The move to vBulletin Update

[WILL]

Hey guys, I just wanted to give everyone a little update on the status of this little project to help improve PGD. The decision to move to vBulletin from the existing SMF site software was made sometime early this year and we started collecting funds to help in the purchase of the new software. To date, we have collected a grand total of $118.71 Canadian Dollars. The total cost of the software license is $285 US Dollars.

As mentioned before I am willing and will absolutely cover the cost of the rest of the remaining amount. In fact I'd like to make the purchase soon so that we can get the ball rolling.

So you can see somewhat how the new site will look have a gander at this here link, I'm sure you'll be happy with what is available: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/content.php

The new key features will be:
- News Posting for Staff and Members alike;
- The same good ole Forums we know and love; and
- Staff and Member Blogs available here at PGD. Wanted to start one, well here is a place to do it.

Other things that may come of use is... a calendar for those all important events like the PGD Annual, the next Lundum Dare and those NecroSOFT boys and their crazy 48 hour game creation sessions. A listing of recent blog and forum posts... and the ability to link your Facebook account to us.

That's all for now any questions or comments feel free. :)

[chronozphere]

Aha.. I've got some good news for you. I still owe you a donation. ;)

Anyone else who hasn't donated yet?? We've gotta narrow that 160$ gap. :D

[WILL]

Of course donations are still welcome, If you want to do so through PayPal that's awesome the Donation button is accessible on PGD's main page in the top news post still. If your donation happens to come after I've already purchased the site software I'll just put it towards other things towards the site or things related to community events.

[paul_nicholls]

This should be great!

Thanks for the heads-up Jason :)

cheers,
Paul

[WILL]

If you want to see all the listed features that will be included also have a look at this list. I just found it while looking up more information...

https://www.vbulletin.com/index.php?do=features

NOTE: We are getting the Publishing Suite not the Forums Classic, so YES there will be Blog capabilities for all of you if you want.

[de_jean_7777]

This is great. I can't wait. I'll try to make a donation one of these days.

[DarkBow]

To be honest I have a divided opinion on this. While I find the new functionalities to be very interesting I also always have thought that vBulletin has a too cluttered UI.

Just my 2 cents :)

[chronozphere]

Donated! :D

[gnoch]

Hey guys, I just wanted to give everyone a little update on the status of this little project to help improve PGD. The decision to move to vBulletin from the existing SMF site software was made sometime early this year


The new key features will be:
- News Posting for Staff and Members alike;
I don't see how you can NOT do that in SMF...


- The same good ole Forums we know and love; and
- Staff and Member Blogs available here at PGD. Wanted to start one, well here is a place to do it.
Same here. I've been offering blogs for users (with admin panel and stuff) at http://noisen.com for the last 3 years. It's using custom code, but I'm working on a mod for doing that, and there are already plenty of blog mods for SMF.

I'm sorry, it's just that I don't understand your reason for moving to another forum software, paid-for at that, instead of trying out SMF2, which is stable enough in my opinion. (I've been using it ever since I opened noisen.com)
I could understand a move to IPB, which is relatively nice, or the free PunBB, which is faster on slow servers (and yours looks like it's a very slow server, or at least a slow connection to France).

Interestingly, I spent some time at SMF developing the software (so I have knowledge in both SMF and Pascal game development), and I can tell you that SMF is to forum software what Delphi is to programming, whereas vBulletin would, fittingly, be Visual Basic (it started out as a forum for VB devs), IPB would be C++ and phpBB would be Fortran.
I'm now working on a side-project that should hopefully get SMF up to speed in terms of feature set (compared to the commercial competition) on the day SMF2 gets out. Consider it a super-mod that implements everything that should be in a modern forum system -- for free.

Just my two cents. Don't switch until you've at least tried SMF2 RC3 (or the upcoming final RC.)

[AthenaOfDelphi]

Same here. I've been offering blogs for users (with admin panel and stuff) at http://noisen.com for the last 3 years. It's using custom code, but I'm working on a mod for doing that, and there are already plenty of blog mods for SMF.

I'm sorry, it's just that I don't understand your reason for moving to another forum software, paid-for at that, instead of trying out SMF2, which is stable enough in my opinion. (I've been using it ever since I opened noisen.com)
I could understand a move to IPB, which is relatively nice, or the free PunBB, which is faster on slow servers (and yours looks like it's a very slow server, or at least a slow connection to France).

Interestingly, I spent some time at SMF developing the software (so I have knowledge in both SMF and Pascal game development), and I can tell you that SMF is to forum software what Delphi is to programming, whereas vBulletin would, fittingly, be Visual Basic (it started out as a forum for VB devs), IPB would be C++ and phpBB would be Fortran.
I'm now working on a side-project that should hopefully get SMF up to speed in terms of feature set (compared to the commercial competition) on the day SMF2 gets out. Consider it a super-mod that implements everything that should be in a modern forum system -- for free.

