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[IRD]

Yep! Getting stuck in our ways is inevitable, but it is not all bad. So long as you keep your eyes open, try to keep up a bit, AND you're stuck in the ways that you've worked out are good for you, then great.

Also well worth remembering that not all new things and ideas are good. Sometimes when they accuse you of being a dinosaur it might be that your dinosaur ideas are actually spot on, and the new ideas being spouted by 20 year olds whose brains are not yet fully developed (happens at around 25) might be utter rubbish.

You sound like me.

You sound witty, cool and intelligent, with great taste

Just like yourself.

[MikeyH]

What's the difference between the thumbsup and the heart imogi, aren't they both the same. Also we already have

[buzyg]

What's the difference between the thumbsup and the heart imogi, aren't they both the same. Also we already have

[B21]

What's the difference between the thumbsup and the heart imogi, aren't they both the same. Also we already have

Like: A thumbs-up, indicating general approval or agreement.
Love: A red heart, expressing affection or strong liking.
Haha: A face with tears of joy, signifying something is very funny.
Wow: A surprised face, used for something shocking or unexpected.
Sad: A crying face, showing sadness or disappointment.
Angry: A red, angry face, expressing frustration or anger.
Care: A hugging heart emoji, expressing care and affection.

[MikeyH]

Thank you B21, very well explained

[Pondrew]

Also we already have

Yes but you have to post a reply to use that. The whole point of 'reaction emojis' is that you don't need to reply. I have a sneaky feeling Jim has only put the reaction emojis on to save server space and hence money!

[enuff_zed]

Also we already have

Yes but you have to post a reply to use that. The whole point of 'reaction emojis' is that you don't need to reply. I have a sneaky feeling Jim has only put the reaction emojis on to save server space and hence money!

[jonzo]

I'm not sure what the consensus was here but I've migrated a phpBB forum to Invision Community and it is a more pleasant experience for users and forum staff.

I know that Invision have a phpBB migration script (and I helped them improve it) so it's definitely an option. On top of that, they offer a complete license / hosting solution so you don't have to worry about keeping the tech running and can instead focus on keeping the forum tidy and well moderated. I don't know the traffic here, but the forum I'm involved with pays around £60 a month which is covered by sponsors.

I have run a forum on a dedicated server and shared hosting in the past and it's a pain in the [bottom] keeping everything going. As someone who does tech for a living, I have no desire to maintain additional stuff outside of work. Migrating to a SaaS model has allowed me to take a step back and let non-technical people with more free time do 99% of the work.

What I would not recommend is going to a general-purpose platform like Discord. Forums need sponsors and SEO reach in order to survive, and you'll only have that level of freedom by having your own forum.

Facebook Groups are awful. They have terrible user experience, are difficult to moderate and there's no structure to the content so you can't (for instance) stumble across a detailed how-to guide someone did for your car 5 year ago.

They were built to get people off forums and keep them using Facebook, and have become popular because anyone can set one up in 5 minutes whereas a forum takes longer and requires some level of ability to keep it in good shape.

[sp3ctre]

I'm not sure what the consensus was here but I've migrated a phpBB forum to Invision Community and it is a more pleasant experience for users and forum staff.

The only option I would consider at the moment is Xenforo. While I have great restpect for Matt Mecham (creator of Invision)... I used to use his original open source forum, IkonBoard back in the day.... since they grew big into the Invision Community stuff I don't trust their pricing. Xenforo have also increased their price but not as much as Invision.

I am not worried about self hosting. This forum has been on servers I personally manage since 2007 and it's bread and butter. I am not interested in Software as a Service solutions.

So, the two options are keep it as-is, or migrate to Xenforo and be at their mercy for future price increases.

I am doing some analysis at the moment in terms of feature comparisons to make sure we don't lose any features should we decide at some point to migrate.

I am going through a divorce and a house move just at the moment, so it is unlikely we will make any drastic changes in the near future, but I won't rule anything out.

I agree on the Discord/Facebook points... they haven't helped forums at all... and the fact Google search has gone down the toilet and AI starting to scrape content instead of pointing people to it is also not a good sign. I see the foture of forums being more of a place where people want to come and be part of the community rather then where people come to answers to their questions (they ask AI now). We used to have both, but times are changing.

[jonzo]

Don't forget that you can also license IPS for self-hosted. Much the same as Xenforo really, you either go SaaS or self-hosted.

There are a large number of forum solutions out there, but yeah I think Invision Community and Xenforo are probably the most popular. Don't forget that vBulletin is still going, though you don't see it anywhere as near as often nowadays. We ruled it out at the time as a lot of their devs had left and the product suffered.

A lot of car forums use Xenforo (mainly because they start up, do reasonably well and are then bought out by Fora / Verticalscope). If that's your strategy then fair enough, but I have to say that compared to Invision I just don't think the UX is as good.

I take the point about license costs and it's a decision we agonised over around 12 years ago when we moved to IPS. Our forum was self-hosted for the first ten years and it was running on a dedicated server at the point where we moved to SaaS. We have always been able to get local businesses to sponsor us and that has helped massively. Our spend is less now than it was when self-hosted, though. We looked at offering hosting to businesses in our market sector as a business model, but really didn't want the hassle.

What I will say is that our users frequently complement us on the ease of use of forum and in this age of competing with Facebook groups and endless Verticalscope fora, UX is really important. As someone who has used both phpBB and Invision as a user and as an admin / dev, there is a world of difference between the two and it does a lot of the admin tasks for you.

