Spherical forums

General Discussion => Site Comments => Topic started by: DaVince on June 22, 2017, 03:31:54 pm

Title: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: DaVince on June 22, 2017, 03:31:54 pm
So SMF is apparently ancient and doesn't seem to be updated much anymore. Even now, it does not officially support PHP 7 and it is by sheer luck that it runs at all. Not to mention it's had many issues with spambots and the like, as well as just problems and shortcomings in general.

So I was thinking... Maybe we could migrate the forums to a more modern forum system? Not right away -- eventually!
I have stumbled across a much better option, one that will allow us to extend the forum system in a way that could grow the community as a whole a little.

I experimented with MyBB (https://mybb.com/) and it seems to work great and come with a TON of features on both the user and admin sides, as well as mods and themes. It seems like a much better option for the future. It seems to even cover migration from other forums (see attached screenshot), so that's pretty awesome.

But naturally, I wouldn't just make such a big change without receiving some thoughts on this.
Title: Re: Idea: eventually migrating the forum?
Post by: Fat Cerberus on June 22, 2017, 10:47:47 pm
Yeah, it's easy to tell that SMF is showing it's age - using it feels like something out of the mid-2000s.  It was clearly designed before the social media era. :P  That said, it has served us well for what it is, and other than a few hiccups on mobile I haven't really been able to complain about anything specific.

The whole site also seems a lot more snappy since the upgrade too.  Well, other than the wiki, but you already knew that. ;)

As for myBB: Based on that screenshot I do like it, it kind of has that "retro" feel to it where it reminds me of the old forums while still looking modern at the same time.  I'd be behind such a migration 100%.
Title: Re: Idea: eventually migrating the forum?
Post by: DaVince on June 23, 2017, 03:47:47 am
The nice thing is that it has theme support, so it can be made to look a lot better. I like this Bootstrap-based one I found, for example.
Title: Re: Idea: eventually migrating the forum?
Post by: Rhuan on June 23, 2017, 03:21:19 pm
What is myBB like speedwise?

I've seen several newer forum solutions that for reasons unknown run a lot slower than SMF and other older options.

Sure SMF isn't the snazziest but it certainly runs smoothly (or at least appears to)
Title: Re: Idea: eventually migrating the forum?
Post by: Flying Jester on June 23, 2017, 04:53:17 pm
Assuming that the performance is reasonable, I think that being better maintained is a big enough plus given how important anti-spam and security (which also is a plus for newer PHP) is for forum software.
Title: Re: Idea: eventually migrating the forum?
Post by: DaVince on June 23, 2017, 11:12:43 pm
I have as of yet only tested it locally alongside SMF, but it's snappy and I couldn't sense any difference, even with the rather large post database imported into it. I think we'll be fine on that front.

So can I take this as a 'yes' from the community? I'll be putting up a little test version soonish, then!
Title: Re: Idea: eventually migrating the forum?
Post by: mezzoEmrys on June 24, 2017, 02:02:55 am
Does MyBB have better support for code embedding/syntax highlighting?? That'd be the only thing that might be questionable that I can think of, but at worst I would expect you could just add it into the CSS manually.
Title: Re: Idea: eventually migrating the forum?
Post by: DaVince on June 24, 2017, 04:19:14 am
Looks like there are two different mods that would allow syntax highlighting. Only thing is, they rely on different bbcode ([code-sh=javascript] or [geshi=javascript]). I'll experiment with them and see if I can modify them to just use the code tag instead.
Title: Re: Idea: eventually migrating the forum?
Post by: Rhuan on June 24, 2017, 06:57:15 am
A test version sounds like a good idea to me, so we can all have a fiddle before deciding for sure if that's feasible.
Title: Re: Idea: eventually migrating the forum?
Post by: DaVince on July 01, 2017, 05:26:20 am
As spambots are starting to find their way in and the SMF admin panel proves to be very limited, I find myself contemplating this more. Will set up a test version today.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: DaVince on July 01, 2017, 05:43:48 am
Actually, I figured I should look around a little more and it seems like a forum system like Flarum (https://discuss.flarum.org/) might be more inviting and conducive to discussion. Subforums work more like filters so that no matter what, the latest activity is shown at the top of the main forum really quickly and easily. Any thoughts on that?

Edit: I just discovered Elkarte (http://www.elkarte.net/), which is originally based on SMF and can directly use the SMF database, but it's apparently vastly improved. I'm going to have to experiment with these systems locally first and then come back on the best course of action.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: DaVince on July 01, 2017, 06:40:17 am
ElkArte looks pretty good in the end because it's basically an updated, maintained kind of SMF with more options, plugins and spam protection. Gonna put something online soon.

Edit: not looking too shabby.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: DaVince on July 01, 2017, 11:38:13 am
A test forum is now available at http://www.spheredev.org/ElkArte/
You can log in with the same credentials you use here.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Rhuan on July 01, 2017, 11:48:45 am
Seems pretty decent at a first try, I';ll try it on my phone in a little bit.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: DaVince on July 01, 2017, 12:00:19 pm
Good to know! It should be great on your phone, I noticed it's fully responsive. :)
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Fat Cerberus on July 01, 2017, 12:02:43 pm
I haven't tried it on mobile yet, but on a desktop browser everything seems spaced too far apart.  Other than that it looks nice. Maybe a bit too stark and minimalist, though.

