This is kinda depressing. There is absolutely no way I will switch to php, like most others I don't have time to deal with it and frankly I have no reason too, my perl boards now fly like a bat outta hell and they are so tweaked it would take me months to recode... But I think there have been some great contributions to the project from all the peeps here and I'd hate to see that disappear, especially since every once in a while I might use one of those features and some of them I have contributed to. And I think I'd rather not use Infopop's site either for the some reservations that others seem to share.
If you are interested, I'd be happy to set up a board on my site but it would have to be a private one, mainly because it doesn't really fit there... or if folks would prefer, I can probably find some place to install the demo version (or if Scream allows it, I'll install the full perl version) and keep it less private there... I'm happy to help however I can, just let me know if one of these two options makes some sense for us all...
Let me know what you would like and I can probably set it up tonite and I'll post the url here.
I'm hoping that things don't get fragmented that much. I'd like to stay involved on the hack sites as well but it's going to be a bit of a problem visiting a variety of sites[]/testimages/icons/laugh.gif[/]. So, the guys from ubbdev are setting up a site dedicated to hacking and this will have forums for both the PHP and the PERL version. This will make it easy to see what everyone is doing on both sides and not fragment the hacking portion of the community too much.
I can appreciate that Scream, and I'm sure most others do. But from what I have read there appears to be some real concern about their censorship issues on their boards and others have clearly expressed a desire to have an independent site to continue on with support for the perl version (not just from a hacking perspective) because of this and the clear fact there will be no support for perl. And as for fragmenting the hacking community, I think that pretty much happened the moment of the decision to no longer support the perl version, there was really no way around that, unfortunate as it is.
Scream, like everyone else, I respect everything you have done with this product and for this community. But very shortly, everything changes for the perl people, frankly for the worse. We are on a different path, there is no way around that. Our sites come first with us, we have communities to support, and I think we need to look at what is best for us now to keep our sites humming and competitive. If peeps think that is using the Infopop site, fine, I have no problem with that decision. All I'm doing is offering an alternative, one that has been asked about.
This isn't actually going to be an Infopop site. I think that's where people are misunderstanding on this one. If you go take a look at ubbdev you'll see that it's just about hacking and adding features to the versions they are working on. I think the confusion is that people are thinking that the dev site and the support site are one and the same. It's not like that at all. You can take a look at the ubbdev site to see what I mean.
ubbubbdev.com has been registered and I've been told ubbdev.com will be as well. I respect everyone's decision if they decide to do something else, I just want to make sure that everyone knows what this dev site will be and who will actually be running it and that I'll be hanging around there as well.
As with jpreeper, I am quite concerned about all the reports of censorship on the UBB boards. When jpreeper suggested setting up his own board, due in part to censorship issues, you responded that the hacking board isn't actually going to be an Infopop site. This, unfortunately, does not allay my concerns, since it's the Infopop site where we will be going to deal with actual support issues.
You've dealt with Infopop, are we right to be concerned? Are people lying when they say they were banned for discussing software bugs? What can we expect from the Infopop support sites in terms of free discussion? It appears someone was banned for mentioning a bug, will we be banned or have our posts deleted if we complain or discuss a competing product?
Derek - I have dealt with InfoPop - and you do have a right to be concerned. There is a tremendous amount of censorship that goes on over there - both on the official support boards and the hacking community boards. Basically - either you rah rah the product or you are banned. You are not allowed to talk about problems, bugs, or anything that might look bad for the company. Which renders any real problem solving impossible.
An independent perl site is the only way you are going to be able to continue to support your own sites. InfoPop won't allow you to talk the way you want/need to be able to continue with your own discussions and development.
There has been some talk of censorship/bannings, but I've been spending quite abit of time at the Infopop/UBB forums looking through the archives. I've found plenty of talk about bugs/problems/etc that are still there for everyone to see. I can't answer for sure what all has went on in the past but just from a brief search it doesn't look like as bad as it's been portrayed to be.
For example, I have had to ban several users on my forums and remove some posts. One was from a formerly competitive product, now defunct. The people on the other side of this ban/censor ended up posting on some other forums about how I was basically doing the same thing that others have accused Infopop of doing. I've always been very open about what can be posted on the forums but there is always a line that can be crossed and 2 sides to every story.
I also heard that you are not allowed to talk about competitor's products on their site. So, I went to community.infopop.com and did a search on a competing product. Found alot of matches and some of the same type of answers I give when someone asks here. Here is a direct quote from an Infopop staffer:
"2) What makes UBB better than vBulletin or Ikonboard for instance?" Questions such as these are always exceedingly difficult to answer. By necessity of the way the question is phrased I'm almost required to say something bad about the other guy. In truth I know nothing about one of them and little of the other. It would be far too easy to misspeak were I to answer that question directly as put.
I prefer to tell you anything you want to know about the UBB, Infopop, our customers, our support staff, and our leadership and then let you decide what makes us better.
You will see, from this post above that 2 competing products were mentioned and an answer was given that is basically what I would have replied with.
That's not right. They've already contacted several users from here to help and be moderators. And, um, who told you that the dev site will be running on UBB? That's not right either. It'll be running UBBThreads, which is why they are getting some help from some of the regulars here.
