version "7" instead of our several year old version "6"), or to switch to vBulletin. A lot of time is going into evaluating each solution. Whichever way we go, substantial customization to the software itself (php programming work) will be required to make it fit our needs. As such, any upgrade made will probably be our last for another year or two.
Reasons to Upgrade:
1. Improved Reliability. A very small set of users have technical problems (ie: login, cookies) that we would like to address, and we don't want to have to address them twice. Upgrading to the new forums should automatically address some issues, and will provide a good opportunity to address other issues through the process of dealing with the inevitable bugs and glitches that will arise..
2. New Functionality. New software offers an improvement in functionality, with only a minor new trade off that there will be some learning for all involved. Basic improvements should make it easier to post, search, and report system abuse. Additional things we may add include an eBay trader rating system for the arcade community members. We may or may not add some photo gallery capabilities.
3. Abuse Control. Easier to limit and ban users. On the new system, it will be easier for moderators to look at activity and ban users that are contributing bad karma to the boards. It will also be easier to take partial action against a user (ie: take away their ability to post for 2 weeks). In particular, there are several users on the 'arcade' side that will have their past behavior counted against them if they haven't cleaned up their act before the new system launches. Several of these users are not showing great appreciation for their fellow users, for the forums in general, or for us (who provides the forums and related web offerings to the public without charge and at a financial loss). No further warning may be given to them.
4. Further Separation Between Interest Areas (ie: Lymphoma vs. Arcade). Times have changed. Our lymphoma support message forums were the first ones we launches (in the early 1990s, though I've run modem based forums for more than 25 years!). The Arcade themed forums were soon to follow. At one time forums were scarce on the web, and for licensing and business reasons it made sense to have multiple topics under one system. Originally envisioned were a whole 'network of forum subjects.' We've given up a number of forums over the years as businesses have been sold (ie: Pets.com) and we have chosen not to add the numerous additional themed forums we originally planned. We've resisted adding areas of interest unless we thought we had a strong user base to support them. Thus, the center of gravity isn't the 'WebMagic Forums', but the individual areas of interest such as lymphoma support or arcade games. At this time, it seems best to build further separation between these areas of interest. Whether that means making easier for searches just to occur in a single area of interest, or breaking the forums into two or more separate forums is yet to be determined. A single user name/password combination will continue to work on all WebMagic supported sites.
5. Separating Wheat from the Chaff. Especially on the arcade side of things, many message threads have so much 'chat' that the meaty content is buried and lost to all but very active users. This is a potential turn-off to new users as it is to people with limited time to read threads (as of my self). We're not absolutely sure how to fix this in a natural rather than punitive way yet, but one idea is to add real time chat to the boards so that some of the conversation that isn't of value to keep long term isn't kept long term. Another option that *might* be available is "social groups", where people can set up their own private groups, invite people in, and have their own private little invite only clubs. <-- I'd love people's comments and reactions to the pros and cons of allowing people to set up social groups.
The Big Decision: Ubbthreads vs vBulletin
Ubbthreads is the third major software product we have used since we started offering web based forums, and the second (perl based UBBClassic) was another, similar product by the same company. We are quite familiar with it, as are our users.
There have been two periods of time over the last decade in which UBB Development slowed to a crawl, though it didn't affect us immediately as we have only upgraded forum software every couple of years. The first period of slowness was in moving from a Perl based software packed to a more efficient PHP based system, which allows for more system traffic on the same level of hardware. The second was a few years ago when Infopop wasn't sure whether or not it was going to continue to support UBBThreads or whether they were going to create a whole new system from scratch.
These blips allowed vBulletin (and other competitors) to launch and thrive. Several years ago vBulletin was a substantially less expensive product to purchase for most users. It registered more users, which in turn helped feed further development. There are probably 20x to 40x as many systems running vBulletin now than UBBThreads. Some large forums have changed to vBulletin recently. Trekbbs.com switched in March 2008, and Lineage2.com (on online game) switched three days ago on November 19, 2008 (and at least as of yesterday, was still a 'featured' site on UBB's home page!). I don't know of any notable sites that have switched in the other direction, though there are a few ubbthreads operators that are thinking of switching to vBulletin, as well as some vBulletin operators that are thinking of switching to UBB.
