Members Input Wanted- Please

Mark Chisholm

Mark Chisholm

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Administrator
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Home of the New Jersey Devils
Hi Gang,

Tom and I have been talking with our web people over the past couple of months about a possible change of software used for this board. We have not been really pleased with the lack of support from Infopop here since they changed their name and such. Anyway, we are looking into other companies. Since this board is for all of us, I thought that I'd ask for some possible feedback from anyone who would like to offer some.

One thing that limits our decision a bit is the need for a seamless integration of our posts into a new software. Some forum companies advertise this. One is V Bulletin.

So, if any of you have a favorite type of forum that you've visited in your travels, we'd love to hear of it. Our Infopop is just too hard to manipulate anymore and we would like to offer the best possible solution to all of you. Thanks for any ideas you may send our way.
 
There are 210 users on line over there right now and still the site runs with good speed. It may be the lack of photos.

There are 5 users here at the Buzz right now and I'm timing out just trying to post or change pages.
 
Yeah, I'm not too sure that the slow down is an Infopop thing. We are just tired of having difficulties upgrading and changing things. It's time consuming and expensive. I think the slowing is a server issue. I may change them too! /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
No way AS software, it sucks!

Honestly, have a look at TH. That's off the shelf software provided free by the host, can be easily moderated and customized, is supported by the host etc etc.

http://www.ipower.com/webhosting.html is the link to the plans and recently they have had a price change for the better. For around $100 a year you'll get 10 gigs of storage and 250gig of bandwidth. And it runs pretty fast.

So, some questions for you. How much bandwidth does TB use per month and how much disk space does TB use at the moment?

Some of the feartures I like on that board is the quick email and website clicks on every post, add pics no worries, you have new posts, bookmarks etc, and being a generic product updates will be easier.

Ipower offer a 24 hour chat service. Just last night I was online to them to have an anomoly fixed on my site, done, straight away, fixed.

They did everything for me when I changed hosts, set up the site, registry keys etc, I'm very happy.
 
A tool to convert from UBB.threads to phpBB2.

phpBB2 is what Butch is using, and it looks entirely serviceable. I've always liked your UBB.threads better than the vBulletin stuff at AS, but if it doesn't suit your needs then don't stick with it.

phpBB2 is GPLd software. Here's a couple of snippets from the Preamble to the GPL:

"The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users."

"When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things."

"To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it."

Compare that with the EULA you get with most "commercial" software...

Let's talk about this site thing, Mark. Maybe we can both benefit by working together.
 
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phpBB2 is what Butch is using, and it looks entirely serviceable.

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That software didn't work well from here on my last visit a few months ago. It's a pain trying to read a new post as the page loads and jumps post to post for 5 or 10 seconds.
 
Dan,

The "page jumping" isn't really a function of the site software itself. It's more likely due to excessive eye candy being used.

I guess maybe I'm seeing tonight what everyone is talking about lately. It's not so much that data transfer is slow (at least it's fast enough for my 56k connection), but the sessions are taking quite a bit of time to set up between my browser and the server.

I'd guess the hosting provider has over-sold their service.
 
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The "page jumping" isn't really a function of the site software itself. It's more likely due to excessive eye candy being used.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually it is likely CSS or HTML that is not configured correctly. Easy to fix if you know what to do, unfortunately many don't. I have also noticed excessive latency in the TB initial page loading and a few page timeouts as well.

Cary
 
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Here's another quick question: Do any of you like the software at AS better than here? If so, what is it that you prefer?

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Mark,
I've had problems posting with the AS site software. Too often I hit post and it hangs, PM's seldom if ever go.

As for reliability you guys are doing pretty good.

Don't know what else there is, but whatever AS uses hasn't made my experience any better there.
 
The browser would have an easier time initially laying out the page if it was given proper hints regarding size (dimension) of the elements. Usually with this database-driven forum stuff (in my experience) the images are dimensionless until such time as they actually "arrive". This often necessitates an adjustment to the layout of the page which then causes the browser to "jump around" it, much as Dan described. Configuration on the server side might well take care of it, but I somehow get the impression that willy-nilly selection of forum features is most likely to blame; namely allowing/encouraging embedded images in the posts which are served from imagestation or wherever, variously-sized and large "avatars", etc.

Personally, I don't see much beyond the fine search features, and the detachment of attachments, to recommend HTTP over NNTP for sharing of discussion online.
 
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Usually with this database-driven forum stuff (in my experience) the images are dimensionless until such time as they actually "arrive"

[/ QUOTE ]

I realize that this is not likely a user controlled configuration fix. And configuration is probably a bit misleading anyway. The crux of the problem is that 99.99% of the software developers only look at their product(s) on a lightly loaded server connected with a high speed connection. It would be trivial to have this type of information (image size) delivered at the time of page generation, but since they don't see a problem it isn't viewed as something that is needed.

I agree, NNTP is/was great!


Mark,

You may want to take a look at simple machines (used by the Forestry Forum). It seems to work well. The one thing it appears not to have, that would certainly be missed by all here, is the ability to remember where you are in the various threads. I have not looked at it for some time, so there may be a way to add this functionality with an extension. I would offer to help out, but I am currently shunning PHP in favor of Python for a personal project I am working on.

Cary
 
One of the features on this board that I really like is the "active topics" button, even if you log off or get kicked off you can come right back to it and no loss.

Where on TH's it has a "new posts" button, which is great if you log on and have a look but a right PITA if you kick off or stuff up.

Sometimes you jump on and there's 300+ new posts and you make a blue and drop the lot to zero when you rejoin.

I do know that the Ipower servers run fast, no doubt about it, that's where all of my videos are coming from. And many broadband USA viewers are watching MPG movies direct with no lag or buffering. That means they are getting it at a speed of atleast what the video plays at which is around 10meg per minute or 1380kbps ... so the server delivers the speed. some servers, regardless of how good or fast your line speed is are slow as a snail taking forever to download.

The only time I have a slow page to load at TH is if Spydie has had a few posts in a row /forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif, he likes plenty of flash in his sig and that slows me down. Some pages get a bit busy with flash, animated gifs, big avatars, flames and pics so if you have a slow connection it very well may jump around.
 
That's vBulletin again, and like Ekka said, this site has the best session-management that I know of. At least the way AS has vB set up, you blow away record of all unseen posts just by visiting. If you don't check them out in that session, they lose their distinctiveness. The software on this site does the right thing in that respect.

I haven't spent enough time at Butch's site to determine how that software handles tracking from the visitor's perspective.

I recall having visited the other forum Cary mentioned and my vote is decidedly against that software if what he's talking about is what I interfaced with there.
 
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