Author Topic: [vote] Upgrade Forum Software  (Read 14325 times)

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Offline JonnyB

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We could just upgrade our current forum software (simple machines) from  2.0.9 to 2.0.13
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Offline cass

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Offline Thom

That's an extremely important point @Stan, thanks for raising it. That actually makes a strong case for preserving the existing SMF forum, and if we want to move forward and improve communication using other forum software like Discourse we should leave the domain as is and put plenty of links to the new forum here in SMF.

That way all external references remain intact and coming here people would be referred to the new forum while this one is locked down in read only mode. That gives us great flexibility to move forward while preserving past history.

agreed, this one should put in lock mode, new forum should run under forum.bitsharestalk.org

Perfect!
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Offline fav

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That's an extremely important point @Stan, thanks for raising it. That actually makes a strong case for preserving the existing SMF forum, and if we want to move forward and improve communication using other forum software like Discourse we should leave the domain as is and put plenty of links to the new forum here in SMF.

That way all external references remain intact and coming here people would be referred to the new forum while this one is locked down in read only mode. That gives us great flexibility to move forward while preserving past history.

agreed, this one should put in lock mode, new forum should run under forum.bitsharestalk.org

Offline Thom

That's an extremely important point @Stan, thanks for raising it. That actually makes a strong case for preserving the existing SMF forum, and if we want to move forward and improve communication using other forum software like Discourse we should leave the domain as is and put plenty of links to the new forum here in SMF.

That way all external references remain intact and coming here people would be referred to the new forum while this one is locked down in read only mode. That gives us great flexibility to move forward while preserving past history.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - MLK |  Verbaltech2 Witness Reports: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23902.0.html

Offline Stan

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I tend to agree along these lines--and my vote is for either stick with SMF or migrate all current content to Discourse--as decided by whomever takes over management and their skills/preferences for managing and maintaining the website operations.

I am not a fan of less established or experimental software (i.e. anything blockchain based) for something as important as the forum. I am also not a fan of anything that has any more friction than necessary for lurking/participating (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23705.msg302021.html#msg302021).

To be clear, I am assuming whoever takes over will have full control over the domain name, the forum server software + database, and any additional software like an SMTP server for sending emails.

If sticking with SMF, it's important that it be kept up to date for security purposes (we are currently several versions behind). This is also the least surprising path since there is unlikely to be any outcry for keeping things as-is.

If moving to Discourse, I think it is important that all threads and user accounts be migrated. If everyone had to re-register, then that could kill the forum. Performing such a migration manually seems non-trivial though: here it says https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrating-to-discourse-from-another-forum-software/16616 it requires manual review and editing of the migration script, which is a complex script (https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/script/import_scripts/smf2.rb). The best bet for a migration (and possibly ongoing operations/maintenance) may be a managed hosting solution (https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-are-some-reputable-managed-discourse-hosting-providers-out-there/54702) like https://www.discoursehosting.com/pricing/ or https://payments.discourse.org/buy/ which also will do the migration for you (eg https://meta.discourse.org/t/discoursehosting-migration-service-for-your-existing-forum/12201). Self-hosting could be done on something like Digital Ocean (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-the-discourse-one-click-application-on-digitalocean) but it would still require a complex manual migration and at least an SMTP server for sending emails.

Perhaps you didn't see it, but if you have what is your objection to keeping the current SMF forum, locking it down into a read only state, and moving ONLY the user accounts over to Discourse? This was DataSecurityNode's suggestion and I believe it has great merit. I agree that re-registration should not be required. Migrating user accounts will be far easier (tho issues could arise) than then entire forum content.

I think a managed host path should be investigated as well. Even if the costs were not prohibitive I still think we should ONLY migrate user accounts and lock down this SMF forum in a read only state. Although the user base is much larger, I manage an SMF forum myself, and it is not a heavy resource intensive application. It would be worth checking into whether the Discourse hosting might also include hosting for this SMF forum as well. If not I still believe it should be preserved as is in a read only state.

A read only state also reduces the maintenance requirements. As long as a full backup is preserved, and that could be done by several trusted users, should the forum be corrupted or compromised it could be restored from a backup fairly quickly, and speed wouldn't really be an issue in doing so anyway, given it is only a reference library.

Migrating the SMF threads will be wrought with problems and take a significant effort. There are likely to be complications and incompatibilities. All of that can be avoided by just providing access to this SMF from Discourse as a reference.