There are all sorts of automation rules for moderation and spam / bot detection and for us it is easily worth the license fee.

[enuff_zed]

sp3ctre, given that you have plenty on your plate in your own life, I would suggest we happily stay as we are for now until such time as you can devote more attention to it. There are bound to be teething troubles and you really don't need to be pestered about them all.
I know i'm a stick in the mud, but I'm sure, given this scenario, no-one would expect you to be faffing about with the forum too.

[sp3ctre]

Don't forget that you can also license IPS for self-hosted. Much the same as Xenforo really, you either go SaaS or self-hosted.

There are a large number of forum solutions out there, but yeah I think Invision Community and Xenforo are probably the most popular. Don't forget that vBulletin is still going, though you don't see it anywhere as near as often nowadays. We ruled it out at the time as a lot of their devs had left and the product suffered.

A lot of car forums use Xenforo (mainly because they start up, do reasonably well and are then bought out by Fora / Verticalscope). If that's your strategy then fair enough, but I have to say that compared to Invision I just don't think the UX is as good.

I take the point about license costs and it's a decision we agonised over around 12 years ago when we moved to IPS. Our forum was self-hosted for the first ten years and it was running on a dedicated server at the point where we moved to SaaS. We have always been able to get local businesses to sponsor us and that has helped massively. Our spend is less now than it was when self-hosted, though. We looked at offering hosting to businesses in our market sector as a business model, but really didn't want the hassle.

What I will say is that our users frequently complement us on the ease of use of forum and in this age of competing with Facebook groups and endless Verticalscope fora, UX is really important. As someone who has used both phpBB and Invision as a user and as an admin / dev, there is a world of difference between the two and it does a lot of the admin tasks for you.

There are all sorts of automation rules for moderation and spam / bot detection and for us it is easily worth the license fee.

You make some good points, but charging $499 one-off and then $199 per year feels a bit much... It's not just the initial cost I just fundamentally don't trust them. They have a bit of a history of catching customers off-guard in terms of pricing. It's no doubt a good product but the Xenforo community does seem "nicer", and more like PHPBB used to be. I dearly love PHPBB, but in the past 10 years they have been treading water.... barely a new feature in a decade.

Either way it'd be an interesting process... we have over 2 Million posts on this forum now... which would make for an "interesting" migration for sure.

One thing that does seem interesting is the Xenforo gallery plugin they have (the official one). It's always concerned me in terms of potential hosting costs if everyone uploads a thousand photos of their car, but it'd certainly be a cool feature to have.

[sp3ctre]

sp3ctre, given that you have plenty on your plate in your own life, I would suggest we happily stay as we are for now until such time as you can devote more attention to it. There are bound to be teething troubles and you really don't need to be pestered about them all.
I know i'm a stick in the mud, but I'm sure, given this scenario, no-one would expect you to be faffing about with the forum too.

Cheers mate... I do love this stuff, so although I don't want to commit to anything I would likely setup a test site for a while and see how it goes before migrating anyway. That way I could get a feel for things and also take the pressure off.

[IRD]

sp3ctre, given that you have plenty on your plate in your own life, I would suggest we happily stay as we are for now until such time as you can devote more attention to it. There are bound to be teething troubles and you really don't need to be pestered about them all.
I know i'm a stick in the mud, but I'm sure, given this scenario, no-one would expect you to be faffing about with the forum too.

Cheers mate... I do love this stuff, so although I don't want to commit to anything I would likely setup a test site for a while and see how it goes before migrating anyway. That way I could get a feel for things and also take the pressure off.

I second what Martin has posted. You do a brilliant job. The Forum works really well and has done for such a long time. It is right that there is debate but I reckon if there was a survey the majority of members would express their satisfaction with the Forum in its current form.
Thank you for for providing a platform which offers help and entertainment for so many.

[sp3ctre]

sp3ctre, given that you have plenty on your plate in your own life, I would suggest we happily stay as we are for now until such time as you can devote more attention to it. There are bound to be teething troubles and you really don't need to be pestered about them all.
I know i'm a stick in the mud, but I'm sure, given this scenario, no-one would expect you to be faffing about with the forum too.

Cheers mate... I do love this stuff, so although I don't want to commit to anything I would likely setup a test site for a while and see how it goes before migrating anyway. That way I could get a feel for things and also take the pressure off.

I second what Martin has posted. You do a brilliant job. The Forum works really well and has done for such a long time. It is right that there is debate but I reckon if there was a survey the majority of members would express their satisfaction with the Forum in its current form.
Thank you for for providing a platform which offers help and entertainment for so many.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. If we do change what I ideally want to do is retain as much of the user experience that we have at the moment, with the same features etc.... replicate the good bits as much as possible.

As I said, PHPBB has served me well since 2007, but the bigger we get the more things concern me, such as:

Upgrades - the upgrade process for PHPBB is awful!
Plugins - I have added a ton of plugins to get functionality such as polls, categories for for-sale etc. All of these are at risk of breaking on every upgrade, especially when v4 comes around
WYSIWYG editor - I have heard the complaints that the current editor is old fashioned, but in PHPBB there are no good plugins to do that

So what I would look to do is try as much as possible to keep the core functionality the same while allowing extra features to be added (login via social etc).