You can see what it will cost up front with their handy cost calculator. One hundred thousand threads, ten thousand users, a million posts, only 1000 dollars! You can even try before you buy.
I can't imagine many of the long standing member here care about the stupid "status" thing.
Is it wishful thinking that you could get behind such a change and support it? I'd like to think we wouldn't loose any traction and that our community recognizes the extent of the problem and wants to support Parallax in such a change.
Would you get behind this for us?
.
Just do it. Rip of the band-aid. The community will live.
In my opinion it's important to ignore these sunk costs, but not the cause. Try to forget the 500 hours, and think about which solution currently looks best as if you were starting over now.
For me personally, having the old stuff archived won't hurt that much, but I don't use the forums as much as some of the guys here. I do agree that if you do archive this, you should try to do it in a way that won't break old links and lose any SEO.
The trouble with "improving" things is that you end up losing all that momentum that you have with existing threads as was pointed out. Of course any new forum software will work well with a fresh install, just like windows does before it starts creaking and groaning again after a while.
While I would love the forum fixed I don't consider a lobotomy a fix as you are essentially cutting off all the stuff that gives the forum its personality. It has survived this past 6 months quite well in spite of the fact that some of the wheels fell off, so take a little longer to evaluate new forum software or a fix and maybe even run the new stuff in parallel for test drives, perhaps just migrating the general discussions to there for the moment if that is possible.
My observation of the replies is that some of the ones that don't seem to care also don't seem to care to post all that often, except now.
I'll be here no matter what. It is the people here and the help they can offer that keep me here. Keep the old content where we can look at it and search it. For the future, we will make more...
I'm one of those who see no issues with the current forum. Not even the ones Gordon mentions, and I use mobile devices to access the forum. In fact it works *much* better now (as in: Fully usable) than the previous version (the one we had before the attempted upgrade) which was utterly useless on Android. This one works. So to me the only reason for upgrading anything would be any security issues forcing it. Only that.
I agree: although read-only is probably bad enough, broken links would be a non-starter. There's just too much rich history here to ignore or even to shunt into the storage cellar. And it's not as if the forum, in its present state, is limping along on life support. So I would advise caution. Go slow, and beware the unintended consequences of hasty action. (Well, okay, I think that lesson's been learned already -- just recently, in fact. )
I'm one of those who see no issues with the current forum. Not even the ones Gordon mentions, and I use mobile devices to access the forum.
Really depends on the device. Nevertheless, the God of the Internet says the forum is not mobile friendly, and what they say is what counts. Here's Google's report on the first page of this thread:
* Text too small to read
* Mobile viewport not set
* Links too close together
In a real responsive platform, long threads like this will also use features like lazy load, so a mobile connection isn't burdened by the extra data transfer. In the current forum, the full page of every page loads, even if you just look at the top. Wastes bandwidth for mobile users, which for many of us is on a per-month allocation. It's really more than just what looks good.
I am pretty much up with What Gordon Said. Even as important as the forums are, 500 labor hours is an awful lot of time for a company the (relatively modest) size of Parallax to dump into something that doesn't create direct revenue. It's basically dropping a Porsche into the sea as in Risky Business. That's skilled labor that could have gone into creating and marketing cool products. I think most of us would rather have the products than a "perfect" forum, as long as the forum is meeting minimum needs -- and as far as I'm concerned, it seems to be doing that.
Will add my 2 cents about links: do not break them! That will be a severe steps backwards for at least 6 months as Google updates all of their cached results.
Old forums: forums.parallax.com
New forums: forum.parallax.com
I say go ahead and start fresh but leave this forum as it is. You only need to drop the "s" in forums.parallax.com for the new one - that way all external links will still work. This one could then simply be frozen so that no new posts or members etc. are permitted. Include some text at the top of the page and maybe a tab to click on to direct people to the new forum.
edit: I see Andrew is on board with dropping the "s". :-)
Will add my 2 cents about links: do not break them! That will be a severe steps backwards for at least 6 months as Google updates all of their cached results.
Old forums: forums.parallax.com
New forums: forum.parallax.com
Agree on the on the subdomain naming. I still remember the frustration I had when a site I often used decided to rename their old forum "archive," and NONE of the links anywhere still worked. What's more, they didn't bother creating a script (easy to do) to redirect the old links. It's amazing that Web developers can be so unaware of the importance of links and searches.
While it's always a pain to follow a Google link to no where, there is a substantial loss of relevance to the whole site when it happens. That equates to lost business. "Link juice" comes from other sites linking to here. Link juice is what makes a Parallax link show with a higher page rank than other sites for a given search. When links break, eventually Google drops the link juice, and other people's sites take ranking precedence over Parallax's. It's not just juice for a specific link, but for the site as a whole. It can take years, not months, to rebuild link authority to a site.