The growth of vBulletin has generated a lot of support from third party add-on providers. While many add-ons will work with either system, some of them have been designed with extra effort put into integration with vBulletin, and as such would require more work to integrate with ubbThreads. Almost none of these add-ons would probably be of much interest to the lymphoma community, and very few to the KLOV community.
In some ways I find the interface better in UBBThreads (provided one doesn't overwhelm the page with lots of different features). In other ways vbulletin is easier to use. In vBulletin, hitting ctrl-B when entering a messages turns on bold text, and ctrl-I turns on italics. The UBBThreads interface will likely be more familiar with our existing users, though the vBulletin interface will likely be more familiar to new members if they have used other forum sites due to the popularity of vBulletin. UBBThreads has a basic photo gallery now, and both have more advanced ones available as ad-ons. vBulletin has an add-on allowing users to create blogs. UBBThreads is likely to release a blog addition this year. Neither blog option is up to the quality of WordPress or the top tier blog/social network sites, and we're not inclined to support blogs within forums at this time. The look of each system varies a lot based on options set and templates altered, and both can be made to look very similar.
We previously purchased the highest level of UBBThreads registration which includes free lifetime upgrades to the latest version. On the other hand, we don't own vBulletin yet at all, so it would be more expensive. The cost difference isn't that meaningful, when one considers the (1) increased benefits of either new system, (2) cost spent in evaluating both systems to date, (3) our cost in custom programming required to interface with either system, and (4) our cost in supporting and running the forums on an ongoing basis.
So, if the two systems are nearly identical, the answer would be to stick with UBBThreads. If vBulletin is a definite improvement, we might move to that. Between the two, I'm torn down the middle at the moment. Features sets are similar, and minor bugs and slow feature development cycles seem to be part of both offerings at this time.
Your comments are appreciated.
Greg
We planned on upgrading the forums in August 2007, and set up a whole new version that neared launch. The import scripts designed by the forum had some flaws (like not importing 'Real Name' to the new system since the new system didn't track it). We were told by the developer that our issue would be addressed within a few months. It has not been, but we can address it ourselves in an hour or two of programmer time. A year has gone by, and it is now time to move on.
Upgrading the message forums takes a lot of work. We have a decision to make as to whether or not to stick with ubbThreads (a new version "7" instead of our several year old version "6"), or to switch to vBulletin. A lot of time is going into evaluating each solution. Whichever way we go, substantial customization to the software itself (php programming work) will be required to make it fit our needs. As such, any upgrade made will probably be our last for another year or two.
Reasons to Upgrade:
1. Improved Reliability. A very small set of users have technical problems (ie: login, cookies) that we would like to address, and we don't want to have to address them twice. Upgrading to the new forums should automatically address some issues, and will provide a good opportunity to address other issues through the process of dealing with the inevitable bugs and glitches that will arise..
2. New Functionality. New software offers an improvement in functionality, with only a minor new trade off that there will be some learning for all involved. Basic improvements should make it easier to post, search, and report system abuse. Additional things we may add include an eBay trader rating system for the arcade community members. We may or may not add some photo gallery capabilities.
3. Abuse Control. Easier to limit and ban users. On the new system, it will be easier for moderators to look at activity and ban users that are contributing bad karma to the boards. It will also be easier to take partial action against a user (ie: take away their ability to post for 2 weeks). In particular, there are several users on the 'arcade' side that will have their past behavior counted against them if they haven't cleaned up their act before the new system launches. Several of these users are not showing great appreciation for their fellow users, for the forums in general, or for us (who provides the forums and related web offerings to the public without charge and at a financial loss). No further warning may be given to them.
4. Further Separation Between Interest Areas (ie: Lymphoma vs. Arcade). Times have changed. Our lymphoma support message forums were the first ones we launches (in the early 1990s, though I've run modem based forums for more than 25 years!). The Arcade themed forums were soon to follow. At one time forums were scarce on the web, and for licensing and business reasons it made sense to have multiple topics under one system. Originally envisioned were a whole 'network of forum subjects.' We've given up a number of forums over the years as businesses have been sold (ie: Pets.com) and we have chosen not to add the numerous additional themed forums we originally planned. We've resisted adding areas of interest unless we thought we had a strong user base to support them. Thus, the center of gravity isn't the 'WebMagic Forums', but the individual areas of interest such as lymphoma support or arcade games. At this time, it seems best to build further separation between these areas of interest. Whether that means making easier for searches just to occur in a single area of interest, or breaking the forums into two or more separate forums is yet to be determined. A single user name/password combination will continue to work on all WebMagic supported sites.