Just my two cents. Don't switch until you've at least tried SMF2 RC3 (or the upcoming final RC.)


The thing is, as we've said time and time again.... we (the admins) are all pretty busy and building a site with all that functionality requires us to install numerous mods. This raises issues relating to setup time and maintenance. All too often when you're using mods, you have to wait on upgrading the core site software until all the mods are compatible. This is a problem. It also takes a lot longer than just updating one all encompassing suite of software like vBulletin.

We want to simplify site maintenance so we can spend more time doing interesting things for the site, like writing articles etc.

[WILL]

Well that's the main thing, all other options seem to have led to more massive mountains of work just to get what is already available for a small cost considering what we could be paying for a fully custom site. And should we need to update we would have to practically set up everything again. An all-in-one software allows the staff to focus more on you guys and other organizing of events rather that just trying to keep the site pages working for you to use the site.

All that said, I've just received another donation closing the gap further for the cost amount and I'm getting ready to make the purchase soon. Anyone else what to chip in please feel free, anything will help.

Also if you would like to become a part of the staff once the new site is up to help reignite some excitement around here, please feel free to PM me and we'll see what job position we can give you.

[gnoch]

Seriously, SMF2 RC3 has most of the 'important' mods up to date. Even in the days of SMF2 Beta, when none of the mods were ready, I converted them by myself. It only took a few hours for the largest ones. It's certainly no harder than programming a game :P
I could do the move to SMF for you if you'd like and if you're too busy. I wouldn't mind.



Well that's the main thing, all other options seem to have led to more massive mountains of work just to get what is already available for a small cost considering what we could be paying for a fully custom site.
But what's particularly different on your website? I don't see anything special, if you don't mind me saying...
Now look at http://noisen.com -- now that's a heavily customized website. This one (pgd) could actually benefit a lot from upgrading to SMF2.


And should we need to update we would have to practically set up everything again. An all-in-one software allows the staff to focus more on you guys
That you think. vBulletin4's release was very controversial. It led to the departure of their main programmer. I'm not sure it's as stable as it pretends to be.


All that said, I've just received another donation closing the gap further for the cost amount and I'm getting ready to make the purchase soon. Anyone else what to chip in please feel free, anything will help.
Seriously, if you have to BUY a software package, go for Invision instead. It's much better in every respect. It's only slightly better than the current SMF2, and even Invision isn't going to be able to compare when the new SMF project that is being built is released. Just don't do anything you could regret later, that's all. Converting from one forum to another, and then back again is not particularly easy either.


Also if you would like to become a part of the staff once the new site is up to help reignite some excitement around here, please feel free to PM me and we'll see what job position we can give you.
I'm not really kind of an "animator", more of a technician (programming stuff, remember?). Maintaining a forum isn't really a "job" to me...

[Darthman]

How can I donate?

[chronozphere]

Donate here (http://www.pascalgamer.com/donate.php) :)

[Darthman]

Ok, I restate the question:
How can I donate other way than PayPal?

[chronozphere]

Not sure if that is possible. I just used Paypal. You should PM WILL and ask for alternatives. :)

[WILL]

Hi Darthman, I'm glad you want to donate, every little bit helps. Every big bit helps too. ;)

The account that takes donations for PGD and Pascal Gamer Magazine is held by PayPal so all means of donating money electronically is done by PayPal. I've been told that specific regions have a hard time with PayPal due to policies or availability. This is unfortunate, because the main reason for using the PayPal service is to be able to record, track and manage all donations paperlessly. It would be too much to retain records for legal reasons should any of these were to be on paper only. And yes, I do keep very good records of every donation and transaction of expenses.

If you want to see just about every way to donate to a PayPal account, you can go to www.paypal.com and read what options they give you.

At one time we had merchandise that we were selling through an online storefront (Cafe Press) with PGD logos and such, but it wasn't a huge success. This is something we could start back up should the interest re-spark.

[JernejL]

I am not very happy with vbulletin upgrade, or mostly the theme.

The forum and topic graphics - icons and colors are now super-unclear on indicating what is new and what was already read.

Also there's still too many forum sections, i said this around 5 years ago.. there's forum sections with like 30 threads total and last updated earlier than 2010.. In essence the forum still looks like a mess :(

Edit:
I think there's better and more functional free forums such as PHPBB V3, there's no real reason to use vBulletin.

Also.. doesn't work.. :(

[chronozphere]

The forum and topic graphics - icons and colors are now super-unclear on indicating what is new and what was already read.


I agree that the Icons on the forums could be made alot clearer, but I don't see why you shouldn't just use the "what's new" button?



