If you want to change the software to reduce spam, go ahead and do it. I am convinced that the forum's new look and its new features will be more than satisfying.

Keep up the good work Jonas and Peter.

Steve

In addition to switching software, would you please consider breaking the current Star-CD User Forum into:

STAR-CD User Forum & STAR-CCM+ User Forum

We can discuss which forums to open once we have the system up and running. Right now we have our hands full to install the new system and transfer all old messages. There are more than 200,000 old messages, dating back more than 10 years, that we need to transfer to the new forums.

good to hear that, may be you can consider a forum for open source codes, good luck

I don't mind losing the simple format as long as there is a search function included. This would help me find what I am looking for a lot quicker than trawling through a lot of questions such as 'What is CFD??' etc.

V bulletin allows people to thank or rate other's posts, and so you can perhaps build up a certain level of trust in those who have a higher ranking.

May I suggest that the poster can use any alias when posting, similar to today. So the registration is only needed in order to log in and be allowed to post.

Jonas,

Reluctantly, I agree that it's time for a change. The Latex ability should really help simplify things! Of course, that's AFTER I learn to use it (I've successfully avoided learning it for years now).

The examples of sites to emulate (Pun?)seem to be pretty similar. As of now, go with what makes the most sense from an administrative point of view.

Question:

How would/will this impact the Wikipedia?

Thanks again for your years of time setting up and managing cfd-online!

OTD

It will not affect CFD-Wiki. I see it just as a replacement for the forum section. We might also be moving the news and announcement section, but at first we will work on the forum switch. Peter has already installed vBulletin and started to prepare the switch.

I'd personally like to lose many of the posts relating to "please send me this paper" or "please send me a solutions manual" as well. But I'm sure those will persist.

Looking forward to seeing the new format once it's ready.

I would welcome a new vBulletin interface and equation rendering using LaTeX for the forums.

For registration, would it be possible to make users specify their level of expertise with the CFD packages?

The reason I am suggesting this is that when someone posts a question, the level of detail required for the answer depends on how expereinced the person is with the software.

Thanks for all your hard work keeping CFD-Online great!

Agree with CDE.

If you are looking at a wider scope than just the forum, then maybe it's worth considering an open source Content Management System (CMS), such as Drupal or Joomla. The CMS base systems are good for organizing content such as news and forums - they also support user id management. Beyond the base system there is near infinite scope to expand functionality using additional modules, such as email newsletters.

As an example here at Symscape we use Drupal. Out of the box it supports:

• content (news, blogs etc.)
• wiki-like book system we use for tutorials
• forum

We also use an email newsletter module.

Worth considering as part of a larger website redesign maybe.

I would agree with a VBulletin forum. It is good to the eye, and as far as I know, there are good features for the administrators. For the registration part, I think it's crucial, due to some spam messages that pop-up.

I really like this one:

http://www.motec.com.au/forum/

http://www.phpbb.com/

Easy on the eyes and really intuitive to browse thru.

Defitnely should include a forum for open source info.

I think also like: I don't like the idea of a forum with registration at all. Some discussions are only possible anonymous.

Jonas,

It would be great to have a play-around of the new site, when you've got it running. It might be useful to send posts to both sites in parallel for a while, until all the bugs are ironed out.

Best of success.

Regards, mw...

www.adthermtech.com/wordpress3

The Ubuntu forums use vBulletin, and I think that they have proved it to be very customizable. One of the really nice things they do is apply a rating to the user given the amount of effort he/she puts into helping people, i.e. from beginner to a super_forum_user of some sort. I think that this is a nice feature, and such an scheme could give the CFD community more of a reason to help out their fellow colleagues.

So Jonas, when do you expect to make the change? I'm looking forward to it already.

-CycLone

It will not happen this year. We are currently struggling to import the more than 100,000 old messages from the current forums into vBulletin. The import functions in vBulletin aren't as good as I expected, so I am writing parts of the import routines myself instead.

At this stage it is a bit early to give a time estimate of the switch.

Why not to use software to control spam, similar to the software used to control spam in e-mails. They are pretty effective. I think that the registration requirement would not reduce spam. Simply, someone register with an alias name and post spam. If you block him from posting he will register under another fake name and keep spamming, unless the registered names are real. But that would kill this forum.

Angen