Yep, that's right. Not sure what that proves. I guess you could probably go there and find mention of WWWThreads, or probably go to any other board and find mention of wwwboard.
How can it not be right - the people who run ubbdev are moderators on community.infopops.com - at the end of the day they cannot be a moderator on an official site, and remain independant.
Yes, that might be true. I misread your post, I was just stating that they aren't all, or won't all be Infopop employees (as far as the moderators go). However, I'm not sure how this is of a concern because if you go to a hacking site you are sharing ideas on how to improve the product. Don't really know why who runs it makes a difference since they all have the same goal.
Infopop is going to have a small bit of influence on ThreadsDev (or whatever we end up calling it), but only as much as is already asked for from the UBBDev crew.
The Threads site is going to be completely seperate, powered by Threads, and hopefully will include many from the Threads community. It will include forums for both the PHP and Perl versions.
Just because Infopop can not provide official support for the Perl version, that does NOT mean that there are no options.
I red a few days ago something about 'preserving usernames and posts on new forums'. Is this still true, and we're talking about the official or dev forums?
As we speak.. er... as I type, we (Infopop) are beginning to look at importing the topics and member data from these support forums into Community's board.
There are quite a few duplicate usernames that need to be worked out... more on that when we figure out what to do.
Most of the forums will be put up live on Community. Some (the Perl forums probably) will either be archived (turned into read-only forums) or handed over to the hacking site to take care of. IIRC, we haven't yet decided exactly how that is going to be handled.
If the topics are moved elsewhere, there may be some delay in doing so - we have methods to do from Threads to OpenTopic, and UBB to Threads and OpenTopic, but no method to go from Threads or OpenTopic to UBB... yet.
> There are quite a few duplicate usernames that need to be worked out... more on that when we figure out what to do. Please let us know in advance if you are about to rename them or something like that. Where should we check if the name is already taken and submit you a new one? I would really hate being called 'JoeUser714532' btw :)
> but no method to go from Threads or OpenTopic to UBB... yet. ;) I got your point but since we're between friends here and people with technical knowledge, I dare ask: isn't this happening because the 'evolution' thing is about 'moving forward'? No really, I mean it
Actually, the working plan is to rename the ~100 users that can't be resolved otherwise... Appending ".w3t" to the username. We're still looking into it and will probably be contacting each user individually to ask them what they want done.
Re, the conversion... it's a matter of demand and time - we have had a grand total of two or three people ever needing to go from OpenTopic to UBB. We can't justify taking the time (days? weeks? depends on how much luck I have with XML::Parser) nessecary to develop a util to do so. I'll probably end up writing something on my own time to get this one done.
I've been following this a bit and it seems folks are getting pretty comfortable with using the new ubb boards so I haven't set up a separate board unless folks still want the alternative. So let me do this
that's funny... it looks fine when viewing the perl version. I guess perl is better after all LOL Actually, I tried to go to the php version to see what you were seeing (thanks for the screen shot btw), and I've never used the php version, but I figured it would hold my login info because it should be working off the same stuff, but it shows me as not logged in over there so I had to come back to the perl version to reply.
The php version uses a different path from the perl one and the cookie set by either one doesn't work on the other. I would also like to take this opportunity to point out something that somebody said earlier: a demo board is never a substitute for a fully functioning, heavily used support forum. I understand that it is easier for infopop to use the opentopic system but OTOH stuff like this is easily caught if the support board is running the actual software it is supposed to support ;)
PS. If you view the post in threaded mode, the button reads $lang['SUB_VOTE'] and there is no "View the results for this poll" link.
As I noted above, we (the Dev site) DO plan to have a full suite of Perl Threads related information, resources, hacks, and boards on the Dev site. Duplication of effort is generally bad. We (the Dev site) would much rather request that you help us. *hint hint hint*
Of course you would, and I'm actually surprised it took one of you guys this long to even _hint_ at that. But, unfortunately I can't admit that I'd personally be comfortable with that. At the same time, let's look at it from the other side. Why would you even want any of us there? This is actually a good question now that I think about it and I'd love for one of you guys to answer it. Here's why I ask. You won't be supporting the perl version. Okay, you'll have a message board and some archives, and if this is like ubbdev, a "private" site, then why do you need us sucking up your bandwidth and your moderators' time for a product that at best you will provide bug fixes for when arguably all of those resources would be much better spent focusing on your php version. Outside of the sentimental attachment that Scream would have, wouldn't you be better off without it?
And since I'm sure you will ask, or at least I hope you would, why would I waste my resources with it. I've used this product for a long time although I haven't upgraded from a feature perspective for almost as long (I still believe performance is so much more important than features). I have added some hacks here and there and I've also provided some back to this community. If I can help make sure that continues, I'm happy to. And ultimately someone will probably come up with something I want to use so I look at that as a tradeoff. There also seems to be a concern about censorship on the boards, which you guys have addressed. However, if it's later proved to be accurate, it's almost impossible to rebuild that community elsewhere, and it will die. I've seen it before. And along with it goes any future development that might occur on the perl version. Will I make any money off the site, no.. I don't plan on running any banners on the site and don't really need to. I have more than enough bandwidth for all of my sites now. And while I realize the "official hacking site" has to make money, I can't click on the back button fast enough when I see popup ads, but that's me. :)
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