Hey all,

I've been doing tons, and tons, and TONS of research as
to the "best" online forum solution, and quite honestly,
there seems to be nothing better than UBB v6.7.3 -- to
the point where I'm a few days away from buying access
to the members area to snag a legacy copy of the software
before it vanishes off the face of the planet forever.

But before I do something stupid, I genuinely want to get
some feedback from others who have resisted moving to a
PHP/MySQL based version of the forum.

Actually, let me take something back... the "best" solution
that I discovered was BestBBS, a custom board used by Brett
over at WebmasterWorld. But that's not for sale.

To me, the second best would be UBB.classic v6.7.3, for the
following key reasons:

1) In lieu of having to fiddle with mod_rewrite commands,
the output generated by UBB/673 is already a flat html file
that search engines can digest.

2) I don't have to struggle with MySQL concurrent connection
issues, not to mention, having to install MySQL on my dedicated
server in the first place. (I plan to co-locate locally).

3) I'm significantly more comfortable with Perl coding than I
am with PHP... so I can theoretically upgrade and support the
legacy code far easier than I could a PHP version of the forum.

I don't know, what am I missing? Am I being crazy?! This is
an oddly emotional decision for me... and the thing is, there
already appear to be a lot of people who have no interest in
upgrading to a PHP/MySQL solution for one reason or another...

I could see us banding together and helping each other out, so
that we can continue making the most out of our forum software.

Alright, I'll open this to thoughts/comments/suggestions...

Nathan

I agree with you. I love Classic and have had nothing but issues with both PHP and MySQL.

I just wish there were more of us left.

Hi, thanks for the reply!

Yeah, I get the sense that there's a dwindling universe
of UBB.classic users... yet it strikes me as being such
an effective piece of software!

Nathan

I was with classic for many, many, many years (can you say freeware?), and resisted the urge, but a PHP/MySQL forum is far more resource friendly, especially on larger forums. Also the new features coming out are also good as well... Since Classic is EOL, it'll likely never be worked on again, hell the lead developer on the project isn't even with the company anymore...

There are significant enough people to support it, should you want to stay with it. We've discussed privately getting permission from Ted to possibly open source the code.

Hi all,

Thanks for the comments.

I agree Gizmo, it's unlikely that Groupee will do any additional
development work with UBB.classic. And you're right, there are some
challenges webmasters have to surmount when using UBB.classic if
their forums start getting statistically significant volume.

Allen, reading your comment was like a tactical nuclear bomb
going off in my brain! LOL

At this juncture, Groupee derives no direct economic benefit
from the UBB.classic line of boards -- with two exceptions that
I can think of off the top of my head.

(1) Backlinks

There are thousands of boards still out there that have the
copyright link at the bottom of their forum pointing back to
Groupee (even if it's the old infopop URL, the traffic
eventually makes its way back to the new Groupee homepage).

So in a way, it's a form of free advertising for the company.

(2) Member Area Access/Upgrades

There is a certain percentage of webmasters who for one reason
or another may decide they want to upgrade from UBB.classic to
UBB.threads. The fact that they are running a UBB.classic board
means they're prime prospects to buy member area access so that
they can upgrade/replace their current forum(s).

- - -

Current UBB.classic webmasters could potentially be upset if the
entire project is open sourced, given that they paid for access
to the code in the first place, etc. It could be one reason why
Ted might hesitant to open source the code.

On the flip side, UBB.classic is on very thin ice... According
to the Wikipedia entry for vBulletin (and we know sometimes the
information on there is suspect, but still...) the founders
of vBulletin created vBulletin v1 as a PHP re-write of
UBB.classic... And that was at a time when UBB was in its prime,
and could have easily taken steps to use litigation as a way
to bully the vBulletin founders into abandoning the project...
vBulletin was an easy target, since they were selling their
software, had revenue, and were easy to "locate"...

What I'm trying to say is that UBB.classic is susceptible to
being "cloned" -- and Groupee may not be able to justify the
logistical and legal costs of pursuing a course of protracted
litigation to try and get the "genie back in the bottle" --
especially given the fact that UBB is and no longer even
officially sold or marketed by Groupee.

