Your Help Needed - Evalutating NEW Forum Software

[Nifty]

Hi Friends!!!

We need your help!

We've been running SS on some pretty old software. Over the years there have been some great advances in forum software. We've tried to keep up by hacking away at this software, but that's proving harder and messier as time goes by. We want to do all we can to support our wonderful community and our amazing staff and make everything easier for everyone in the long term.

I'm personally VERY involved in the forum software space and have kept a close eye on the changing landscape for years. We've been evaluating another forum platform that is very popular and robust. The forum system we're looking most closely at is called XenForo and is not the same platform that BYC is on. We've been playing with it for a while and we think it looks great!

Here's where you come in: I recently purchased a forum that is running the Xenforo software so we could kick the tires. So far we're really impressed with the software, but we need your help to do even more robust tire kickinating!

Here's what we'd like you to do:

1) Go to http://RemodelForums.com/
2) Browse around and create an account
3) Start a new "introduction thread", maybe upload a picture or three
4) Play around with all the various features, PM's (called conversations over there) etc.
5) Come back here and tell us what you think, ask questions, etc.

We've done a test conversion and so far it's worked great! Users, passwords, threads, posts, PMs, etc. all converted. There are some things that may be frustrating with a move and we know change is hard and very few people like change... but we're pretty confident that this has the potential to be a HUGE benefit to our community and we'd love your feedback and support!

Thanks everyone, we look forward to your replies!!!

 

[FarmerJamie]

how about a small contest for a reward for those who participate?

 

[Nifty]

Interesting idea, what do you have in mind?

 

[Denim Deb]

Winning lottery ticket?

 

[Nifty]

hahaha... get in line (right after me)

 

[FarmerJamie]

You're the internet business and marketing dude, I'm just a simple IT guy

Users provide feedback on "x" number of features or a set of things you're wanting more opinion on, and earn an entry in a random drawing.

Drawing could be for some $$ amount on the BYC store.

I'm assuming users would have to "identify" themselves upfront, kinda hard to interact via conversations if you don't know anyone. Also somehow verify what they have done.

Free stuff is always good.

 

[so lucky]

I went there and signed up using my same user name. I like it so far, simply because the italics and the underline work. I couldn't get a smiley panel to come up tho.

 

[Nifty]

FarmerJamie, we'll definitely have some contests if we go down the path of conversion, but for now we're just trying to get peeps that are interested to kick the tires. We want to avoid "HEY, WHY DID YOU SPRING THIS ON US!?!?!"


so lucky, thanks for playing around over there! Regarding smileys, what did you do / didn't you do to try to get smileys to work? What happened when you clicked the smiley icon on the reply field?

 

[Joel_BC]

As you know, Nifty (because you replied to one of my posts), I signed up.

Change is okay if things are improved, and if good things from the present are preserved into the new situation. Overall, the RemodelForum is pretty similar to the forum software we're familiar with from SS and other forums. If it's easier for the web master, that's one important thing. But I'm looking at the issue from the member perspective.

On RemodelForums, I did find one thing puzzling at first, and slightly less convenient: You have to click "More Options" (when making a post) in order to have a button to click for a preview of your post. I think a preview is pretty basic, but it's an extra step.


I'm hoping that the upload of pics would be a simple and easy as on the current SS software, but since I haven't tried that yet on the RemodelForum, I don't know.

But this leads to another question: Nifty, would all of the many hundreds of threads in the archived material here on SS - the posts along with their pics, if they have some - be preserved within the various subforums? Would everything remain as accessible (including by searching) as it is now?

 

[FarmerChick]

improve moderation of the site being held to its belief would be nice. simple, self suffient. forget the fancy graphics and more, this site should be upheld for simple. life sustatining info. If it grades up to more it would be horrible. (and we from the past saw that)