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Migrating to Xenforo
- Thread starter arn
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LOL. Are you involved in the work, since you seem to know this as a fact? Do you have any insight in the progress? Or do you just feel entitled to this?
Did you even read what arn wrote in the original post about this?
Enterprise type applications are very complex, involved and require a lot of configuration and some customization. Its not unheard of for major installs/conversions to take over a year. I work in IT and my company is involved in a major application upgrade, it easily can take a year. While a forum is not the exact same thing, it similar enough to know that you can't just slam it in.
Just consider the outcry if people lose their posts, userids, or the forum does not work because they rush the product in.
You've obviously never worked in IT and done any type of large software upgrade or conversion.
You can do it quickly, or you can do it right. Seems like the MR admins have taken the second option.
I quite like Xenforo, especially the Discussions functionality. So glad to hear this is happening 
I've worked with some sophisticated enterprise applications and it does take a lot of work to implement something like this smoothly.
I'd much rather MacRumors take their time and get it right than rush out the new site. Plus, it isn't like the current site is lacking. We've gotten along fine until now, we can manage for another 6 months or so.
I'd much rather MacRumors take their time and get it right than rush out the new site. Plus, it isn't like the current site is lacking. We've gotten along fine until now, we can manage for another 6 months or so.
I suspect it is getting close to ready...
I dread all the forum uproar when they do change. People typically don't respond to change well.
So long as the admins really dig down deep, and make sure all their t's are crossed, and i's are dotted, there won't be many differences between what we've got now, and Xenforo. I think most of the biggest changes will be on the back end. For us, we might get a few new buttons, some slight rendering differences, and nothing more.
Personally: a change of shape of avatar won't upset me.
Communally: if differences in rendering will include reductions in legibility (e.g. reduced contrast and contentious fonts, maybe inspired by Yosemite), then I should expect more than a few users to be displeased.
Let's have an emphasis on usability
It's rather a lot more than that. If that's all it was, there'd be no reason to spend so much time and effort changing over in the first place. The changes are pretty much all for the better, but yes, people who can't deal with change at all (and they exist) will complain about it.
--Eric
From what I gather, the major reason for the migration is because vBulletin is apparently run by a bunch of bastards, while Xenforo is allegedly pretty cool and easy to get along with. Most of the advantages made from the switch will be for those running the forums, making it easier for the admins to manage and upgrade. We'll benefit by having a better, more stable forum to visit, but the superficial changes shouldn't be all that great. What we're getting won't look or act much different than what we have now.
Someone will complain, sure, and there probably will be at least three death threats made before it's all said and done. It is the internet, after all. But I don't think it's gonna be a huge deal, otherwise.
Sorry about the delay. The design took the longest piece. So we got a version of that in late Feb. Then I've been traveling pretty much all of March. And into April. (I'm out next week too).
I am going to open up the test environment to everyone pretty soon. Some of the contributors have access to it already.
I expect people to have issues with it... But that's why I want people to play with the early version of it first to get any obvious issues out of the way.
arn
I am going to open up the test environment to everyone pretty soon. Some of the contributors have access to it already.
I expect people to have issues with it...
But that's why I want people to play with the early version of it first to get any obvious issues out of the way.arn
Like the Yosemite haters, refusing to leave Mavericks because they can't handle the new look and complaining about it constantly.
Sorry about the delay. The design took the longest piece. So we got a version of that in late Feb. Then I've been traveling pretty much all of March. And into April. (I'm out next week too).
I am going to open up the test environment to everyone pretty soon. Some of the contributors have access to it already.
I expect people to have issues with it...
arn
Count me in for the first Public Beta
It's because vBulletin isn't really developed anymore, which is pretty clearly stated in the first post in this thread.
I'm a mod on a forum that did the exact same migration, and the changes for users are more than superficial. It's just a more modern platform that has better features. The behind the scenes stuff is better too, yes.
It should be reasonably different (and better). Granted there's customization involved so I don't know how far MacRumors intends to go with that, but while it's not a totally new paradigm or anything (the basic concepts of posting on a forum are the same), it's not like it's just a matter of different button images.
--Eric
Admin note:
A few comments about Yosemite were removed, since they were off-topic to the thread. But feel free to repost them in relevant threads!
Carry on...
A few comments about Yosemite were removed, since they were off-topic to the thread. But feel free to repost them in relevant threads!
Carry on...
I went to the site that Arn linked to in the first post and the design isn't dramatically different than what we have no, or so it seems. Assuming they use that there really shouldn't be any major UI changes accepted a redesigned ribbon and maybe new fonts.
Like you said, it shouldn't be a huge deal.
Of course the basic aspects of a forum software are the same, but the appearance is drastically different. MR could use an interface lift, it doesn't help that I joined in 2014 with the forum software looking like something out of 2005.
But it's functional, that's the most important thing. If a redesign with Xenforo will bring the increased improvement that it is supposed to than I'm all for it.
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One thing I'm curious about, will Xenforo increase site performance? I get a lot of lag when browsing MR on my iPad 3 (yes, that model is slow all the time, but it's much worse here).
From my experience, Xenforo is much snappier than VB - at least it is on a few of the other sites I frequent.
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