[Dev] Release of Updated Feathercoin (FTC) Forum - Software and set-up
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*** UPDATE ***
We have now set a date to cut over to the new software, we will be taking the current forum off-line at 17:00 GMT on Thursday the 23rd July 2015
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Oh dare I say it ? as I know how well this went down last time it was done, but as I mentioned here we really have little to no choice on the matter
IPBoard costs money to keep some of the key features running, anti-spam being one of them and we can all see whats happened now that has expired!!
The weapon of choice being proposed at the moment is NodeBB I’ll leave you to go and research on their site and the web but a little snippet for you
NodeBB is a next-generation discussion platform that utilizes web sockets for instant interactions and real-time notifications. NodeBB forums have many modern features out of the box such as social network integration and streaming discussions.
NodeBB is an open source project which can be forked on GitHub. Don’t forget to check out the ways that you can help contribute to this project, from translations, pull requests, and telling your friends
Here’s a couple of screen shots to whet your appetite before I get into the details of what it means for us
New home page
New topic list page
New support page, notice the question tags
New Nav-Bar
As you can see from above we have kept it nice and simple, enabling a very easy to read space for your favorite feather :)
I’m going to stop typing now and for a good reason but I’ll be back later to let you know what’s next :) …
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Back again…
Here is the list of features that we are hoping to get ready for launch day
Switch to open source software
Faster more responsive page loads
Better spam protection
Improved support forum
New Shoutbox/Chat
MentionsWe have done a number of test data imports and are working through the issues we have experienced in preparation for the switch over, we are tweaking the code and doing our best to make the experience as painless as possible.
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TL;DRThe switch to an open source product not only gives us the benefit of not having a licensing cost, but also enables us to develop cool features and plugins to run here on the feathercoin form, the list of ideas is almost endless and when the switch has been made we will start to explore some of them in more detail
Spam protection is something we are severely lacking right now, we get 10’s of spam registrations today and keeping them at bay has almost become a full time job for wrapper, but not only that it clutters up the forum if you just want to hop on and see whats happening
Support for users has always been at the heart of the feathercoin community, so with the questions and answers marking system in use you will easily be able to see if the thread your looking at has solved the problem, and if you’re feeling helpful see that little “?†on the Nav-Bar that will list any unanswered questions ;)
Over the recent months the team have been working away, not necessarily behind closed doors, but on products and platforms that don’t support un-invited access so the re-introduction of the shoutbox is aimed to bring the community closer together, as registered members will be able to join in :)
Mentions, allows posters to reference (or mention) other users or groups on the forum by simply precluding the @ symbol before a username, nothing new there but it’s quite cool to see your mentions pop up in the Nav-Bar (right-hand side, the little bell with the red “1” allowing you to easily find any posts you have been mentioned in
Oooh and some other features we are looking at for shortly afterwards
- Enhanced forum search
- Opt in group for news letters and announcements via email
- WordPress integration
and for a bit of fun
- Using the HTML5 Vibration API to alert you upon new incoming notifications while browsing on mobile
- Push notifications to user on mobile phones
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We currently don’t have a set date for the change over but will keep you updated in this post
UM
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That’s not the biggest improvement IMO. The biggest improvement is allowing the community to self moderate via the up/down voting system. It’s the entire communities responsibility to help facilitate the conversation and you all need empowering. Someone being a bit of a dick? Downvote them. Someone trolling and stopping an interesting conversation from developing, downvote them. The forum needs to be for people to get heard, when people can’t be heard for non-constructive and off topic trolling it will descend into chaos, we can all help fix that. :)
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What**exactly **was wrong with simple machines (1st version of forum)?
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Nothing I’m guessing, but I wasn’t part of the decision make process at that time.
NodeBB however is a huge step forwards from both IPBoard and SMF, gives us the features listed above, takes us back to open source and gives us a platform we can build upon.
UM
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What**exactly **was wrong with simple machines (1st version of forum)?
SM Forum is very basic. IPBoard had much more features. Plus I believe the reason for the move was the security issues that caused the forum hack.
UM is right, nodeBB is much better. We tested two of the best new bits of forum software, Discourse and NodeBB.
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Thanks for the update and the work, actually look forward to the new forum now .
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We are getting there, we have now cleared up the issues we where having with the imports, so the process now completes and we have something we can work with :)
But as with all of these things we are going to have a bunch of manual processing to do afterwards as we can’t automate everything… I’m trying to pull a date together so we can get it announced, but RL is playing it’s hand at the moment
UM
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No point rushing it at this stage. I’m happy it’s moving forward in a good direction.
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Only 1 issue remain now… how to support our Russian and Chinese friends in the languages section of the forum… O0
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Great forum , Can we add a FTC tip in forum ?
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That’s the point Lizhi, open source baby we have the code anything can be looked into.
And that is high on my list :D
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Only 1 issue remain now… how to support our Russian and Chinese friends in the languages section of the forum… O0
What’s the problem with us?
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There is no problem as such… just when the import process takes place all of the characters for Chinese and Russian are dumped into the database as ???
I have managed to fix the problem from freshly created posts on the test forum, but there is little I can do with the content that is already there, but I think I may have a work around for that, that will bring back the historic posts within a few days of us going live with the new software :)
Still don’t have a date for the switch yet I’m afraid folks :(
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Cheers for the work UM, don’t be worried or sorry about doing it right once…
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Set names utf8; first command when connection is set up. Also text, varchar, … fields need to be utf8-general-ci…
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We are almost there :)
I just have to make a couple more changes to the setup and we should be ready for the last data migration… I’m trying to round up a few folks to assist in making changes to some of the existing posts that we can’t “fix” during the migration and hopefully we can do a migration within the next 7 - 10 days
UM
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I’m here.
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Unfortunately I’m occupied for the next two week by my sailing vacation :)
