Welcome to the new Forum Software!


bob

bob

Administrator
Staff member
As I write this (4/12/18) we've just finished a massive upgrade of the forum software. We were previously running Vbulletin, and while it served well for years, it was no longer being supported and eventually ended up being flagged as a potential risk by some online software even when no active threats were present.

With no reasonable upgrades of that software in sight, it was time to make a change. We're now running on Xenforo 2, the most recent version of that popular and well liked forum software. We also have a new photo gallery, Xenforo Media Gallery. The gallery is tightly integrated into the forum now rather than being an add-on. This allows additional features, for example a search can now include both the forums and the gallery if you so choose.

Both programs are faster, more secure, and much more mobile friendly. You'll no longer need to use Tapatalk, the forum automatically scales to the size of the screen you're using.

Welcome to the new place. Your user name and password will work the same as before. While there are plenty of upgrades and changes, the basics of how to post and reply are nearly identical to what we had before, so you shouldn't have any trouble using the new software.
 
Things were running slowly at first, as the last step was to build the search index and it used a lot of system resources. It took about 2 hours for that to get done but now the place is running nice and snappy.
 
wombat457 said:
This is impressive and seems much faster than the old forum. Job well done mate!
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It's faster, cleaner looking, far more secure, (hopefully this is the end of any browser warning, though it make take a while to update) and it also works very well with mobile devices, which make up about 50% of online activity these days.
 
bob said:
As I write this (4/12/18) we've just finished a massive upgrade of the forum software. We were previously running Vbulletin, and while it served well for years, it was no longer being supported and eventually ended up being flagged as a potential risk by some online software even when no active threats were present.

With no reasonable upgrades of that software in sight, it was time to make a change. We're now running on Xenforo 2, the most recent version of that popular and well liked forum software. We also have a new photo gallery, Xenforo Media Gallery. The gallery is tightly integrated into the forum now rather than being an add-on. This allows additional features, for example a search can now include both the forums and the gallery if you so choose.

Both programs are faster, more secure, and much more mobile friendly. You'll no longer need to use Tapatalk, the forum automatically scales to the size of the screen you're using.

Welcome to the new place. Your user name and password will work the same as before. While there are plenty of upgrades and changes, the basics of how to post and reply are nearly identical to what we had before, so you shouldn't have any trouble using the new software.
Click to expand...

Bob et al,

Nice job on the new site. It's attractive, easy to use and its "birth" took only a day or two!
 
autocoach said:
Looks okay. Lot of white space a la google's style.
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It makes reading easier, essentially creates a column. You don't have words all the way across the page in a book or magazine, and your eyes aren't comfortable reading that way.

Google does it and so does Facebook as well as many more. We're a bit unusual in that it's true white space, rather than ad after ad. We do have a few ads, this place isn't free to run, but I'm trying to keep them within reason.
 
I see we currently have 10 members online. I guess the word is getting out that the place is back up and running and people are coming back to the website.
 
Looks great. One question, my photo albums from the old site, can't seem to find them....
 
Olie said:
Looks great. One question, my photo albums from the old site, can't seem to find them....
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Olie, I'm not sure why the images wouldn't have transferred. Were they in a "private album"? I don't think this software supports that option.
 
bob said:
Olie, I'm not sure why the images wouldn't have transferred. Were they in a "private album"? I don't think this software supports that option.
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I don't know if the album was private or public. I simply went to my profile page, made a couple of albums and began uploading. I'll have to check my early posts as I used the bbcode. If those are no longer view-able then I guess it was private.

Not a big deal, I can always upload them again. For Future reference, how do I know if the album is public or private?
 
Olie, I need to do a bit more research on those various settings. I'm going to see if I can disable private albums entirely, they really should all be public and most folks who create them never intended for them to be private in the first place.
 
OK, I've just double checked. We aren't using personal albums on this software, so you don't need to worry about creating one by mistake.

You can still create an album in the albums sections but they will be public. A good example of when to create an album would be for a construction project like Olie's covered bridge.
 
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