Also there's still too many forum sections, i said this around 5 years ago.. there's forum sections with like 30 threads total and last updated earlier than 2010.. In essence the forum still looks like a mess


This has obviously nothing to do with vBulletin. But I agree. we could remove a few forum sections, for example:

> Jobs and resum?©s (noone seems to use it)
> PP Compiler forum
> Kylix IDE/Compiler forum
> XCESS GD kit forum

It seems to me that only popular libaries (and those with alot of threads) deserve their own subforum.
Also, the whole sound/music section could be merged into one subforum. Same for the story/documentation and graphics/modelling sections.
We should keep in mind the PGD forums are mainly geared towards programmers. Artists and storywriters will most likely ask their questions at Gamedev.net or somewhere else. I rather see 10 subforums that are actively used than 30 subforums that are deserted and outdated.

I'm pretty sure that merging forums can be cumbersome (never done it myself), so I don't expect anything to happen soon. Just saying that I agree with delfi's point. :)

[JernejL]

An odd issue when posting a new thread: There is no formatting toolbar anywhere.. it's there in quick reply but not in new thread / post advanced form.. wtf?

[WILL]

The [pascal] BBCode tags were just a mod that we used when running under phpBB, we don't plan on modifying any of the site software's code as it impedes updates and site stability. The [code] tags work just as well however. :)

One of the nice things about vBulletin compared to phpBB or SMF for example is that you can collapse and expand sections of the Forums so you don't have to see everything at once. Should you close your browser and revisit PGD, you'll notice that the forums will stay organized as you left them. Also What's New is the new 'Posts since last visit'. It also includes News Post comments too.

If you are really keen, you can use an RSS Feed reader to read all the latest forums posts if you like.

As for the formatting tool bar, there is the simple one if you hit quick reply, but if you want more advanced options you should select 'Go Advanced' instead and you can do more to format your post content. Including uploading images and files that will not get lost by referencing external hosting services.

No one likes things to change all the time, but I'm sure you will see that the site now out performs the old one and has many more clean features than any of the previous versions of the site. ;)

[Murmandamus]

I've said before that I don't care one way or the other, as long as it is usable and readable without too much hassle or eyestrain.

That said, don't bother comparing forum features/performance between phpBB, SMF, vB, etc. They all have pretty much the same featureset and performance within a percentage point or two. I've run most of the "popular" ones at one point or another for various forums, and the differences are almost too small to worry over. The important thing is to choose the one you feel more comfortable with, and stick with it.

What I would like to have is a main index display mode which, by default, collapses everything that has no new posts. I know there is the "new posts" link, but meh. Just would like for it to come up with that by default.

Yeah, the RSS reader helps, but I don't really use it all that much.

[JernejL]

As for the formatting tool bar, there is the simple one if you hit quick reply, but if you want more advanced options you should select 'Go Advanced' instead and you can do more to format your post content. Including uploading images and files that will not get lost by referencing external hosting services.

Sometimes i WANT to embed a picture or a link or format text, there is none of those options in "go advanced".....

[WILL]

Sometimes i WANT to embed a picture or a link or format text, there is none of those options in "go advanced".....
Actually you don't need to go to advanced to upload an image. You have to upload it from your computer to be able to format it later. You cannot upload the image from a foreign URL. I think that might be the problem.

[JernejL]

Actually you don't need to go to advanced to upload an image. You have to upload it from your computer to be able to format it later. You cannot upload the image from a foreign URL. I think that might be the problem.

I get the feeling that you are intentionally not looking at the issue i pointed out.

I don't want to upload images. i want formatting toolbar in "go advanced" / "post topic"

Let me visualize: The formatting toolbar is MISSING THERE:

http://www.mathpudding.com/temp/NO%20FORMATTING%20TOOLBAR.jpg

[WILL]

I think I understand what the problem is. Check out this thread where Christina explains how to set your editor preference. The screenshot helps too btw. ;)

http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/showthread.php?5984-Message-Editor-Configuration

Unfortunately we were not able to batch set this option for each exiting member when we converted all the accounts over to the new site. However once you set it to the WYSIWYG Editor you'll have your formatting options and the ability to upload images and post YouTube videos and the like.

[Traveler]

I get the feeling that you are intentionally not looking at the issue i pointed out.

This is not to judge you, but it's something I've learned along the way and feel I need to share:
I find that of about half the time I accuse people when I think they are wrong, they usually are not. This is mostly the case when I only see half the picture. Always double check. And if you're not 100% sure, only tell what you see or what you think is the case. Never tell people they are wrong, because in the end it makes you look bad, when they aren't.

[JernejL]

This is a pretty stupid change on vbulletin's part. i have not yet seen a vbulletin ever configuired in such a manner.

Traveler: all i wanted was a solution, to me it looked like a issue with the forum theme, so i reported this as i saw it. I see nothing unusual / wrong with that.

[AthenaOfDelphi]

This is a pretty stupid change on vbulletin's part. i have not yet seen a vbulletin ever configuired in such a manner.

This issue should only affect those users imported from the existing forum database. As WILL pointed out, at the time, I couldn't find a quick way of fixing it for everyone other than post instructions as to how to select the required editor, hence nothing has been done about it. I'm sure I can fix it for everyone, but I've been really busy with work and studies and so minor issues like that have taken a back seat.