New Forum

Snoteye · June 30, 2014, 05:11:13 AM

In the course of summer to early autumn, as soon as somebody has the time, EfU will need to switch forum software. What we are using now will cease to work. We have not decided what to switch to but are, unsurprisingly, strongly in favour of gratis solutions. If anyone has recommendations other than phpBB (including non-PHP software), please direct them my way. Consider also that it would be a huge improvement for faction owners to be able to manage their own faction fora.

We will do the best we can to migrate as much data as possible, but in the absolute worst case we will not be able to migrate anything. If that happens, at the very least we will be able to extract everything from the database so that nothing is lost, but it will not be particularly usable and likely not readily available to the public. It is also not expected that we will be able to simply archive this forum and link to it the way we did with our previous one. If you already now know there are things you would like to save I encourage proactively taking back-ups.

Another announcement will follow once we have made more progress towards deciding on a direction, and then another when the actual move is undertaken.

Snoteye · October 20, 2014, 03:27:56 PM

This is not the update I promised you.

As luck would have it, I have had a single free weekend since the first post and that's not going to change before the deadline. That's not what I expected and there isn't much I can do about it.

The situation right now is that SMF's converter works but the permission controls are lacklustre, so a considerable amount of manual labour would be necessary. In the meantime I have not been able to confirm that phpBB's permission controls are better, though historically it has been closer to vBulletin than SMF ever has -- however, the phpBB converter does not work, and I don't yet know if I can make it work, so the point may be moot.

Howlando · October 22, 2014, 07:51:05 PM

I'll use this thread to mention that we are going to be upgrading our forum software at some point in the coming days. This is a little bit expensive, so now wouldn't be a bad time to send EFU some spare change. You can donate via Paypal howlando@gmail.com or contact me privately if you'd like to donate using Google Wallet or another method.

Snoteye · October 24, 2014, 04:58:39 AM

There is a bit of uncertainty about when the final deadline is but the earliest date I have is Monday, November 3rd. I am aiming to carry out the upgrade Saturday, November 1st. You should expect the forum to be largely unavailable that day.

We have decided to upgrade to vBulletin 5 after all, despite the cost. I have been completely unable to complete a migration to phpBB and the workload involved with a switch to SMF would be immense, and there is no way I would personally make it in time. On that note, thank you very much to those that have donated, and thank you to everyone for your patience and for playing here.

Snoteye · October 31, 2014, 03:39:18 PM

This is a friendly neighbourhood reminder that your friendly neighbourhood forum will be friendly neighbourhood inaccessible tomorrow UTC.

Snoteye · November 01, 2014, 11:12:53 PM

lolno

I'm going to bed. Better luck next time.

Snoteye · March 21, 2015, 07:07:04 AM

This is an irresponsibly late announcement that I'll be trying again in about 30 minutes.

Snoteye · March 22, 2015, 07:30:56 AM

We're now on vBulletin 4. That means there's still a large upgrade ahead and there's a risk it'll take as long as this one did.

The forum is open now and will stay open until around 11:00 UTC (3Â½ hours), at which point I'll commence the hopefully final upgrade.

I'm afraid all of the old themes are gone. vB3, 4, and 5 all use different theming mechanisms so there was really no way around that. Additionally, I have a very strong suspicion that botched theme migrations were the primary cause of last time's failure. You have to wonder why vBulletin event attempts to migrate themes between fundamentally incompatible versions, but it turns out that with vBulletin there are a lot of things to wonder about.

Do not get too attached to this particular forum version. Whatever else happens we have no intentions on staying with it for longer than necessary. Ultimately, it has precisely the same problems as the vB3 did: it's grossly outdated. I mention this especially because vB4 includes a number of features ("blog posts", "articles") that I have no desire to support even the slightest; if you find out that you have permissions to use them, don't be disappointed if that goes away.

Snoteye · March 22, 2015, 05:30:17 PM

Just so there is no doubt, I hate -- absolutely despise -- vBulletin.

I might try again next weekend. My sanity desperately requires that I finish this.

Snoteye · July 09, 2015, 04:50:11 PM

Oh, look! A year has passed! It seems I return to this every four months.

I don't have anything else to do on Monday so I figured I'd give this another shot. Expect downtime all of Monday, UTC.

Snoteye · July 13, 2015, 06:26:39 AM

Going down in 30 minutes.

Snoteye · July 13, 2015, 01:16:39 PM

I think I did it. Wow.

If you have trouble logging in you may need to clear cookies from efupw.com.

Arc made a very nice theme for an older version of vBulletin 5. I'll try to get that setup sometime during my vacation but I don't know if it still works.

Snoteye · July 15, 2015, 09:02:24 AM

Sometimes you get this:

As far as I can see this has to do with the editor's autosaving after you've spent too much time writing. I don't know what to do about it. My recommendation is to write in an external editor but that would be my recommendation anyway; browsers are not made to do what we use them for.

Snoteye · August 02, 2015, 07:02:56 AM

I have finished installing Arc's theme (on the last day of my vacation, even).

It is currently the default theme because, well, it has character, goes with the web site (actually, the site goes with the forum; that's why), and everyone seems to be allergic to white. You can switch themes with the dropdown in the bottom left if you don't like it or want to try something else. I have also enabled the remaining default vBulletin themes, most of which are hideous.

Huge thanks to Arc for his creative work, and apologies to him for this taking so long.

Snoteye · August 02, 2015, 07:22:57 AM

For the record, I know that there are a few issues with the theme -- some I have already personally identified, such as the text colour in reply boxes and PM recipients -- and the overall forum. You are highly encouraged to report any such issues in the bug report or suggestion fora. Some things are easy to fix, some aren't, and hopefully somebody will get around to reviewing feedback (I don't say that in jest -- I don't monitor activity closely enough that I can be relied on to do it, myself, but others might).