Upgrading Forums
 

Hello Everyone,

I am watching to change the forums and would like your ideas/point of view on the options.

I am also watching at opening the forums to mobile players and not requiring gold subscription, I have a few ideas for it like direct link from the graal client to open an account.

Please keep the discussion clean and avoid sarcasm ;)

Option 1) Small Upgrade to Vbulletin 3.8.8.
+: Will allow to move to a new faster computer, correct some security problems and upgrade to last PHP
+ We can keep the current style of the forum + plugins
+ Less work for me (yes I known it's not an argument)
- Nothing really new

Option 2) Upgrade to Vbulletin 5
+: We run the latest version of Vbulletin and get access to more plugins
-: Will be hard to keep the current skin/style, anyone here can do help?
-: We loose all vbulletin plugins
-: No more integration with our backend (new account registration will be harder).

Option 3) Upgrade to other forum software, like ipboard
+: Look like ipboard for exemple is quite popular and stable
-: We have to learn new forums
-: We loose the skin (anyone here expert on ipboard ?)
-: We loose all vbulletin plugins

im not sure that going through a lot of effort would be worth it for the sake of being able to use more vbulletin plugins, are the any other significant benefits for upgrading to new vbulletin versions?

that said the current css for the forums doesnt look too complicated to adapt to a different html structure, there are a lot less style rules both in-line and included as a file than i thought there would be

There might already be a vb3 styled theme out there somewhere were all you need to do is switch up the colors.

The IP boards look interesting. I suppose it all depends on how much work you want to put into the forums, and if the community would be up for the change. I have seen some really cool themes for other games using these forums, as well as nice themes with no pictures, or non-game pictures.

I don't really see anything wrong with the way the forums are, currently, but I would like the look updated to reflect the game (New logo), just my opinion.

I don't think making registration harder is a good idea.

I would either go for option 1, or 3

Also, looking forward to the forums being opened up to the whole community :)

Also, like Darlene said, IP Boards has a LOT more customization and it's a lot easier to code for. Might be easier on the team as well as the community. Make it fun to come and read/post. DEFINITELY make mobile link to forums, but let's not allow them to spam. I know these 12 year olds, they'll do anything to piss you off...

vBulletin5 would be nice.
Can also help with design etc.

Upgrade to 3.8.8 and perform some additional updates to the forums (combine redundant forums such as Feature request with Future Improvements, abolish the current reputation system, restore the NGRT forum, allow larger avatars).

Option 1 seems like the logical choice

Yeah, I think the forum in it's current state is doing just fine, and option 1 seems to have the most benefits, especially for mobile registration stuff, I assume.

So I'd also say option 1 seems the way to go.

On top of that, I also agree with the revisions Minoc mentioned.

I like option 1. I hope the rules are looked into aswell.

I agree. I like option 1. We would need to see some examples of the ip boards for those of use like me who have never seen them but the 1st option would be a definite upgrade that I know a lot of us have been asking for for a long time

Also prefer option 1. I don't think the software is what's holding back these forums.

I would have to go with option 1 as well. Removing the gold subscription from the forums will be a good thing. :)

I'm interested in option #2, upgrading to Vbulletin 5. I may be able to help a little while we transition to Vb5 and try to redefine our skin, but I am not available to completely overhaul.

While staying on topic though, either option 2 or option 3 will do :D

Option 1 seems like less trouble, especially if you bring in a whole crowd more of the wider community.

I'm not 100% sure what's going on, but I saw "free forums" mentioned somewhere earlier, and I have to say this is probably one of the best things that could ever happen to Graal. Seriously though, it's a step in the right direction to keep the community together.

Pretty sure Graal Online was the first and only forum I've ever seen where you needed to purchase something to get access to, especially with such exclusively.

I have to say I agree, I can't think of anything else where their forums access was pay to use either.

I have but they were either get quick rich related forums or illegal activities, both being pay for software use forum for support type deal.

Option 1. I don't really care for the newer VBulletin or think it's worth searching over to an entire new forums. You'd have to somehow transfer all the material from these forums over (because let's be honest, 99% of all Graal scripting documentation comes from random posts people have made on here) but at that point, what's the point?

