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We are currently testing a new forum that will replace this PHPBB3 based one with plans to change it within the next month. It will then, not a huge amount of time after that, update again to a newer version of the new platform, the latter update should have no meaningful effect on how it’s used.
There are some things that all need to be aware of when this happens and, I will update here as it does as well as put a news story up on it as well so you will know but, you will need to keep an eye on it.
First is, it’s a new platform totally so it will look and feel a bit different.
It will bring a ton of new features.
It will bring an improved search facility, which I know has been probably the most requested thing regard the forum. How improved, time will tell.
It will allow logins using social media by the public as well as sharing etc so, we will probably get a lot more enquiries from the public.
That’s some of the good stuff, now the bad.
All passwords will need to be reset, we cannot port them over as they are encrypted and we do not have access nor can we get access to or even want access to those. Sorry, no option there.
Other stuff will almost inevitably break we’re catching a lot of the major stuff but some things like some attachments, embedded content and so on may well simply cease to work. We will fix what we can but expect errors on that front.
Forum permissions (a particular bane of my life) may also be affected though that’ll get fixed fast enough if there’s an issue.
The big one is, the forums will be offline for 8-10 hours minimum whilst all this happens. Again, unavoidable.
Our plan is to take the forums offline on a Friday evening into Saturday morning as that’s the quietest time of the week and, most probably, on the 17th or 24th of this month to perform the migration and get it back up online.
I think it’s worth the pain.
We were going to do this about 8 years ago then again about 2014 but we put it off as it broke too much and we had too many other fires to fight at the time.
Now given advances in technologies behind the scenes we are forced to do something, there is no option but to upgrade or change and we think this is the best way forward with the minimum of disruption, maximum gains from what we can’t avoid.
Just so you all know what’s going on.
K.
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