The simple truth is that all the changes to the Forum(s) have forced me to accept that I should be thinking more about my programing projects and less about what the Forum(s) have to say.
Yes, there is a ton of history that may disappear into the midst. But real support queries from new users will revive old topics that are of great importance.
Just maybe we are hanging too much on to search engines doing the work for use. I actually am finding myself more organized and thinking more independently.
Every major revision of the Forum(s) seems to create a convulsion that just may not be good for business. It feels that the outcome always has more downside than upside over the short-term.
I do like the present organization. I feel nothing is perfect, and Google dependency may actually be a source of many problems.
Google dependency is a fact of life. Even if Google were magically replaced one day I don't see the demand for such search ability ever abating.
More importantly changing URLs breaks all incoming links and often all internal links. All of a sudden all of peoples bookmarks don't work, links to threads that they may have put in blogs and other external web writings don't work. Worse still even if you do find an old thread in an archive all the links to schematics, code and other attachments don't work making it useless.
Even worse, for anyone stumbling into that broken mess it makes the site owners look incompetent. It that respect it's perhaps better to just delete everything ather than keep the broke and mangles remains around in an archive.
I would urge try that migration from vBulletin to PHPP. It's a very low cost experiment and a solution that seems to work well for others.
Sounds like there are budding careers for Google repair and rebuild techies.
My point is that at some point, Google is an advertising expense that desires to lock into a company's cash flow on a perpetual basis. Is that was a website should accept?
Sounds like there are budding careers for Google repair and rebuild techies.
Oh yeah, I'm sure there are already web design consultant's that specialize in search engine optimization.
...Google is an advertising expense that desires to lock into a company's cash flow on a perpetual basis. Is that was a website should accept?
No doubt true. Like newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations before it. Except on an unprecedented scale made possible by the wonders of the internet.
Should a web site accept it? As as far as I know it is not necessary to pay for Google to advertise you. Companies still have many other outlets for get their message out including now facebook, twitter, github and so on.
Call it a symbiosis. You have a useful and popular webs site. Google indexes all that and serves it up in search results. That is good for you as you get visitors and hence customers and it's good for Google as they can show people adds for other stuff as they search.
After all if there were no interesting and useful web sites for Google to return in search results they would be nothing. On the other hand the huge success of AdaFruit, SparkFun, the Arduino the RaspberryPi, the Espruino and an endless list of others is solely down to the net and a large part, search engines.
My point is that at some point, Google is an advertising expense that desires to lock into a company's cash flow on a perpetual basis. Is that was a website should accept?
Wise websites accept the reality of the Internet, which is that Google provides the majority of search traffic. No site is forced to accept Google's way of doing business, but traffic from them is fundamentally free. What kind of fool would not accept free advertising? Why not try to make the best of it?
I'm not sure what you're arguing. Google ranks sites based on perceived value -- those with working links and accessibility on all platforms are deemed to have higher perceived value. So why would you be against just giving Google what it wants, which is also what users want? Or maybe I'm missing what you're trying to say.
I've given the IT crew clearance to configure and launch a new forum tool. I really like the features and look of the phpBB system, too. I can't identify a requirement that's not on their list.
Thank you very much for the thoughtful replies above.
Does that also include the migration thing I mentioned or perhaps some other way?
I don't know. I'll need Jim and Bump to comment on that point. My main purpose is to get us beyond this awful, constipated mess we're experiencing.
Just a minor comment on an unrelated item to your reply. Some asked about keeping what we have and why that's not a viable option. We realize what we presently have "works for the most part" but it's not a long-term option. Soon, vBulletin will drop support for our version and we'll be facing this exact same situation (though we don't get support, just imagine getting less than no support). Further, features of these forum tools have really improved and we need to use them before our system is irrelevant. We've got to deal with it today or later, so we might as well take the medicine and move on. We've got other important efforts lining up right now and I'd hate to see us tripping over this problem in a few months when we need to be using the forum tool for its intended purpose.
I'm thankful and appreciative that people understand this quandary. I believe that most anybody who could participate in this for the past six months the way we have would come to the same conclusion.
I don't see why you couldn't get the new forum up and running, and then write a parsing script to integrate the old forum into the new, that way we get the best of both worlds. It would eat up a lot of server time, but it sure would be nice to bring the old threads back to life.
The trouble with "improving" things is that you end up losing all that momentum that you have with existing threads as was pointed out. Of course any new forum software will work well with a fresh install, just like windows does before it starts creaking and groaning again after a while.
