[niklas]

I'd like to suggest that we change forum software to phpbb3.

I'm seing an increase in double-posts, thread hijacking and out-of-topic posts.

phpbb3 is now superior in both administration and configuration.
http://www.phpbb.com/

what do you guys think?

[caw]

I agree with you. A more modern forum software is preferable.

Question: is it possible to move the old postings to a new forum software?

Best regards
Christian

[hjasak]

CFD-Online is just switching software as well. This would be a god chance to integrate with the rest.

Hrv

[gschaider]

Usenet Newsgroups, I want Usenet Newsgroups.

Sorry. Got carried away by a wave of nostalgia. (But I'm serious)

I think the most important thing would be that there is a way to get the old messages from this forum to the new software. Which (I think) would need some work (at least some serious script-writing).

[kati]

Should I be ashamed admitting that I would like usenet newsgroups too? What's wrong with them?

[dmoroian]

Have you seen YaBB?
OpenDX is running it successfully and for quite a long time.

Dragos

[braennstroem]

New software would be great.

A combination of online forum and mailing list would be best. So one can answer and post questions using a mail program :-)
Just reading the forum using mail is fine, but one should be able to answer as well...

Fabian

[mattijs]

CFD-Online is switching to vBulletin as a forum software:

http://www.vbulletin.com/
http://www.physicsforums.com/
http://www.mathhelpforum.com/

It would make sense for us to switch and integrate and import the postings. I would like to know what we require from the forum. Here is my list:

- fast mailing
- being able to post by replying
- have messages have a fixed http address so we can refer to them
- optional: have messages as html so we can use an external search engine to search
- optional: have easier attachments (though I have no problem with the \attach)

Mattijs

[gschaider]

@fabian: The thing you're talking about IS Usenet-News. Almost (Good mail clients know how to use the usenet)

@kati: There's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just that when you tell young people about the Usenet they go: "But my Bulletin-Board has more colors. And I can have a nice picture that shows me as superman with every of my postings"

Joke aside. Whoever does the work of implementing the transition should decide which software to use (because that person will end up with some work). IF there are plans for a transition

Bernhard

[gschaider]

Hi Mattijs!

(Obviously I didn't read your post when I sent mine)

So there are plans? Nice

In addition to your list I'd like to see some kind of "threaded view". Currently sometimes threads are hard to read because people are replying to messages that are "4 posts away" while in the 3 intermediate posts people are discussing something else (that may or may not have something to do with the Thread title). But obviously vBulletin does that (this URL should only serve as an example of that feature. The contents are of no interest: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...42#post1674242)

Bernhard

[mwild]

While we're at it: can we have a real bug-tracker/ticket-system? If you don't want to set it up yourself, there's always http://lighthouseapp.com/. A forum like this one is very good for getting help and general discussion, but not really suited for keeping track of issues.

Michael

[jola]

As Mattijs and Hrvoje wrote we are changing forum software on the other forums on CFD Online also. We are moving to vBulletin. Niklas, I hope that you think vBulletin is another interesting alternative to switch to, it is quite similar to phpBB. Mattijs, Henry and me have agreed to investigate the possibility of integrating the OpenFOAM forum wíth the other forums on CFD Online. However, we still have some issues with the import of all old messages from the DiscusWare software used today. I hope that we will solve these problems.

A preview of how the forum will look can be seen on http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums This is only a test forum with a few test messages. Before we launch it we will import all old messages and the test messages there now will be deleted.

[niklas]

vBulletin looks better than phpbb3

Personally I dont mind starting from scratch either, but that might just be me.

[jola]

Yes, I investigated phpbb a lot a few years ago. But then the lead developer of phpbb stepped down and that made me change my mind about the future of phpbb. Since then vBulletin has continued to grow. vBulletin is today used on the majority of the large discussion forums on the web. See for example http://www.big-boards.com, which lists the software used on the largest boards on the web. Out of 2,000 listed boards 1,300 use vBulletin.

[jola]

You can find a preview of a vBulletin based OpenFOAM forum here:

http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums-tes...rums/openfoam/

A recent import of all messages from this forum are included there and the OpenFOAM forum has been integrated with the other forums on CFD Online.

Note that this is just a preview and registrations are closed and you can not submit any new messages.

If everyone agrees and would like to switch to vBulletin we are soon ready to launch the new forum. What do you guys think about this?

Will the new vBulletin based forum be acceptable? Would you like us to change anything in the layout or in how messages are imported? We appreciate any advice.

[niklas]

I think that looks great.

[gschaider]

Hi!

It looks nice. The only thing that bothers me is that according to
http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums-test/faq.php?faq=vb3_user_profile#faq_vb3_subsc riptions
I can get the old mailing behavior (somebody posts a message, a mail gets sent) only on a per-thread, but not on a per forum basis (my main means of keeping up-to-date with the board is EMail)
And http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums-test/faq.php?faq=vb3_board_usage#faq_vb3_rss_po dcasting is not really an alternative as it only seems to report new threads

Ah. And BTW: is the random question in the search dialog really necessary? People are not using the search function in the old software as frequently as one would hope and with that additional hurdle ....
(is it there to prevent DenialOfService-attacks?)

But apart from these objections: Nice job and my deepest respect to those who did the import of the old messages

Bernhard

[braennstroem]

Hi!
I got the same 'problem' as Bernhard... otherwise pretty nice.

Fabian

[bfa]

Hi!
I like the new forum! Is there an expire date on the old forum? Where should we post at the moment? Or is there some kind of synchronisation running to keep both boards consistent?

Bjoern

[jola]

A few answers to the questions about the new forum:

The preview of the new forum is based on an import we did yesterday. The final import will be done from this forum on the launch date. So please continue to post here. The launch date is not set yet, assuming that most of you want us to make this switch. We are waiting for the release of a new version of a forum addon and we also have a bunch of small details to fix before we are ready to launch it.

Bernhard asked for instant email notification of an entire forum. This issue was also raised by Mattijs. vBulletin does not have this functionionality I'm afraid. The reason they have left it out for entire forums is performance.

The main problems we have had with the current Discus forum is also related to this emailing. The OpenFOAM forum has grown many times both in number of users and in traffic over the years we have hosted it on CFD Online. The server is now spending most of its resources on sending emails. With several thousand registered users and more than 50 posts per day instant email notification of every post does generate a significant amount of emails.

vBulletin instead provides a daily digest of all posts from the previous day. With >50 posts per day I would personally prefer that instead of getting 50 mails every day. Instant notification is also automatically activated for all threads that one has posted to, so that one instantly will get notified of replies in these threads.

There are addons to vBulleting which has this instant email notification functionality for entire forums. However, we do not want to install this now. We want a setup which is as clean as possible and a minimum non-standard features. Once we know that the forum works well and does not bog down the server too much we can play with these addons. I hope that this is acceptable.

About the random question. These are only used for guests. Registered users will not have to reply to these questions and a cookie will automatically remember your login so that you don't have to re-login every time you return to the forum. The search function does generate quite a lot of load for the server and these days the internet is full of web-robots that automatically post spam in every form field they can find... this question prevents these web-robots from generating a lot of load on the server by trying to submit spam data in the search form.

Getting the import to work has been a lot of work. The forums we are moving from (webbbs on CFD Online and DiscusWare on OpenFOAM) aren't exactly well supported anymore and we had to write a lot of import routines ourself although vBulletin does provide a nice import feature to start with.