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Future of Forum

Hosting Vanilla is costing a lot of money for no reason. I'd really like to stop paying. It seems like there is at least one promising alternative in the works that is Flarum.

http://flarum.org/

It's still beta, but I got it to run. You can try out the demo and see how it is. Once it's not beta, I imagine it will serve our purposes nicely. If anyone knows of any others, let me know.

The problem is migrating all the stuff from this forum. I don't think it will be possible. Even if it is possible, it will be too difficult to be worth the trouble. I think the plan will have to be that I will get a database backup from Vanilla. Then I will run a server with the open source Vanilla 2 and put the forum in read-only mode. Then start a new forum with freshness.

Also, it seems that due to the popularity of Slack, there are a lot of web-based chat frameworks available. We still have our IRC channel, and yes there are people there. But obviously people aren't going to use that so much. Is there a reason to have a chat if we already have a forum? Here are some possible chats that won't cost us any money:

http://www.mattermost.org/ - Free, open source, self hosted, seems nice, lacking features.
https://rocket.chat/ - Free, open source, self hosted, feature rich, even has apps, bleeding edge fancy tech I don't fully trust.
https://discordapp.com/ - Free, not self-hosted, has all sorts of bonus features for gaming.

Would people use one of these AND the forum if I had both setup?
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Comments

  • I've been using discord for a bit and I like it. Private rooms, voice chat, etc.
  • edited November 2015
    Rocket Chat just looks like a Slack clone.

    Like it looks almost exactly the same.

    Also Flarum seems fine. Honestly I think Vanilla Forums are kinda garbage. I'd be down for basically any alternative.
    Post edited by MATATAT on
  • MATATAT said:

    Rocket Chat just looks like a Slack clone.

    Like it looks almost exactly the same.

    Also Flarum seems fine. Honestly I think Vanilla Forums are kinda garbage. I'd be down for basically any alternative.

    But costs $0.
  • We probably wouldn't need paid Slack features, but you are right you get everything fo' free.
  • I'm probably only ever going to use the forum.
  • I'm probably only ever going to use the forum.

  • Flaurm seems real nice. And for chat I vote for Discord.
  • I don't know how often I would use a chat, but I don't want to say I never would because a web-based chat interface might be more appealing for casual use than an IRC. So if it costs zero monies, I'd say go for it.

    Definitely okay with switching over to Flarum as well. Vanilla 2 is nice, but definitely has its limitations as well and they probably aren't worth paying out the butt for. As long as there's an archive of this forum available, I think it's all good.
  • Yeah it looks nice. As for chat, if you wanted to be really lazy you could just have the chat be a link to a web-based IRC clent on the Geeknights channel like this.
  • I'm still waiting for Geeknights Newsletter #29
  • Matt said:

    I'm still waiting for Geeknights Newsletter #29

    I was going to send it on Halloween, but I didn't finish it.
  • @Apreche
    If you end up doing this let me know if you want any help moving everything from here to there, I've got a good handle on the Vanilla API at this point, I am also way less busy than you.
  • I was wondering why you were still paying for forum software in 2015. Hell, free forum software was available before YouTube.

    Yeah, let's drop this shit.
  • Daikun said:

    I was wondering why you were still paying for forum software in 2015. Hell, free forum software was available before YouTube.

    Yeah, let's drop this shit.

    Vanilla Forums is "free-ish" I think. You pay for it as a service.
  • Matt said:

    I'm probably only ever going to use the forum.

  • We are paying for forum software as a service. The community edition was not cheap to run from a time, materials, and effort perspective either.
  • Discord looks cool. I'm just kinda sad because losing all the old threads and stuff is gonna make it kinda like moving to a different house.
  • Discord looks cool. I'm just kinda sad because losing all the old threads and stuff is gonna make it kinda like moving to a different house.

    They could possibly be transferred
  • I'm on board with this. I'm not here for the forum software, I'm here for the community. And plus, I do sometimes feel a touch guilty about the fact someone is paying $200ish bucks a month for this.

    Discord is pretty cool, but I don't know much else about it. I'll have to look at it more.
  • Whatever you change to, I will probably continue to lurk and stealth-post.
  • Nuri said:

    Whatever you change to, I will probably continue to lurk and stealth-post.

    You and hundreds of others. =P

  • Apreche said:

    Matt said:

    I'm still waiting for Geeknights Newsletter #29

    I was going to send it on Halloween, but I didn't finish it.
    Consider folding the newsletter into Patreon.
  • okeefe said:

    Apreche said:

    Matt said:

    I'm still waiting for Geeknights Newsletter #29

    I was going to send it on Halloween, but I didn't finish it.
    Consider folding the newsletter into Patreon.
    That's a good idea.
  • Supposing there's no data migration, do we have a username free-for-all at the new house?
  • Starfox said:

    Supposing there's no data migration, do we have a username free-for-all at the new house?

    Probably.

    A data migration in itself isn't actually that hard. Forums tend to have similar database structures.

    The problem is that to migrate we need to keep all the exact same URL patterns. Every single URL that works today for this forum needs to keep working for the sake of Google and all the places that link to the forum.

    So for example:

    http://forum.frontrowcrew.com/discussion/10092/future-of-forum

    Has to link to this thread, forever.

    Also, there are the URL patterns from the old Vanilla 1 forum which still work today.

    http://forum.frontrowcrew.com/index.php?p=/discussion/2737/

    Making all these old URLs continue to work, or at least redirect to the correct place, in a new non-Vanilla forum platform is not entirely impossible, it's just incredibly annoying and difficult.

    Also, keeping the old forum in archive mode makes it easier to maintain other functionality. Things like people being able to login and see their private messages in the archive. It's tricky to migrate that sort of thing.
  • I'd be happier with having all the old threads in place, and the same usernames for everyone, rather than trying to keep all the links the same.

    How important is it that Google's links will be broken? They will only be broken until Google crawls the entire forum again.

    How important are links from elsewhere? I'm sure the links from the podcast show notes would be easy to fix in place. Who else has linked to the forum enough for it to matter that their few links won't work now?
  • I'd be happier with having all the old threads in place, and the same usernames for everyone, rather than trying to keep all the links the same.

    How important is it that Google's links will be broken? They will only be broken until Google crawls the entire forum again.

    How important are links from elsewhere? I'm sure the links from the podcast show notes would be easy to fix in place. Who else has linked to the forum enough for it to matter that their few links won't work now?

    Have you gone through and tried to visit old things of the day? An absurd number of them are 404. Once a URL exists, it should exist forever. It should continue to direct, or redirect, to the same content for as long as the web continues to exist.

    You might not care, but making a URL no longer work is an Internet felony.
  • A one time URL map would probably work fine but just an extra thing to add on. Also that depends how they're managing URLs on the backend I suppose.
  • edited November 2015
    Cool URIs don't change. Also the site has presumably built up a fair amount of Google juice, you take a penalty changing that.
    Post edited by Starfox on
  • Are you going to try to map old posts to new users?
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