While I would love the forum fixed I don't consider a lobotomy a fix as you are essentially cutting off all the stuff that gives the forum its personality. It has survived this past 6 months quite well in spite of the fact that some of the wheels fell off, so take a little longer to evaluate new forum software or a fix and maybe even run the new stuff in parallel for test drives, perhaps just migrating the general discussions to there for the moment if that is possible.
My observation of the replies is that some of the ones that don't seem to care also don't seem to care to post all that often, except now.
DITTO
Some of us put a lot of work and effort into our threads, like Peter for example. Read only is a smack down, not an upgrade.
I don't know. I'll need Jim and Bump to comment on that point. My main purpose is to get us beyond this awful, constipated mess we're experiencing.
Just a minor comment on an unrelated item to your reply. Some asked about keeping what we have and why that's not a viable option. We realize what we presently have "works for the most part" but it's not a long-term option. Soon, vBulletin will drop support for our version and we'll be facing this exact same situation (though we don't get support, just imagine getting less than no support). Further, features of these forum tools have really improved and we need to use them before our system is irrelevant. We've got to deal with it today or later, so we might as well take the medicine and move on. We've got other important efforts lining up right now and I'd hate to see us tripping over this problem in a few months when we need to be using the forum tool for its intended purpose.
I'm thankful and appreciative that people understand this quandary. I believe that most anybody who could participate in this for the past six months the way we have would come to the same conclusion.
Ken Gracey
I'll take your word for the current forum being an awful, constipated mess. I haven't actually had any but minor problems with it. I guess I'm not a power user! :-)
I don't see why you couldn't get the new forum up and running, and then write a parsing script to integrate the old forum into the new, that way we get the best of both worlds. It would eat up a lot of server time, but it sure would be nice to bring the old threads back to life.
That's the way it was done last time. It wasn't simple -- or cheap.
That's the way it was done last time. It wasn't simple -- or cheap.
Then maybe not a whole-shebang port, but some means to start a thread in a new forum, with context and links to an old forum one, should surely be possible ?
A forum is part knowledge base, part chatter, and the knowledge base is the important bit to not lose.
My opinion: Parallax needs to take some dramatic steps forward to really position itself as a modern company. Modern is different than it was 5 years ago, and in large part that's a strong emphasis on web design, broader content, and integrated discussion.
The root problem that I see is that Parallax rarely has anything new. Without constant updates, news, and information people won't keep coming back. For me, the forums is the only place that I check regularly, but that's a result of my past history and investment in Parallax. I don't think if I was new to Parallax I'd really want to stick around.
What functions does the forum serve now?
- Chatter
- Debugging help
- Project logs
What other functions could the forum help with?
- Product information
So, my suggestions:
1. Update to a new forum software that's modern and gives your web developers something that they can integrate into the store and learn.
2. Create a special section for Parallax products. Each product gets two threads: product reviews and product comments.
a) product reviews is a special thread that is displayed on the product page. Using the forum software this way allows a more uniform system
b) product comments. People have specific questions on a product before they buy (how big is it, will it work for abc, ...). Making it easy to ask and answer these questions leads to more sales and a better understanding of customer needs.
3. Combine Parallax "News" feed with the forum front page, and update the News feed regularly. You don't need to write about Parallax topics specifically, but anything that would appeal to the general hobbyist electronics market. What's it like working in China? How does it work to manufacture chips? What about internal quality control? What does a Parallax of 2020 look like?
4. Improve the project logs to become a front page citizen. Make it possible for somebody to make a nice web page for the project, and feature good projects on a rotating basis. Even if it doesn't include Parallax products. The point is to drive customers to Parallax.
5. Do something similar for learn as in #2. Let people discuss the various learn pages, and ask for help.
6. Through it all, allow forum regulars (us) to see new content and posts so that we can respond and help people, without having to do anything more than click refresh.
With these improvements, the forums become part of the Parallax system and not an isolated component.
You'd only be losing the ability to comment on old threads
Instead of a stone-dead lock down of Read-Only, how about a [reply in new forum button] (maybe with an option of how many posts to include?).
That would leave old threads alone, but bring over, on-demand, active threads.
1. DO NOT break the old forum links. This was learnt the hard way some time ago when the forum moved.
2. Preferably, continue to allow posts to existing threads, and just prevent new threads from being started. Place a "sticky" to the new forum for each forum group.
I think making the current forum read only is a mistake (at least for the time being).
I have a number of problems with the existing forum that causes me real problems. I have to post files with a different browser than my posting. Real PITA.
But for moving forward...
Why not try the new forum (I love dropping the "s" in forums.parallax.com) with just the "General" section first up?