My educational background is in law, and I have an extremely
strong respect for intellectual property rights, and am not in
any way suggesting that UBB.classic code should be maliciously
cloned or modified in a way that defeats the letter and spirit
of the license agreement that presently exists.

That said, I do think that Ted and the team at Groupee could
potentially be persuaded to allow a "fork" development path
to go forward in much the same way an operation like CentOS
derived its existence from Red Hat. Actually, I'm not even
sure that CentOS could be considered a fork path, I think
they just re-brand Red Hat's stuff. I'm not sure... but
anyway, you get the idea.

Sadly, but truthfully, if Perl were an in-vogue coding language,
my suspicion is that an "unauthorized" variant of UBB.classic
would be supported and championed in much the same way as phpBB
is today... (but hopefully without the bloat and exploits that
perennially plague phpBB! )

That's all for now, sorry for such a long post!
-Nathan

'Open Source' may have been too strong a term, I meant more like a variant you were talking about, in that they would retain some sort of rights over it, copyright would remain intact, but we would be allowed to continue developing it.

I moved away from classic only because I wanted it to work with some other software (gallery, etc.) and hated paying imagefolio ridiculous amounts of money for a script horribly supported by the authors. For sites without a lot of traffic, ubb.classic more than handles what's needed.

CentOS is just a debranded RHE, no "forking" involved; Fedora however can be seen as a fork from RH.

As for rights, likely some sort of general use license retaining all rights to Groupee.

Releasing the UBB.classic code is a few years too late It should have been released quite a while ago, instead of holding onto it 'til death and shaking every last penny out of it. Groupie could have made more pennies off of service by releasing the code while .classic had some life in it, but they were short sighted.

I'm a long-term UBB Classic Owner/Admin, only I'm still running 6.7.2 because my access to the member's area ran out shortly before 6.7.3 came out, & times were lean. When I was once again in a position to get access back, I realized 6.7.3 was it in terms of UBB Classic, & I felt stupid paying that kind of money for one upgrade.

I have to admit that I don't know if I want to upgrade to Threads because I have a small board, upgraded to using the .php generator, but still good ole Classic. Don't know how to go about getting 6.7.3 without paying for a year of access, but I'll figure it out somehow.

I like the idea of us dinosaurs getting together because, as always, there is much more to be had through a group than by yourself.

I just re-registered so, if any of you remember me from my old username, I was Shimaka, & I had a UBBDev email, [email protected]. Don't know if you can still access UBBDev email, or if I can get a different account now. I've been around since version 5 in the low numbers, as I recall. Gosh, that seems like eons ago.

Thanks for reading my babble.

Shimaka

i've been running ubb classic since 2003 - i never thought my forum would grow beyond 1000 members, with light traffic. wrong. i have over 20,000 members, a private quad core UNIX server with unlimited file space and bandwidth. i wish i never started a flat file forum, should gone with php.

moral - if you're SURE your forum won't grow, ubb classic is too easy to use ... else, go with mysql-based forum software, like the free smf.

ubb.classic will handle larger numbers than what you're talking about - it's mostly a hardware issue - just make sure you have fast I/O and a decent amount of ram and you're golden.

If you want php/mysql, there isn't a better one than ubb.threads - bar none. Others have busier dev sites but the underlying code/GUI is the pits... bar none.

Hey Shimaka, ubbdev email is still available, tho that email service we've been using is the pits, I need to move it to gmail hosted. The current providor deletes all your email if you don't use it much.

Lol allen, what's the holdup on Google Apps? Need help or something? (I use it for all of my email and help clients get it setup)

ubb classic 6.7x is a near dead end, kept only alive via hacks or folks like me who can't easily, if never, get out of it an on to far more 'feature rich' *supported* forum software. i've tried to migrate to vb, php, smf. when you've got 20k members, 143 forums, well over 500k *pruned* posts, over a thousand users online at the same time, it's just an extremely difficult task.

i'm using a few ubb hacks/mods thanx to this forum, but even they have their limits. case in point is that the control panel 'view password' and control panel 'change user name' hacks don't work at the same time, it's either one or the other (could someone please look into fixing that???). this is what happens when you deal with hacks/mods instead of tested integrated code updates.

there are so many other features i sorely need - auto resize of posted images, topic time frame auto delete, global post pruning by member number, better style page variables that allow for image patterns instead of solid colors, etc etc ad nausea.

given better 'features', flat file cgi ubb classic would then be lots better that going the relational php mysql route, imho.

