RFF Software Upgrade?

The first question I have is: what does RFF need that the current software doesn't offer or can't do (or do well?)
 
tlitody said:
I don't think there is any correlation between top of the forum rankings and/or best forum software. The rankings are more to do with what the forum is about I think.

I only found one PUNBB forum in that list which, purely by chance, has roughly the same amount of posts in it as RFF.

PUNBB is like a Rangefinder. It has only the things that are essential to running a forum. Like a RISC processor built for speed without any resource consuming fancy bits. But if you want fancy bits then its not for you.
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Actually the site rank quantitatively, which may be a good indicator the software's scalability and maybe reliability.
Many of those top sites use the same software as RFF.
I'm just sayin'
 
I run a forum with c.2500 users and a similar posting rate to this. We use SMF (version 1; 2 is still in beta). I can't say it's any better than this.

Hosting makes a big difference. We changed from free hosting to renting our own server (physical, not virtual) from 1and1 in Germany. This means we could install our own OS and tweak everything for the best performance.

One thing we do that SMF wouldn't recommend - we never archive old posts, so everything is available online. There are about a million in the database now.
 
t.s.k. said:
Actually the site rank quantitatively, which may be a good indicator the software's scalability and maybe reliability.
Many of those top sites use the same software as RFF.
I'm just sayin'
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I think the real question here is what is going to be easily manageable for the forum webmasters who may be doing this as a hobby and don't have the time or inclination to get into heavy coding and/or maintenance.
 
I would go latest version of vBulletin, and cut out all customizations and deviations from standard software, even if it means dropping galleries etc. only that way there is future upgrade path for the site. going to totally another forum software is expensive biz.
 
jarski said:
I would go latest version of vBulletin, and cut out all customizations and deviations from standard software, even if it means dropping galleries etc. only that way there is future upgrade path for the site. going to totally another forum software is expensive biz.
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Expensive in time yes but both PHPBB and PUNBB software is free I think.
 
My main request would be to keep the current site available for use and as a temporary fallback site in case there are problems with the upgrade, i.e. don't go off line to do the upgrade - install, test, and develop it offline as much as possible before going "live".
 
karlori said:
Dunno IF anyone suggested it. But the format of i think VB Publishing suite with plugins and customizations seen on PentaxForums is working ok.
I think that there would be members willing to donate to the cause, myself included.
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I like the Pentax Forum too, and I'm not a tech guy but I would make a donation.
 
I just noticed that manaulfocus.org forum is running in debug mode and is giving transaction generated times at the bottom of every page.
Mods here might want to make a comparison with the times RFF gave yesterday when debugging was switched on.
Whether the difference is coding, size of database, poorly maintained indexes, slow database server or just plain slow server I don't know but manualfocus.org is generating its pages about 10 times faster than RFF.
But that doesn't explain the much longer long delays than the generation time shows on RFF.
 
Hi Stephen,
While you all are looking at possibly changing the software, it'd be appreciated if someone there could look at this problem of mine (and others here as well I believe). Whenever I try to look at one of the REALLY LONG threads like "Let's see your Leica M" or "Cameras and Coffee", I get this message whether I'm using a Mac or PC computer:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 24117 bytes) in /home/rff/public_html/forums/showthread.php on line 1232

Thanks for any help.
 
Any system is only as secure the people who have access to it and any person can become disaffected with their lot in life and do the unexpected. Which loosely translated means no system is secure whether it be software or anything else.

Nearly all of the RFF errors are just sloppy coding but won't cause actual problems. Wrong dtd I think or not coding to the dtd used. But that isn't the point. The point is that no one cared enough to do what is so easily checkable and fixable. And that is the web for you. Mostly created by throwing together code from many sources without knowing or cheking that any of it is robust.
 
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tlitody said:
And that is the web for you. Mostly created by throwing together code from many sources without knowing or cheking that any of it is robust.
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And that's what I see as the basic problem with the initial proposal of throwing together several different pieces of software to create essentially several different sites, while hacking together some glue logic so that you can use the same password with all three.
 
rxmd said:
And that's what I see as the basic problem with the initial proposal of throwing together several different pieces of software to create essentially several different sites, while hacking together some glue logic so that you can use the same password with all three.
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there's a difference between integrating software into another piece of software and just building a simple account creation routine so I think we'll have to disagree on this one.
 
I'm a newbee when it comes to this tech stuff but I must say the current form seems to work well for my needs. You folks seem to have made good choices so far. Keep up the good work. I know it ain't easy running this thing.
 
Just wanted to say it seems to work pretty well for me even with all the errors. I haven't had too many problems, but it seems to me the site ran really well up to about a year ago. Then it seemed like there were glitchings here and there occasionally, I don't know. There was a forum I used to frequent that switched their software when I wasn't looking, I came back and it was unusable, so ugly. Best luck.
 
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tlitody said:
And that's what I see as the basic problem with the initial proposal of throwing together several different pieces of software to create essentially several different sites, while hacking together some glue logic so that you can use the same password with all three.there's a difference between integrating software into another piece of software and just building a simple account creation routine so I think we'll have to disagree on this one.
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That's how it all starts.
And then a simple routine that changes your password in the classifieds system when you change it in the forum system.
And then a simple routine that shows you when logging into the forum system whether you have new PM's in the classifieds system.
And then a simple routine that lets you send PM's from the forum through the classifieds, because the forum system (in the case of PunBB) doesn't contain a PM function in the first place and the classifieds are the only way to provide the newly proposed RFF with PM capability at all.
And a few dozen simple routines later you end up with a bunch of tacked-on unmaintainable stuff, the way we do now.

I don't think that's what I would recommend to anyone maintaining a site with 35,000 users. The software may be free, but only if your time is worth nothing.
 
My advice to Stephen is to hire professionals to assess the problems and develop a plan to resolve them. Throwing the question out to the forum public is not likely to be the path to a sound decision; crowdsourcing has its uses, but this isn't one of them. The wide range of solutions and troubleshooting presented in the thread should make that clear - upgrade VB, switch to Simple Machines, no custom coding, switch all the parts and then custom code to integrate them, go with a content delivery network, run traceroute, clear the cache.... All these suggestions are well intended, but following them prior to methodical troubleshooting is not likely to result in resolving the real problem and could create even worse ones.

A good professional will not make suggestions to start changing things to "see what happens" or that you throw out the forum's base software. The whole site is not broken, it is just slow - painfully slow- right? A good pro would focus on that and would have access to the specifics of your server, code, and all configuration settings, rather than just the public site.

Here is a cautionary tale from the owner of a larger site than this one, who chose to have a forum member "fix" the site rather than hire the right resources. In the end he hired the pros and it cost a lot more to fix the "fixes". http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1010715/0

This is great site with great functionality, it is worth spending some money to address the problems while leaving the good stuff alone.
 
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