New Server And Message Board Software

[Steven Benner]

TL;DR: Do you like IPB better than SMF? Tell me what forum software you like and explain why you like it.

Well we've got a new server ready to go. I've been testing out the server with some other sites and it is really great. More powerful, more memory, more bandwidth and just plain better than the old system we're running on now. But here's the problem. We are running an old, old... OLD version of Invision Power Board. And unlike cars, older does not mean easier to work with.

Long story short: we cannot run this software on the latest version my PHP and MySQL, so we cannot run this board as it is on the new server. We have to upgrade. There are two options:

1) Upgrade to the latest IPB

Pros:
• Least data loss, new IPB will probably support most of the old IPB stuff.
Cons:
• This costs money, a minimum of $150... $250 for a full package.
• Not open source, may be vulnerable to attacks that others would be safe from.
[/li]

2) Switch to another board

Pros:
• Free, no money is a good thing.
• Better security and testing, big open source projects get a lot of scrutiny and testing that proprietary software does not.
• Easier to update.
Cons:
• Possibility of data loss. I don't know what, but I can see stuff like custom titles and such not existing in other software.
• Different BB code. Old posts will probably not display properly because old BB code wont be recognized.
[/li]

There is only one mainstream board package that actually has a conversion script that may work for our old, old (did I mention this forum is old?). Maybe, it's actually for the minor version above ours. That is SMF. SMF (Simple Machines Forum) is a well tested and very powerful piece of forum software that you have surely seen on other sites.

No matter what, we will lose some data, your settings will be lost, and any of the custom tweaks that I've made to the site over the years will be lost. All of the member accounts, posts, PMs and attachments should be saved. Everything else is unknown, I have to actually do a test version before we'll know.

I'd like to hear your thoughts.

[hayabusa]

wish i could help. im sure someone will chime in.    

[Coop301]

Steve.  With regards to data loss, with all the experience of the folks here, I think we can replace the lost data rather easily.  If it is OLD data like posts from eons ago or lost members, that would not be too big of a deal.  I would think the most important data would be the writeups and ultimate retailer thread.  Everything else I am sure that we could re-create as needed.  Would help clean up some of the "foot-in-mouth" posts as well.  Also, it depends alot on user features.  The more the better and with open source software, there is always someone out there coming up with neat snapins.

For the sake of security, flexability and supportability, I vote option 2.  I personally hate going to the vendor for software support and problem solving when something goes wacko.

If the majority want to do option 1, I am sure that we have more than 250 active members.  Everyone chip in $1 and there is the cost of the software.  Or, figure the cost of the server setup and software, divide by the number of users and that is what we pay.  Then, maybe an annual fee to cover the cost of operation.  I know we all enjoy this wonderful place you have created here.  I personally would not have a problem with helping to support it.  I know free is good, but when it comes to keeping this forum up and running, someone must pay the price.

I don't feel you should bare any of the cost of this forum.

BTW.  Need an emoticon for getting on and off one's soapbox. hehe.

[hayabusa]

im all in  

[Steven Benner]

When I talk about data loss I'm not talking about posts or accounts. Every message board has posts, accounts, PMs, etc.

I'm talking about little things like custom titles, forum ranks, BB code formatting, smileys, PM tracking, and other small things like that.

Has anyone had any experiences with the new IPB or SMF boards? I'd like to hear opinions about these software packages. What do you think about the features? Was the board easy to use as a member?

If we do opt for IPB, I will probably do another donation drive so we can get the full package that can do stuff like user image galleries, blogs (I think this would be great for people with long-term projects), and downloads so we can host useful files (like Ratio Calculators, and digitized manuals) in a central place. I'm sure SMF has similar features but I haven't dug into it enough to know how it works.

For more info:

• Invision Board
• Simple Machines Forum

[Coop301]

When I talk about data loss I'm not talking about posts or accounts. Every message board has posts, accounts, PMs, etc.

I'm talking about little things like custom titles, forum ranks, BB code formatting, smileys, PM tracking, and other small things like that.

Has anyone had any experiences with the new IPB or SMF boards? I'd like to hear opinions about these software packages. What do you think about the features? Was the board easy to use as a member?

If we do opt for IPB, I will probably do another donation drive so we can get the full package that can do stuff like user image galleries, blogs (I think this would be great for people with long-term projects), and downloads so we can host useful files (like Ratio Calculators, and digitized manuals) in a central place. I'm sure SMF has similar features but I haven't dug into it enough to know how it works.

For more info:

[/li][li]Invision Board
[/li]
• Simple Machines Forum
  

this is a little disturbing for Invision: "Save $50 a year by purchasing our Community Suite bundle"  Is it an annual license fee?

Steve, I have used this one as a user and is pretty nice and user friendly.  

http://www.vbulletin.com  

here is a site that uses it.  http://www.shannondale.org/forum/

SMF looks pretty good too.

[Teranfirbt]

Any aversion to PHPBB? From what I've seen, it's pretty powerful and is free.

[dead91silvia]

So I'm a little lost, but thats not hard to do when it comes to computers....

Are you changing the floor mat of the forum, as in, the way things are posted and the layout?      

[Steven Benner]

this is a little disturbing for Invision: "Save $50 a year by purchasing our Community Suite bundle"  Is it an annual license fee?