This way we can see if it is going to work nicely (ie trial) and it's the least disruptive if it doesn't work nicely and needs to be abandoned.
Meanwhile, we live with what we have for a month or so. This probably has the least impact to Parallax.
Comments
Seems migrating vBulletin to PHPBB may actually be easy using this service:
https://www.cms2cms.com/cms/supported-cms/vbulletin-to-phpbb-migration/
You can see what it will cost up front with their handy cost calculator. One hundred thousand threads, ten thousand users, a million posts, only 1000 dollars! You can even try before you buy.
I can't imagine many of the long standing member here care about the stupid "status" thing.
Just do it. Rip of the band-aid. The community will live.
For me personally, having the old stuff archived won't hurt that much, but I don't use the forums as much as some of the guys here. I do agree that if you do archive this, you should try to do it in a way that won't break old links and lose any SEO.
While I would love the forum fixed I don't consider a lobotomy a fix as you are essentially cutting off all the stuff that gives the forum its personality. It has survived this past 6 months quite well in spite of the fact that some of the wheels fell off, so take a little longer to evaluate new forum software or a fix and maybe even run the new stuff in parallel for test drives, perhaps just migrating the general discussions to there for the moment if that is possible.
My observation of the replies is that some of the ones that don't seem to care also don't seem to care to post all that often, except now.
I stand with whatever Parallax thinks is best...
-Tor
Ken, it may be galling at times, but you can always count on me to speak my mind and not toe the company line.
Yours, as devil's advocate,
-Phil
Really depends on the device. Nevertheless, the God of the Internet says the forum is not mobile friendly, and what they say is what counts. Here's Google's report on the first page of this thread:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fforums.parallax.com%2Fshowthread.php%2F160376-Forum-is-broken-and-considering-a-fresh-install-your-input-requested!
The verdict:
* Text too small to read
* Mobile viewport not set
* Links too close together
In a real responsive platform, long threads like this will also use features like lazy load, so a mobile connection isn't burdened by the extra data transfer. In the current forum, the full page of every page loads, even if you just look at the top. Wastes bandwidth for mobile users, which for many of us is on a per-month allocation. It's really more than just what looks good.
Old forums: forums.parallax.com
New forums: forum.parallax.com
edit: I see Andrew is on board with dropping the "s". :-)
Agree on the on the subdomain naming. I still remember the frustration I had when a site I often used decided to rename their old forum "archive," and NONE of the links anywhere still worked. What's more, they didn't bother creating a script (easy to do) to redirect the old links. It's amazing that Web developers can be so unaware of the importance of links and searches.
While it's always a pain to follow a Google link to no where, there is a substantial loss of relevance to the whole site when it happens. That equates to lost business. "Link juice" comes from other sites linking to here. Link juice is what makes a Parallax link show with a higher page rank than other sites for a given search. When links break, eventually Google drops the link juice, and other people's sites take ranking precedence over Parallax's. It's not just juice for a specific link, but for the site as a whole. It can take years, not months, to rebuild link authority to a site.
Yes, there is a ton of history that may disappear into the midst. But real support queries from new users will revive old topics that are of great importance.
Just maybe we are hanging too much on to search engines doing the work for use. I actually am finding myself more organized and thinking more independently.
Every major revision of the Forum(s) seems to create a convulsion that just may not be good for business. It feels that the outcome always has more downside than upside over the short-term.
I do like the present organization. I feel nothing is perfect, and Google dependency may actually be a source of many problems.
More importantly changing URLs breaks all incoming links and often all internal links. All of a sudden all of peoples bookmarks don't work, links to threads that they may have put in blogs and other external web writings don't work. Worse still even if you do find an old thread in an archive all the links to schematics, code and other attachments don't work making it useless.
Even worse, for anyone stumbling into that broken mess it makes the site owners look incompetent. It that respect it's perhaps better to just delete everything ather than keep the broke and mangles remains around in an archive.
I would urge try that migration from vBulletin to PHPP. It's a very low cost experiment and a solution that seems to work well for others.
My point is that at some point, Google is an advertising expense that desires to lock into a company's cash flow on a perpetual basis. Is that was a website should accept?
Should a web site accept it? As as far as I know it is not necessary to pay for Google to advertise you. Companies still have many other outlets for get their message out including now facebook, twitter, github and so on.
Call it a symbiosis. You have a useful and popular webs site. Google indexes all that and serves it up in search results. That is good for you as you get visitors and hence customers and it's good for Google as they can show people adds for other stuff as they search.