One bug I noticed is that the login bar didn't work.  It took me to the full login page saying I didn't enter anything in the username field.  Logging in from there worked fine.

edit: The font is way too big on mobile, and yeah, everything is still too spaced out.  I don't understand the obsession with large fonts in mobile UIs recently.  The iOS beta has these really ugly headings on every screen too.  Just because I have a 6-inch screen on my phone doesn't mean I want to compensate by making everything ginormous, that defeats the purpose of having a large phone :P
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Rhuan on July 01, 2017, 12:22:56 pm
So I like it both on my laptop and my desktop BUT I do tend to like lower resolutions and larger/brighter images than the average person.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: DaVince on July 02, 2017, 04:06:47 am
Wow, yeah, the text DOES look quite big on a phone. Nothing a few theme tweaks can't fix though. As for the spacing... I dunno, I personally think it looks a lot more comfortable with the added whitespace. But as it is, I actually have to zoom in the current forums in order to get a comfortable experience.

I can reduce the maximum side width though (on a 1366x768 screen it looks perfect but it gets too wide beyond that, it seems).
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Rhuan on July 02, 2017, 07:40:51 am
I personally prefer ElkArte to Flarum for navigation/appearance, but hey, I don't like change.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Fat Cerberus on July 02, 2017, 09:58:58 am

Wow, yeah, the text DOES look quite big on a phone. Nothing a few theme tweaks can't fix though. As for the spacing... I dunno, I personally think it looks a lot more comfortable with the added whitespace. But as it is, I actually have to zoom in the current forums in order to get a comfortable experience.

I can reduce the maximum side width though (on a 1366x768 screen it looks perfect but it gets too wide beyond that, it seems).


The main thing for me is that the excess of whitespace makes me lose context.  Buttons and such start to look like they're swimming and not attached to anything.  Maybe it's not so much the spacing though as the lack of a clear separation between things that should logically be distinct.  That seems to be the trend with UIs nowadays: Let's make them really really minimal and make everything white so you can't tell where one thing ends and the next begins.  It's like someone looked at a newspaper and then said "Let's make a user interface look like this!".  And then everybody else followed suit.

The thing is, people do seem to love the minimalist thing--look how successful Google was with Material Design on Android.  Not me, though.  Maybe everyone else is normal and I'm actually the strange one! :P

Oh, on a sidenote, this whole "being a mod" thing is really messing with my muscle memory.  I keep accidentally trying to edit people's posts when I really just want to quote them, hehe. :P
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: DaVince on July 02, 2017, 11:52:41 am
Well, whitespace is ultimately also supposed to aid in what belongs together: elements that belong to each other will be grouped together while keeping sufficient space between the next group of things. I get what you're saying about the excess of whitespace, but it's the lack of whitespace that would really make it unclear where one things ends and the next thing begins.

That said, going too far in either direction WILL cause usability issues. I was mainly talking about the desktop version here, but I also find the mobile version to look significantly more cluttered and it could use some more contrast. Contrast between elements also separates them better and right now this contrast really isn't high enough.

All that said, I just picked a theme that looked like it really matched Spherical itself well. From here I can keep looking for themes, or I can modify the one that's there. I think I'll do the latter, make it a little darker, give things more contrast, try to play around with what works and not.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Fat Cerberus on July 02, 2017, 12:00:20 pm
Yeah, I realized it was the lack of contrast that was bugging me most.  That's what I meant about lack of clear separation.  That, when combined with the surplus of whitespace, just makes it borderline unusable.

The cluttered look on mobile I attribute to the huge font.  Shrinking the text would go a long way to fixing that, I think.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Eggbertx on July 03, 2017, 07:17:07 am
Using the Firefox Android app, radio inputs look wrong, and I'm unable to select them.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Fat Cerberus on July 06, 2017, 10:21:48 am
Yeah, we need a new forum system posthaste.  The spambots have opened the floodgates and the moderation features on this one are... lacking.  Deleting hundreds of spam posts one by one is not my idea of a fun time :(
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Rhuan on July 06, 2017, 12:36:57 pm
Wow, what on earth is going on with these spambots,  they're not even advertising anything, they're just generating junk, have we annoyed someone?
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Fat Cerberus on July 06, 2017, 01:16:51 pm
There are pothole links embedded in the spam posts, but a huge word salad wall of text certainly isn't going to make anyone want to click them, so... yeah, it doesn't make much sense to me either.

I tried to see if I could deny new users the ability to post links to fight them off, but it doesn't seem like that's one of the available permissions.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: DaVince on July 06, 2017, 04:16:07 pm
I've disabled registration. Looks like with the new SMF update, all the anti-spam mods got disabled, and re-adding all of those is a greater effort than just moving to the new forum system.

Anyone against moving please speak up now. Otherwise I'll be moving it tomorrow (or whenever I see the time to do it). Also, sorry for the trouble with the spam.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Eggbertx on July 08, 2017, 02:10:54 pm
Yeah, I think it's best that we ditch SMF. Even if it's an inconvenience, I'd rather have us do that then block registration, as that could be a deterrant to people interested in using Sphere. I'll make a post on the Facebook page.
Title: Re: Idea: forum migration?
Post by: Rukiri on August 01, 2017, 12:07:48 am
Xenforo is pretty good :)