Oh and a massive pet peeve.. this is disabled or not an option: I don’t know what it’s called but when you write text it auto spell checks as you type.. it’s like the text is viewable by the browser.. and you can instantly fix up the word (it goes red underlined)
Okay, we probably won’t be doing a local Reddit install then (although using r/LvMI as a supplemental thing might be fun). Still would like to hear more reviews of other platforms. It sounds like vBulletin is going downhill. phpBB sounds popular; would that meet our needs? Any good examples of phpBB? Anyone like Invision?
Daniel, try this site. It’s a bit outdated, but it gives you a basic breakdown of features: http://www.forummatrix.org/
Edit: another comparison site that seems more up to date: http://www.forum-software.org/forum-comparator/ipboard-vs-phpbb3-vs-simple-machines-2-vs-vbulletin4
Finally someone says it.
Go over to the end of the third grouping of buttons on that top row where the source button is. Click on the typical spellcheck button with the dropdown arrow. Click the first option.
I was thinking the same thing, but yeah.
First, thank you to LvMI and Danny for soliciting opinions this time. Purely from my own perspective as a user:
Essential: Reliability, easy quoting, easy linking, easy posting of pictures and videos, easy to format text, preview page, large input box, easy to read, spacing between posts and paragraphs.
Nice to have: Like/rep buttons for posts/threads, highlighting of unread posts, favoriting posts/threads, stickying
Not really bothered: Ignore button, groups, private discussion areas, categories for threads.
My thoughts on nesting… I think I prefer participating in nested forums, but prefer reading non-nested forums. I think it’s very easy to follow conversations here (if quoting is used). The problem with coming in late to nested threads is that you read down the page and when a conversation ends, you then have to scroll up to work out who the next person is replying to. But I also agree with AJ about the unseen effect: I think conversations go deeper in nested forums. However, they also tend to create one-on-one discussions, while forums like this one have more open group discussions. So on balance I think I’d prefer a linear forum.
Graham,
If you use the collapse button on Reddit ( [-] ), that makes it easy to read through threads with a lot of nesting. What you do is when you finished checking out a subsection, you collapse it, and you can visualize what’s going on.
What I perceive as a big advantage of Reddit is that they’ve aimed at making posts compact. This makes the nesting succesful (together with the collapse function).
If you don’t want to go with Reddit, then I would suggest looking into XenForo. The fact that they split off from Vbulletin, and started from scratch, makes me think they have the most modern code of the big ones. phpBB appears to get a total overhaul, but only for the next version (4). MyBB is also still in an old version and the next big one (2) will be rewritten as well. I wouldn’t go with the current version of MyBB. Also, as one poster suggested, MyBB is not capable of converting the content from this current forum; and I doubt any of them are.
This XenForo forum was started on April 24th and went to 1.4M posts and 80K members: http://www.terrariaonline.com/forum/ . A different looking custom template: http://slruser.com/ . I don’t think it would be too difficult to skin it like this forums looks now, in general terms.
http://xenforo.com/community/forums/forum-showcase-and-critiques.53/
Which of the platforms discussed will give us the “all-thread” front-page view that AJ is talking about? Because that is key.
John James: Go over to the end of the third grouping of buttons on that top row where the source button is. Click on the typical spellcheck button with the dropdown arrow. Click the first option."
Obviously… and? No, it’s still a pet peeve. VB and other forums have ‘auto-check’.
@all =
These forums tend towards long, thoughtful posts and responses. I don’t know whether that is the because of the users, but I think the forum actually has something to do with it.
Upon change, I wouldn’t want it to become like RonPaulForums… where there is a lot of ‘spamming’ comments that add nothing to the discussion. I think the type of forum there also has an affect (the ease of posting probably).
Daniel,
Most fora have a page or link that shows you all the latest threads. It’s a simple trick of forwarding people to that link. But what AJ’s getting at is that from the outset there isn’t much reason to create a bunch of subforums. If you just keep it flat, you prevent these problems. Example: [ lobby (technical help) ] [ discussion ] [ Institute related topics (Academy, Events, Donations, etc) ] .
If integration with WordPress is all you want, you can use phpBB (here is a phpBB showcase). If you’re concerned about the need for future integration with who-knows-what then I would drop the money on IP.Board because they have the best integration package and have their own CMS with a lot of modules that might be useful for the Institute. They will also handle the forum conversion for a lousy $60, which is pretty amazing. The weakness of IP.Board is that some of the mods are paid mods.
I don’t understand what that’s supposed to be. You asked for the autocheck where red lines appear under misspelled words. You claimed this forum didn’t have that ability. I simply showed you it did. Again, click on the second “ABC checkmark” button with the dropdown arrow on it and select “Enable SCAYT”.
That is the exact red line check you were asking for and claiming this forum couldn’t do.
I agree in principle with the above highlighted. In general, subforums should be kept to a bare minimum.
I would dare say, go all the way and keep everything in one big subforum (at least at the start), and then branch off another subforum when only absolutely necessary, should the need arise.
Natural ebb and flow of the topics should drive whether subforums split or merge, and not pre-plan them the other way around.
From what I understand, vBulletin and phpBB already has that feature, or least I’ve used them myself on other forums to view the latest topics. Edit: XenForo has it as well.
. . .
By the way, how important is a WYSIWYG editor? Because, it seems, bolting on such an editor seems to break the forum software, e.g. the quoting mechanism breaks on both the “old” and the “new” communities.
Maybe editor compatibility should be a consideration.
From my brief perusing, XenForo looks promising. Maybe worth investigating?
There is also some work on a WordPress-XenForo bridge:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/wordpress-3-bridge.5398/
Anything goes, if it looks more like ‘traditional’ forums and not like Reddit. But, these forums showed that you don’t need good and easy Quote or Search-tools if content is good enough.
XenoForo does sound promising. Does it have a large development community?
Are any of the platforms missing a decent quoting capability? That is a must, too.
I don’t know the first thing about platforms but I have been a member on this board for a number of years and I like the way it works (especially the simpliity of quoting, linking, and embedding) ALOT.
I don’t think that was always there. Interesting.
Why isn’t it the default?
@all - What’s the deal with the ‘chat room’. Will there be one, or it’s something that can be separate. A chat room that is active can alleviate a lot of the ‘spamming chat’ that goes could arise in threads and dilute post quality.
I was going to make efforts to form an Austro-Libertarian dedicated chat site, but if this is the official one… and it’s done properly then it’d save trying to make an ‘unofficial one’.
More prominence instead of being hidden would change a lot of things.
Also what will happen with these forums - remain archived, yeah? Or integrated possibly? [threads over X no. posts are transferred over?] Too much effort I suppose.