Hello everyone,
Just wanted to keep you updated on the site updates and our future plans.
We have moved this board to a new server already (around the beginning of November 2018). So far so good...things went really smooth in the transition. There have been no noticeable hiccups or errors on our end, so for the time being, it's running just fine.
That being said...we've ruled out updating vBulletin for a few reasons. We found out it's essentially a dead product now (the development team disbanded, actually), and it has not been actively updated for a year or so, which means a lot of security holes will never get patched. So far we've been very lucky as far as spamming and bots, but we don't exactly want to encourage them by not having the latest patches. Purchasing and installing an expensive vBulletin upgrade, while technically solving some issues, only buys us so much time before we'd need to do this all over again. So the time has come to ditch it.
The good news is, we've found a few other viable candidates that are lower cost and are still being actively produced, with large community support forums. We'll be doing some test installs and beta testing over the next few weeks. Keep in mind that we have to translate our current database over to the test board software, and it's a rather large database (accumulating since 2006-ish), so things are taking a little longer than, say, a fresh install from scratch. Of course, one of the priorities is that the new board software have a real, usable search feature so we're going to give that a thorough rundown in testing. All of the candidate software has newer features like responsive design for mobile devices, custom themes, uploading photos from mobile devices, etc. so those issues will definitely get resolved.
Alex (baxo) and I have limited time over the holidays to work on this but we'll do the best we can and keep everyone updated here.
In the meantime...a huge THANK YOU to all those that have donated. With your donations we were able to purchase better multi-year hosting which really takes some pressure off of us. We'll continue to judiciously use the funds for the site upgrades and future purchases.
If you are looking to donate, the PayPal address is eric@coolcats.net
Thanks again for your support, your patience, and your interest in this site!
P.S. Is anyone using the arcade? We turned the tab back on with the hopes we'll get some grudge matches going. :hick:
As far as contributions, is this the same idea as what Thunder Chicken started or another separate thread? Just asking.
Separate...this is the latest information.
Thanks. donation is on the way.
Mark
Thank you both (Eric and Alex) for taking this on. The site needs the upgrade and I think this will help keep more folks active being able to access it on multiple platforms and hopefully encourage other Fox owners to join up and contribute to the community.
I did not realize that VBulletin was EOL'd. Wow. Just goes to show how much damage social media has done to forums in general
what do you mean it hasn't been updated in a year?
https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum/vbulletin-announcements/vbulletin-announcements_aa
5.4.5 was released exactly a month ago...5.4.4 was released 3 months prior to that..
do you mind sharing what some of your candidates are to replace vbulletin? invision & xenforo are the two more popular paid solutions out there. woltlab.org is nice too.
v4x isn't being updated. v5 is but the reviews are none too pretty...
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.vbulletin.com
https://www.reddit.com/r/vbulletin/comments/67gttr/vbulletin_5_cloud_review_april_2017/
The common theme is lack of support, or the support team ignoring issues. Not worth the effort.
I was going to ask the same thing as 85turbobird, but came to the conclusion Eric did. V5 is >5 years old and there is no V6 on the horizon. It's technically being updated, but there doesn't appear to be an active and responsive dev team running the show.
The more I look the more Vbulletin seems like a hot mess. They were bought out by Internet Brands a long time ago (the same company that bought and sh*tted up a lot of the bigger forums) and run into the ground.
https://www.avforums.com/threads/vbulletin-review-how-internet-brands-have-killed-off-vbulletin.1855705/
fair enough, I thought you were going to upgrade to the latest available version - vb5.
any word on the replacements?
Any idea on cost and what's needed still for the update? That way we have a better idea as to what we need to contribute?
I just sent some funds.
No idea just yet...we're trying several solutions and each one is a different cost.