Test forum - check it out!

[Rico]

I've been toying with "possibly" a new forum system.  Two main choices are vBulletin and Invision.  Both forums are software that you have to pay for.  Still in the early stages of thinking and working on this.  The MAIN thing is, I don't want to lose any of the old forum posts, attachments, etc.  Anyway, so no need to panic.

If you have some time and want to play around, I have a demo of an Invision Power Board forum running here:  

http://a22623.ipsdemo.ipslink.com/index.php

Just join as a new member and post some things.  No biggie for right now, this is just a test site.  Feel free to post comments and thoughts back here.

-thanks!

[X]

It's pretty, but are the differences worth the cost to you?

[Rico]

It's pretty, but are the differences worth the cost to you?

The look is just a test skin for it.  The main thought for switching would be to move to one of the bigger forums with more functionality, options, etc.  Like I said, just toying around with things right now.  I kind of like to try new things.

[Feathers]

I've set up and Admin'd a vBulletin board before (and moderated another) and while I would support it's use, I'm not sure what it would give you that you don't already have here. Admittedly, I don't know what the back-end systems of this board is like but fom the outside it looks to have all the facilities you could wish for.

Licensing is another issue. I know vB has a couple of options but I'm not sure what the price are like these days.

I'll have a play on the trial board.

[Rico]

I heard back from Invision and they said I can't do a test move over of old forum data with the test forum.  Which is what I really wanted to try out.  Oh, well.

[Feathers]

They have some nice features, particularly for mobile use but whiter that's enough to justify a move, I don't know.

When we migrated an old YaBB board to vB a few years ago, it was the transfer and translation between formats that was the main issue. None of the internal (posted) links worked any more and all of the guest posts lost their identity. We didn't try and recover it all, just carried on.

[Feathers]

Any conclusions from the test forum?

[Meds]

Apparently Bryan isn't wearing any pants on there.

[Feathers]

Apparently Bryan isn't wearing any pants on there.

I'm assuming we're using the US definition of pants here? ;)

[Meds]

I seriously hope so Mike.

[Bryancd]

..and I was having a right good time as well....

[wraith1701]

Any conclusions from the test forum?

I'm not too fond of the new .  I like this version of the forum.  :)

[Rico]

I frankly haven't done a lot more with it.  When they said I couldn't do a test move of all the old posts and data over, I kind of dropped the idea - at least for now.

[Bryancd]

No worries, Eric, I can remove my pants here as well...

[Geekyfanboy]

No worries, Eric, I can remove my pants here as well...

Wait... what!!! I must have missed something!!!