For the support services there is an annual fee. There is no continuing license fee for the software itself. At least that's how I understand it, I should read a little more.

http://www.vbulletin.com

vBulletin is a good piece of software. But converting our database to be used by vBulletin would be neigh impossible. We need a script that can convert our old IPB database into whatever structure is needed for that particular piece of forum software. vBulletin has not released any scripts that even come close to working with our old IPB database structure.

Any aversion to PHPBB? From what I've seen, it's pretty powerful and is free.

I really like phpbb, it's what I use on my other sites. But they don't have any script that can convert our old IPB to the phpbb database format.

Even SMF doesn't have a script made for our version, however they do have a script that can convert IPB 1.3.x to the latest SMF database schema. Our database is IPB 1.2.x. It has been reported that the 1.3.x conversion script has worked for people running 1.2.x.

So I'm a little lost, but thats not hard to do when it comes to computers....

Are you changing the floor mat of the forum, as in, the way things are posted and the layout?   

That is basically it. All of the data behind the forums, such as posts, members, PMs, etc will stay. But I will be changing the software that uses that data and displays it to your web browser. That means that the look of the forums and the features you use on them will change.

[kvanderlaag]

I like PHPBB just fine, myself. It's always served me well as a user and an administrator.

I think priority, though, is as little data loss as possible. If upgrading to the newest version of IPB is the easiest way to accomplish this, I'm in for $50 towards the upgrade. I'm sure the user base here can come up with that kind of money.

[dead91silvia]

Can we get an example of another forum that uses each one?

Sorry to be a bother, I would just like to know what I'm going to be voting on if it comes to that.... I'm also not to smart when it comes to this stuff...    

[Coop301]

I don't know anything about how the BB software talks to SQL but how hard would it be to translate the db?  I would think that it would be fairly easy to match the database table fields of the two databases and write a script to insert the data into those fields.  Use the 1.2 script as a starting point and customize it.

I am not a programmer but do it all the time with multiple tables in SQL2000 and soon SQL2008.

[ozzie]

I am not a programmer but do it all the time with multiple tables in SQL2000 and soon SQL2008.

Oddly enough, I'm a programmer but I've never messed around with databases, or I'd offer to write a script. I've been meaning to look into how hard it might be, but I just don't have any time at the moment. I'll try to take a look at it this weekend, if I can hep I'd be glad to, but I don't want to end up in over my head, most of my programming experience is low-level stuff in asm and C, but this seems like a simple script should be able to handle it. And I'd vote for phpbb too, I set up a forum once with it and was quite happy with it.

[kvanderlaag]

VB might be optimal for a script to do that, since it's quite adept at interfacing with SQL databases, easy to use, and flexible in its integration directly into Windows.

...unless the server is, you know, running a linux box with limited support for that sort of thing.

Sorry, there goes my expertise.

[Steven Benner]

Can we get an example of another forum that uses each one?

Of course!

[/li]
• http://www.simplemachines.org/community/
  
• http://forums.invisionpower.com/
  

I don't know anything about how the BB software talks to SQL but how hard would it be to translate the db?  I would think that it would be fairly easy to match the database table fields of the two databases and write a script to insert the data into those fields.  Use the 1.2 script as a starting point and customize it.

It's not as simple as it sounds. There is a lot more data behind a forum than just posts.

Code: [Select]

mysql> show tables;
+------------------------+
| Tables_in_[FORUMS_DB]  |
+------------------------+
| ibf_admin_logs         |
| ibf_admin_sessions     |
| ibf_badwords           |
| ibf_cache_store        |
| ibf_calendar_events    |
| ibf_categories         |
| ibf_contacts           |
| ibf_css                |
| ibf_email_logs         |
| ibf_emoticons          |
| ibf_faq                |
| ibf_forum_perms        |
| ibf_forum_tracker      |
| ibf_forums             |
| ibf_groups             |
| ibf_languages          |
| ibf_macro              |
| ibf_macro_name         |
| ibf_member_extra       |
| ibf_members            |
| ibf_messages           |
| ibf_moderator_logs     |
| ibf_moderators         |
| ibf_pfields_content    |
| ibf_pfields_data       |
| ibf_polls              |
| ibf_posts              |
| ibf_reg_antispam       |
| ibf_search_results     |
| ibf_sessions           |
| ibf_skin_templates     |
| ibf_skins              |
| ibf_spider_logs        |
| ibf_stats              |
| ibf_templates          |
| ibf_titles             |
| ibf_tmpl_names         |
| ibf_topic_mmod         |
| ibf_topics             |
| ibf_tracker            |
| ibf_validating         |
| ibf_voters             |
| ibf_warn_logs          |
+------------------------+
43 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Every forum has a different schema, every major revision of a single forum has a changed schema. Everything from data types, to the way the data is consumed is different. The way that the forum software expects the data is so dramatically different between our old forums and any piece of modern forum software that it makes it very difficult to convert the schema and the data correctly.

Oddly enough, I'm a programmer but I've never messed around with databases, or I'd offer to write a script. I've been meaning to look into how hard it might be ... most of my programming experience is low-level stuff in asm and C, but this seems like a simple script should be able to handle it.

Again, simple is really not the best word to describe the job.  :D

Check out the script used to convert to SMF:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/in...0;attach=107339

And that doesn't even include the programming to deal with the returned data.

VB might be optimal for a script to do that, since it's quite adept at interfacing with SQL databases

SQL is the best language for dealing with databases. It's not good to abstract code out into another language if it has to be running SQL anyway.