5. Separating Wheat from the Chaff. Especially on the arcade side of things, many message threads have so much 'chat' that the meaty content is buried and lost to all but very active users. This is a potential turn-off to new users as it is to people with limited time to read threads (as of my self). We're not absolutely sure how to fix this in a natural rather than punitive way yet, but one idea is to add real time chat to the boards so that some of the conversation that isn't of value to keep long term isn't kept long term. Another option that *might* be available is "social groups", where people can set up their own private groups, invite people in, and have their own private little invite only clubs. <-- I'd love people's comments and reactions to the pros and cons of allowing people to set up social groups.
The Big Decision: Ubbthreads vs vBulletin
Ubbthreads is the third major software product we have used since we started offering web based forums, and the second (perl based UBBClassic) was another, similar product by the same company. We are quite familiar with it, as are our users.
There have been two periods of time over the last decade in which UBB Development slowed to a crawl, though it didn't affect us immediately as we have only upgraded forum software every couple of years. The first period of slowness was in moving from a Perl based software packed to a more efficient PHP based system, which allows for more system traffic on the same level of hardware. The second was a few years ago when Infopop wasn't sure whether or not it was going to continue to support UBBThreads or whether they were going to create a whole new system from scratch.
These blips allowed vBulletin (and other competitors) to launch and thrive. Several years ago vBulletin was a substantially less expensive product to purchase for most users. It registered more users, which in turn helped feed further development. There are probably 20x to 40x as many systems running vBulletin now than UBBThreads. Some large forums have changed to vBulletin recently. Trekbbs.com switched in March 2008, and Lineage2.com (on online game) switched three days ago on November 19, 2008 (and at least as of yesterday, was still a 'featured' site on UBB's home page!). I don't know of any notable sites that have switched in the other direction, though there are a few ubbthreads operators that are thinking of switching to vBulletin, as well as some vBulletin operators that are thinking of switching to UBB.
The growth of vBulletin has generated a lot of support from third party add-on providers. While many add-ons will work with either system, some of them have been designed with extra effort put into integration with vBulletin, and as such would require more work to integrate with ubbThreads. Almost none of these add-ons would probably be of much interest to the lymphoma community, and very few to the KLOV community.
In some ways I find the interface better in UBBThreads (provided one doesn't overwhelm the page with lots of different features). In other ways vbulletin is easier to use. In vBulletin, hitting ctrl-B when entering a messages turns on bold text, and ctrl-I turns on italics. The UBBThreads interface will likely be more familiar with our existing users, though the vBulletin interface will likely be more familiar to new members if they have used other forum sites due to the popularity of vBulletin. UBBThreads has a basic photo gallery now, and both have more advanced ones available as ad-ons. vBulletin has an add-on allowing users to create blogs. UBBThreads is likely to release a blog addition this year. Neither blog option is up to the quality of WordPress or the top tier blog/social network sites, and we're not inclined to support blogs within forums at this time. The look of each system varies a lot based on options set and templates altered, and both can be made to look very similar.
We previously purchased the highest level of UBBThreads registration which includes free lifetime upgrades to the latest version. On the other hand, we don't own vBulletin yet at all, so it would be more expensive. The cost difference isn't that meaningful, when one considers the (1) increased benefits of either new system, (2) cost spent in evaluating both systems to date, (3) our cost in custom programming required to interface with either system, and (4) our cost in supporting and running the forums on an ongoing basis.
So, if the two systems are nearly identical, the answer would be to stick with UBBThreads. If vBulletin is a definite improvement, we might move to that. Between the two, I'm torn down the middle at the moment. Features sets are similar, and minor bugs and slow feature development cycles seem to be part of both offerings at this time.
Your comments are appreciated.
Greg