A nicer theme however would be nice as these forums are kinda ugly in design. That, and a change in how these forums are moderated, forums for iServers, unrestricted access, etc. As far as the unrestricted access goes, nobody is going to pay for a gold subscription just to use these forums--but giving someone an ability to use these forums might just lead them to wanting to buy a gold subscription.

Option 1 + added tapatalk plugin for mobile access.

Oh geez! I wasn't even thinking about that. Whichever option is taken, I would hope it includes preserving all of the threads & posts in the current forums, otherwise the loss of scripting knowledge would be catastrophic! (At the very least, it would be upsetting).

I meant for games. :(

That was the first thing in my mind.

U got me there

'WWII Online: Battleground Europe's forums are only for subscribers. It isn't unheard of.

I would like to keep the need of an in-game account though, to register on the forums. Of course without paying for a subscription, just a registration. Would be easier to moderate players in my opinion.

Definately nice to know we won't have to join a forum for each server. When they do that because they can't register here some people like myself refuse to join yet another forum and would rather stay with these forums. So this is great news.

I'd like to see Option 1 or Option 2.

Option 2 seems really cool, and I'm sure we could find some graphic artists who are willing to help with the layout. Since Gold subscriptions are nearly non-existent now, there's little reason to keep non-gold accounts locked out. However, that may mean stepping up moderation if we get accounts made for being disruptive.

Chances are that the old plugins may still be usable with the new version, or alternatives that basically do the same thing will be available. So that's not much to worry about.



Do you have any time frame in mind for when this is going to be done? I'd like to back up my blog articles just in case.

I definitely agree with this.

Lets get some new forums, Come on guys were all about changes here. We cant live in the past forever

It's neither about change nor "living in the past". It's about what's more functional, convenient and/or less headache to migrate to considering we've got an established database of users, moderators, threads/posts/documentation, etc.

Can you confirm whether or not we would have to abandon our current data? I anticipate there's a migration tool.

There are generally migration tools for every type of popular forum from vBulletin. A vBulletin to newer vBulletin is easily supported with tools provided by vBulletin and a migration to IP.Board is, as well.

Migration is generally easy and quite seamless.

I vote option #1.

option 2 seems the best to me. if you're going to upgrade, mine as well go all out.

option 1 seems pointless, unless there's some exploit where people are stealing passwords from here, and upgrading will solve it.

Well options 2 causes alot of problems with how graal game accounts are managed with forum access. Since every v bulletin doesn't come with graal lol. In the end what all do you gain from option 2 besides more plug in and potentially forced new style?

With option 1 everything is quite easy to do and won't break anything. And actually security wise oddly enough the version the forums use right now has very little known exploits.

Option 3 I don't have enough information on. I've never used ip boards or many others.

Hey Unix, with the new board, can you please also increase the permitted size of image / file attachments from 1MB to 5MB? (Or more?)


A lot of the allowed formats, such as zip, wav, midi, pdf, png, bmp, psd, doc, tar, tgz, and others often can't be attached because they're not small enough to do so.

For example, if you take a screenshot on Graal that is larger than a 1024 x 768 resolution, you will not be able to upload the full image. (1280 x 1024 is roughly 1.32MB and it only goes higher from there.)

It would be nice to post full screenshots on higher resolutions without having to crop or resize the images, as well as allowing people to post entire songs they've made, extensive documents written in pdf format, and so on.

Part of that is how color palette are handled in images. Png can use alpha channels for example and like 24 million colors while bitmap cannot and is much larger. Jpeg can compress size in alot of cases. But I agree we should be able to attach larger then 1 MB tho because some compression loses detail while other can be lossess.

Hi there.

I cannot recommend vBulletin 5.0 at all. We tried it for our forums for Valikorlia and it is just terrible! We upgraded from PHPBB to 5.0 and it was just a nightmare... We downgraded back to vBulletin 4.X and it is an amazing forum to work with, in my opinon.

http://www.kharlia.com/forumzzz - bad 5.0 forums
http://www.valikorlia.com/forum - good 4.x forums

Those are on the same host, same server for the database, but you will notice how much slower and unresponsive the vBulletin 5.1 Connect software is, I highly suggest you stay away from it.

IPBoard doesn't look too bad, but I am super happy with the last stable version of vBulletin 4.X - good luck in your decision!