As to who should be responsible or how to manage the servers and domain, I don't think we should be thinking that a centralized, single point of failure approach is best. I also don't think a group or committee makes sense either. We just need to have more than one person with admin access in case the primary admin can't act for any number of reasons. There is a very small risk that one of the admins could change passwords and lockout the others, but I believe the chances of that occurring are extremely slim if the people are chosen well.

Perhaps we should consider control of the domain separately. That will require far less interaction, almost none after initial setup, and thereafter only to renew the it periodically. That could possibly even be automated to be paid directly via the blockchain.

Whatever we do, lets not break all the links to 4 years of posts referenced from everywhere else.
Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline vikram

Perhaps you didn't see it, but if you have what is your objection to keeping the current SMF forum, locking it down into a read only state, and moving ONLY the user accounts over to Discourse? This was DataSecurityNode's suggestion and I believe it has great merit. I agree that re-registration should not be required. Migrating user accounts will be far easier (tho issues could arise) than then entire forum content.

I think a managed host path should be investigated as well. Even if the costs were not prohibitive I still think we should ONLY migrate user accounts and lock down this SMF forum in a read only state. Although the user base is much larger, I manage an SMF forum myself, and it is not a heavy resource intensive application. It would be worth checking into whether the Discourse hosting might also include hosting for this SMF forum as well. If not I still believe it should be preserved as is in a read only state.

A read only state also reduces the maintenance requirements. As long as a full backup is preserved, and that could be done by several trusted users, should the forum be corrupted or compromised it could be restored from a backup fairly quickly, and speed wouldn't really be an issue in doing so anyway, given it is only a reference library.

Migrating the SMF threads will be wrought with problems and take a significant effort. There are likely to be complications and incompatibilities. All of that can be avoided by just providing access to this SMF from Discourse as a reference.

I don't have a strong objection, I guess I just have a preference to minimize discontinuity if feasible. For example, I like to look at people's post history on here, but that chain gets broken if not migrated.

I'm willing to leave it up to whomever ends up in charge though. As long as a read-only version remains reliably accessible and searchable then I think that could be okay. I agree it's important that at least the user accounts be migrated (I wonder how smoothly that can be done--would it require a password reset?) The old forum would also need to be clearly marked that it has been deprecated so that anyone looking will know to move to the new forum for discussion.

I'm no expert in forum software (and related) maintenance and operations nor do I want to be, so if it were me I would go with managed hosting--but again I think this can also be at the discretion of whoever is in charge and their skillset.

Offline Thom

I tend to agree along these lines--and my vote is for either stick with SMF or migrate all current content to Discourse--as decided by whomever takes over management and their skills/preferences for managing and maintaining the website operations.

I am not a fan of less established or experimental software (i.e. anything blockchain based) for something as important as the forum. I am also not a fan of anything that has any more friction than necessary for lurking/participating (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23705.msg302021.html#msg302021).

To be clear, I am assuming whoever takes over will have full control over the domain name, the forum server software + database, and any additional software like an SMTP server for sending emails.

If sticking with SMF, it's important that it be kept up to date for security purposes (we are currently several versions behind). This is also the least surprising path since there is unlikely to be any outcry for keeping things as-is.

If moving to Discourse, I think it is important that all threads and user accounts be migrated. If everyone had to re-register, then that could kill the forum. Performing such a migration manually seems non-trivial though: here it says https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrating-to-discourse-from-another-forum-software/16616 it requires manual review and editing of the migration script, which is a complex script (https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/script/import_scripts/smf2.rb). The best bet for a migration (and possibly ongoing operations/maintenance) may be a managed hosting solution (https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-are-some-reputable-managed-discourse-hosting-providers-out-there/54702) like https://www.discoursehosting.com/pricing/ or https://payments.discourse.org/buy/ which also will do the migration for you (eg https://meta.discourse.org/t/discoursehosting-migration-service-for-your-existing-forum/12201). Self-hosting could be done on something like Digital Ocean (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-the-discourse-one-click-application-on-digitalocean) but it would still require a complex manual migration and at least an SMTP server for sending emails.

Perhaps you didn't see it, but if you have what is your objection to keeping the current SMF forum, locking it down into a read only state, and moving ONLY the user accounts over to Discourse? This was DataSecurityNode's suggestion and I believe it has great merit. I agree that re-registration should not be required. Migrating user accounts will be far easier (tho issues could arise) than then entire forum content.

