Hi everyone.
It's come to a point in the site's life where the current forum software is coming to the very end of its life (vBulletin 4). They stopped developing it some time ago when version 5 had matured and it's maintenance and security updates are now about to end.
For this reason we need to look at options to upgrade the site to a new forum platform. The obvious one is to go for the direct uograde to the newer vBulletin 5. However many of the original vBulletin development team left the company and set up a new company to develop a whole new forum software called
https://xenforo.com I've been taking a look at this and it looks really good. The developers got frustrated with vBulletin because it's become quite big and bloated over the years, and wanted to build a new forum software from the ground up that was lightweight and contained up to date code.
What this does mean however is that to perform this upgrade I need to ask for your help. The licensing upgrade to either vBulletin 5 or Xenforo plus addons needed will cost between £200 - 300. I can't currently afford to fund this myself so need to ask if you would all be willing to help?
And whilst I know this site is only an enthusiasts site for a group of friends to share interests, if I can get the site upgraded I want to then try to get it back to where it was when we had a larger active community. I will have a bit more time towards the end of the year to devote to the site to start pushing some new content and work on development. And to finally get the plan to create a proper emulator and emulation section built.
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I have the strong feeling that it's not going anywhere with the forum, thus I wouldn't necessarily upgrade. I would of course gladly contribute, but I don't see the point.
I know that as admin, it's a lot of work and it takes a lot of time, and sometimes, especially if you have a family, that's exactly what you don't have. When did you say that we would change the Amiga format of the forum to Retro in general? I think we're talking about years ago, and not anymore recently. Plus the main page is also unchanged since I can't even remember.
So to revamp the whole thing could take you forever, and we probably never would see something happening but a construction site forum, or you wouldn't perhaps find the time at all. No blame here, at all. Like I said, I do understand. Determination is not everything. I doubt that Toni Wilen has a family
A way would be to find people helping with the administration, but you would need people with the knowledge, and I guess also with trust. And whom of us would that be, we're basically all grandpas here
I have to say that I lately visit the Retro Video Gamer (RVG) forum, where our member Zapiy is moderator and keeps the site together. He send me an invitation years(?) ago, but I never really visited, as it was quite small and not busy, but now it has grown to a great site, and the forum covers exactly what we want to do here, everything retro. Mods are nice, and the community also seems to be pretty decent. I'm actually a reviewer there now, and I will surely write some more reviews for the site.
I would like to see something like that for this forum too, but then again, do we need 2 of the same forums, with even the same members? I don't think so. Why not join efforts and make something good even better? I have no idea how that would work, on an admin base, but I think it would be nice. How many returning members do we have left here? Not even 10 I think. That's definitely not enough in my opinion, perhaps to keep a site running like it is, but definitely not to achieve what we are looking forward to.
I don't raise the white flag yet, don't get me wrong, and I won't shout RIP Classicamiga, but it seems that's the direction it has taken. I check the forum almost daily, and sometimes it happens that during 10 days, there was not even ONE single post, and if there was, somebody put up a funny picture. That's not what I think a healthy forum anymore.
And according to me, upgrading the whole software now, is casting pearls before swine. Changing the software means changing the content, otherwise I don't see the point at all. But are you (we) willing to do that? Now? If not now, when? Paying up to 300£ to still have exactly the same, just in a different shape doesn't help. Then rather keep it the way it is now.
That are my thoughts, feel free to share
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