After all if there were no interesting and useful web sites for Google to return in search results they would be nothing. On the other hand the huge success of AdaFruit, SparkFun, the Arduino the RaspberryPi, the Espruino and an endless list of others is solely down to the net and a large part, search engines.
A thriving business already.
Wise websites accept the reality of the Internet, which is that Google provides the majority of search traffic. No site is forced to accept Google's way of doing business, but traffic from them is fundamentally free. What kind of fool would not accept free advertising? Why not try to make the best of it?
I'm not sure what you're arguing. Google ranks sites based on perceived value -- those with working links and accessibility on all platforms are deemed to have higher perceived value. So why would you be against just giving Google what it wants, which is also what users want? Or maybe I'm missing what you're trying to say.
Thank you very much for the thoughtful replies above.
Ken Gracey
Does that also include the migration thing I mentioned or perhaps some other way?
I don't know. I'll need Jim and Bump to comment on that point. My main purpose is to get us beyond this awful, constipated mess we're experiencing.
Just a minor comment on an unrelated item to your reply. Some asked about keeping what we have and why that's not a viable option. We realize what we presently have "works for the most part" but it's not a long-term option. Soon, vBulletin will drop support for our version and we'll be facing this exact same situation (though we don't get support, just imagine getting less than no support). Further, features of these forum tools have really improved and we need to use them before our system is irrelevant. We've got to deal with it today or later, so we might as well take the medicine and move on. We've got other important efforts lining up right now and I'd hate to see us tripping over this problem in a few months when we need to be using the forum tool for its intended purpose.
I'm thankful and appreciative that people understand this quandary. I believe that most anybody who could participate in this for the past six months the way we have would come to the same conclusion.
Ken Gracey
DITTO
Some of us put a lot of work and effort into our threads, like Peter for example. Read only is a smack down, not an upgrade.
Your comments are not totally unrelated to my reply. At the end of the day proprietary solutions will always do this to you eventually.
At least all the current forum data is in MySql and you have a very good chance or migrating it out of the constipation!
That's the way it was done last time. It wasn't simple -- or cheap.
-Phil
Then maybe not a whole-shebang port, but some means to start a thread in a new forum, with context and links to an old forum one, should surely be possible ?
A forum is part knowledge base, part chatter, and the knowledge base is the important bit to not lose.
The root problem that I see is that Parallax rarely has anything new. Without constant updates, news, and information people won't keep coming back. For me, the forums is the only place that I check regularly, but that's a result of my past history and investment in Parallax. I don't think if I was new to Parallax I'd really want to stick around.
What functions does the forum serve now?
- Chatter
- Debugging help
- Project logs
What other functions could the forum help with?
- Product information
So, my suggestions:
1. Update to a new forum software that's modern and gives your web developers something that they can integrate into the store and learn.
2. Create a special section for Parallax products. Each product gets two threads: product reviews and product comments.
a) product reviews is a special thread that is displayed on the product page. Using the forum software this way allows a more uniform system
b) product comments. People have specific questions on a product before they buy (how big is it, will it work for abc, ...). Making it easy to ask and answer these questions leads to more sales and a better understanding of customer needs.
3. Combine Parallax "News" feed with the forum front page, and update the News feed regularly. You don't need to write about Parallax topics specifically, but anything that would appeal to the general hobbyist electronics market. What's it like working in China? How does it work to manufacture chips? What about internal quality control? What does a Parallax of 2020 look like?
4. Improve the project logs to become a front page citizen. Make it possible for somebody to make a nice web page for the project, and feature good projects on a rotating basis. Even if it doesn't include Parallax products. The point is to drive customers to Parallax.
5. Do something similar for learn as in #2. Let people discuss the various learn pages, and ask for help.
6. Through it all, allow forum regulars (us) to see new content and posts so that we can respond and help people, without having to do anything more than click refresh.
With these improvements, the forums become part of the Parallax system and not an isolated component.
That would leave old threads alone, but bring over, on-demand, active threads.
Seems I am late to the party
There are a few points I have to echo...
1. DO NOT break the old forum links. This was learnt the hard way some time ago when the forum moved.
2. Preferably, continue to allow posts to existing threads, and just prevent new threads from being started. Place a "sticky" to the new forum for each forum group.
I think making the current forum read only is a mistake (at least for the time being).
I have a number of problems with the existing forum that causes me real problems. I have to post files with a different browser than my posting. Real PITA.
But for moving forward...
Why not try the new forum (I love dropping the "s" in forums.parallax.com) with just the "General" section first up?
This way we can see if it is going to work nicely (ie trial) and it's the least disruptive if it doesn't work nicely and needs to be abandoned.
Meanwhile, we live with what we have for a month or so. This probably has the least impact to Parallax.