I think a managed host path should be investigated as well. Even if the costs were not prohibitive I still think we should ONLY migrate user accounts and lock down this SMF forum in a read only state. Although the user base is much larger, I manage an SMF forum myself, and it is not a heavy resource intensive application. It would be worth checking into whether the Discourse hosting might also include hosting for this SMF forum as well. If not I still believe it should be preserved as is in a read only state.

A read only state also reduces the maintenance requirements. As long as a full backup is preserved, and that could be done by several trusted users, should the forum be corrupted or compromised it could be restored from a backup fairly quickly, and speed wouldn't really be an issue in doing so anyway, given it is only a reference library.

Migrating the SMF threads will be wrought with problems and take a significant effort. There are likely to be complications and incompatibilities. All of that can be avoided by just providing access to this SMF from Discourse as a reference.

As to who should be responsible or how to manage the servers and domain, I don't think we should be thinking that a centralized, single point of failure approach is best. I also don't think a group or committee makes sense either. We just need to have more than one person with admin access in case the primary admin can't act for any number of reasons. There is a very small risk that one of the admins could change passwords and lockout the others, but I believe the chances of that occurring are extremely slim if the people are chosen well.

Perhaps we should consider control of the domain separately. That will require far less interaction, almost none after initial setup, and thereafter only to renew the it periodically. That could possibly even be automated to be paid directly via the blockchain.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - MLK |  Verbaltech2 Witness Reports: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23902.0.html

Offline vikram

Quote
As discussed with Fuzzy, I personally think a group solution for hosting the forum is making the subject unnecessary complex. I would prefer that one trusted active community member is in charge of the forum. That would make it easy in terms of the responsibilities, who to contact and also who is in charge to fix something in case of a problem. I prefer to keep things simple.

How simple will it be if that person can't fulfill their responsibility due to unforeseen circumstances?

No, I think the best model is worker for hosting / server costs, several trusted community members with admin rights. If one admin can't do the job or heaven forbid gets hit by a bus, there are 1 or 2 more that can pick up the slack. I would prefer a primary admin and 2 backup admins.

I do agree with you tho that we probably shouldn't count on buy.org. I like the idea of a blockchain based forum but it may be too much to ask of it to meed our needs upon launch.

I also think that anything we can do to improve communications with the east should be given priority.

I tend to agree along these lines--and my vote is for either stick with SMF or migrate all current content to Discourse--as decided by whomever takes over management and their skills/preferences for managing and maintaining the website operations.

I am not a fan of less established or experimental software (i.e. anything blockchain based) for something as important as the forum. I am also not a fan of anything that has any more friction than necessary for lurking/participating (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23705.msg302021.html#msg302021).

To be clear, I am assuming whoever takes over will have full control over the domain name, the forum server software + database, and any additional software like an SMTP server for sending emails.

If sticking with SMF, it's important that it be kept up to date for security purposes (we are currently several versions behind). This is also the least surprising path since there is unlikely to be any outcry for keeping things as-is.

If moving to Discourse, I think it is important that all threads and user accounts be migrated. If everyone had to re-register, then that could kill the forum. Performing such a migration manually seems non-trivial though: here it says https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrating-to-discourse-from-another-forum-software/16616 it requires manual review and editing of the migration script, which is a complex script (https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/script/import_scripts/smf2.rb). The best bet for a migration (and possibly ongoing operations/maintenance) may be a managed hosting solution (https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-are-some-reputable-managed-discourse-hosting-providers-out-there/54702) like https://www.discoursehosting.com/pricing/ or https://payments.discourse.org/buy/ which also will do the migration for you (eg https://meta.discourse.org/t/discoursehosting-migration-service-for-your-existing-forum/12201). Self-hosting could be done on something like Digital Ocean (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-the-discourse-one-click-application-on-digitalocean) but it would still require a complex manual migration and at least an SMTP server for sending emails.

Offline JonnyB

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Offline Thom

if you got chrome: left click > translate - no need to install anything

And if you don't? Sounds like at a minimum you need chrome. Not much freedom of choice.

Is there a plugin for Firefox or IE (I myself don't care for IE).
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Offline fav

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Thanks Chris for the detailed info about Discourse.

Although @tbone ranked translation functionality as a lower priority on his list, I believe it should be given more weight. It may be a moot point since the consensus appears to be converging on Discourse, but we should be doing all we can to be inclusive.