My recommendation would be to close the forum over a long weekend, do your migration, then reopen shop on the new forum...

As for features you need, best bet would be to file a feature request over at ubbcentral; Rick is working on v8 afterall, best time to post requests would be now...

i've worked on migrating a copy of my forum over to vb, with two of the vb staff running most of the conversion and no one ever completed the migration. they gave up before i did.

What happening with releasing ubb classic as open source code?
is Ted planning to do anything with ubb classic codes?

I think the biggest hurdle to upgrade is going from classic up.
Since it is a flat file system the biggest resource hog would be the time involved. Writing all of the posts and users to tables. Potiential hickups writing to tables.
Regardless of what forum software you go to.
After the initial change, it is not nearly so bad to upgrade.
In fact it takes me longer to make a pre backup that the upgrade.

lemme tell ya, for large forums it's near impossible to move ubb classic over to modern mysql forum software. yes, it can be done, but i don't have $5k or more to spend on getting that herculean job done via a 'consultant'.

i wish i had the hindsight to go mysql rather than a flatfile forum.

I feel your pain. But again I wish I had the problem.
In your case it would be nice to have a merge feature in lieu of a import across forum software versions. Sort of a partial move over time.
Well anyway v8 someday is going to have a feature to run large boards on multiple MYSQL servers. Maybe the opportunity will come on that day.

i'm not holding my breath ....

It's never too late. Normally large forums I convert in my own time, since I usually have to run it from home since it will take awhile, but nothing is too big.

We did the SimHQ import over the course of a weekend I think. They had about 2 million posts and it certainly didn't cost $5k

here, take a look at this site and tell me you can convert it - and i mean convert over everything, including profile data, avatars, links, etc - to a *private* mysql database forum of your choice (but NOT using online forum software like ubb threads) ...

www.tradgang.com

I don't get the comment about"but NOT using online forum software like ubb threads"
Are you stating you wish to move the forum to other than UBBThreads?

correct. vb, php, smf, whatever - NOT UBBTHREADS.

Well not trying to sound like a jerk or only supporting Ubbthreads.
I have looked at other software myself.
Why would you think that someone here would write a export utility to import to another vendor.
For example would VB write a export utility to allow you to import to ubbthreads. I don't think so.
It would be the other way around.

Maybe you should be asking this question at the sites you are contemplating to migrate to.

did you read my other posts above?

Yes I have read them all but venting here serves no purpose other than the sake of venting.
You are using classic v6.7.1, The last supported version was 6.7.3.
Now it is ubbthreads 7.5.4.1.
What is your expectation of what you get out of this board!

looking for a miracle that ain't gonna happen? m LOL!

Well it is never going to happen if you don't attempt to do something about it.
You apparently don't want anything to do with UBBThreads. So it is time to look elsewhere.
The people here are only going to support UBB.
Although I think you need to give UBB a second chance.

Membership renewal only cost $99.00 which allows you to upgrade to the latest version of ubb.
If you had a previous price of 5000.00 what the hell is a petty 99.00 dollars.

Just my 2 cents.

i've spent quite a bit of time and money already, in attempting to move a large ubb classic forum to mysql forum software, and that includes getting professional help from vb, php and smf.

i've attempted more classic to mysql conversions that you could imagine. not even the guru's at vb could migrate my forum to their software. every migration conversion failed before any kind of completion.

and i'm an updated paid user of vb, php and smf - there is no reason for me to pay ubb for something i don't want: ubb threads.

i've plugged in some posts to this thread in comment to the topic posters comments/questions.

i'm no longer actively looking to move my forum off ubb, but if you, or anyone else for that matter, think you can, let's do lunch and talk ....