- 14,639
- 4,820
- 113
- Location
- Buchanan, GA
What: The forum will be going through a software conversion and update.
When: Tentatively scheduled to start Friday evening 12/7/19, exact time still TBD.
Why: There's several reasons actually. The forum runs on a forum software known as vBulletin. vBulletin used to be the front runner in the forum world. It's been surpassed these days to be honest. And support is starting to dwindle. Also the design of our forum is a bit dated. Remember, our last update (cosmetic) was from 2012. We'll be retaining some of the look and feel. But with a lot of updates.
The software we'll be moving to is XenForo. It will be different in some aspects. But fear not, it shares a lot of the same functionality currently in use. Truth be told, many of the original vB programmers left and form XenForo and refined a lot of the code. So there's a lot of things that the two systems do the same. But XF does things a little more securely, with lower server loads, and now more support. Also there's going to be some neat new features with the software. The most useful will be interactive, the ability to tag members in threads, more robust communications systems, and the like.
What to expect: The forum is quite large. This will take some time. I suspect we'll be working overnight and hope to be back online sometime Sunday. There will not need to be anything done from the memberbase. Your login/password/PMs/exc will all be retained. (As well as your posts) Just please be understanding while we make this transition. Also, like any upgrade/conversion, I'm sure we'll run into issues once we're live. I'll have a "report issue" thread post upgrade where I'll ask everyone to post any issues they find.
When: Tentatively scheduled to start Friday evening 12/7/19, exact time still TBD.
Why: There's several reasons actually. The forum runs on a forum software known as vBulletin. vBulletin used to be the front runner in the forum world. It's been surpassed these days to be honest. And support is starting to dwindle. Also the design of our forum is a bit dated. Remember, our last update (cosmetic) was from 2012. We'll be retaining some of the look and feel. But with a lot of updates.
The software we'll be moving to is XenForo. It will be different in some aspects. But fear not, it shares a lot of the same functionality currently in use. Truth be told, many of the original vB programmers left and form XenForo and refined a lot of the code. So there's a lot of things that the two systems do the same. But XF does things a little more securely, with lower server loads, and now more support. Also there's going to be some neat new features with the software. The most useful will be interactive, the ability to tag members in threads, more robust communications systems, and the like.
What to expect: The forum is quite large. This will take some time. I suspect we'll be working overnight and hope to be back online sometime Sunday. There will not need to be anything done from the memberbase. Your login/password/PMs/exc will all be retained. (As well as your posts) Just please be understanding while we make this transition. Also, like any upgrade/conversion, I'm sure we'll run into issues once we're live. I'll have a "report issue" thread post upgrade where I'll ask everyone to post any issues they find.
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