We're all very aware of how strong the eastern contingent of users is, so let's make sure we do everything we can to be inclusive of their input.

On that note, have we considered the weechat or whatever they're finding popular? According to my limited research Discuz! is the market leader for forum software in China. The language barrier is a big deal. We need to bridge the gap, and it almost seems unfathomable that solutions don't exist to solve that problem. They may be I guess, but perhaps not a price we can afford. 

After searching around and not finding much, I posted a question to the IMUG facebook page:

Quote
'm looking for a different forum for our international user group. There are quite a few multilingual versions of various social platforms, however the multilingual support on those I've looked into doesn't provide translation of messages / posts / articles. Ideally I would like a forum similar to Discuz! (http://www.msg2me.com/portal.php) where ALL of the content, not just the user interface or input laguage is translated by clicking on the little nationality flags at the top of the website.

Does such software exist? If so are any open source versions available? If not what level of costs are involved?

Thank you for all the work you do at IMUG. If you can't answer these questions I'm not sure anyone can.

Hopefully I'll get a reply and we can factor that into this discussion.

@Thom, I'm in total agreement about the importance of communication with the Chinese community.  I've been pushing that idea heavily in Telegram, trying to be diplomatic in heated conversations with @alt and @bitcrab, etc.  And I put translation on a list of must haves, but in last position with the "good to have" qualifier because an existing plug-in isn't necessarily a total requirement since the other requirements include open source and customizable, so it should be possible to create our own translation plugin if necessary.  But yeah, it would be better if we didn't have to!

anyone with a modern browser can download a google translation plugin and use it in 1 click. I don't see this anywhere near as needed on forum basis

That's good to know @fav. It would be great if you would post a link to where that can be downloaded. Thanks.

It's not a matter of being lazy; in this sea of info it's often not trivial to find info or it takes more time than many may have to invest. If you know of such a plugin please enlighten us.

if you got chrome: left click > translate - no need to install anything

Offline Thom

Thanks Chris for the detailed info about Discourse.

Although @tbone ranked translation functionality as a lower priority on his list, I believe it should be given more weight. It may be a moot point since the consensus appears to be converging on Discourse, but we should be doing all we can to be inclusive.

We're all very aware of how strong the eastern contingent of users is, so let's make sure we do everything we can to be inclusive of their input.

On that note, have we considered the weechat or whatever they're finding popular? According to my limited research Discuz! is the market leader for forum software in China. The language barrier is a big deal. We need to bridge the gap, and it almost seems unfathomable that solutions don't exist to solve that problem. They may be I guess, but perhaps not a price we can afford. 

After searching around and not finding much, I posted a question to the IMUG facebook page:

Quote
'm looking for a different forum for our international user group. There are quite a few multilingual versions of various social platforms, however the multilingual support on those I've looked into doesn't provide translation of messages / posts / articles. Ideally I would like a forum similar to Discuz! (http://www.msg2me.com/portal.php) where ALL of the content, not just the user interface or input laguage is translated by clicking on the little nationality flags at the top of the website.

Does such software exist? If so are any open source versions available? If not what level of costs are involved?

Thank you for all the work you do at IMUG. If you can't answer these questions I'm not sure anyone can.

Hopefully I'll get a reply and we can factor that into this discussion.

@Thom, I'm in total agreement about the importance of communication with the Chinese community.  I've been pushing that idea heavily in Telegram, trying to be diplomatic in heated conversations with @alt and @bitcrab, etc.  And I put translation on a list of must haves, but in last position with the "good to have" qualifier because an existing plug-in isn't necessarily a total requirement since the other requirements include open source and customizable, so it should be possible to create our own translation plugin if necessary.  But yeah, it would be better if we didn't have to!

anyone with a modern browser can download a google translation plugin and use it in 1 click. I don't see this anywhere near as needed on forum basis

That's good to know @fav. It would be great if you would post a link to where that can be downloaded. Thanks.

It's not a matter of being lazy; in this sea of info it's often not trivial to find info or it takes more time than many may have to invest. If you know of such a plugin please enlighten us.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - MLK |  Verbaltech2 Witness Reports: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23902.0.html

Offline btswolf

IMO steem is the way to go.
sure steemit.com is not a forum frontend but it is just a matter of time until suitable frontends will appear.
and finally steem offers the ability for everyone to choose her own frontend...
it's decentral and it's free

edit: https://steemdb.com/forums
« Last Edit: January 20, 2017, 02:53:21 pm by btswolf »