• Welcome to the Cricket Web forums, one of the biggest forums in the world dedicated to cricket.

    You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join the Cricket Web community today!

    If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us.

Considering new forum platform

James

Cricket Web Owner
The moderator team and I have been discussing on and off for quite a while now the direction the Cricket Web forum will take moving forward with the software that is used.

The vBulletin product with the addons we have installed has been causing performance problems on and off so it has forced our hand in doing something about it.

One of the options is to un-install the problematic plugin and replace with it another. The cost of doing this (US$200) is more than it would be to move to the XenForo forum platform (US$140).

vBulletin is no longer the product it once was with later versions being far inferior to the version we're using currently and there seemingly being no publicly viewable roadmap for the product.

XenForo which is run and developed by original vBulletin developers has come up a lot since it was started a few years ago and that looks to be our preferred option at this stage.

We've setup a demo forum for XenForo and would appreciate feedback from the community on what you feel about this, and whether you believe XenForo is the right approach moving forward.

You can login using the details:
Username - testuser
Password - password
 

Red

The normal awards that everyone else has
Is xenforo the one that big_footy uses? It's pretty user friendly, and nicer to look at imo
 

Red

The normal awards that everyone else has
The only issue that I find is that big_footy has dire ads at the bottom of the page. Big and ugly and intrusive.
 

HeathDavisSpeed

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
That test forum better not be how the end product actually looks. The colour scheme is awful.

I'm guessing that a lot of the facilities on that software can be tailored to your individual needs, so until that's done, the test forum isn't actually much use in helping to choose a preference.
 

jan

State Vice-Captain
I am a member at one forum where the same thing happened. It run on Vbulletin for years and there was a fair share of instances when it didnt run well. The owners switched to XenForo as soon as it emerged. It has been rock solid since.
Personally the XenForo design is not my cup of tea, I like the (somewhat simplistic) visuals of Vbulletin more but hey, we cannot stop trying to improve things. A great topic to moan about about once forum migrates :D
 

Gnske

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
vBulletin is just so comfy though, XenForo looks rather sterile (hopefully different schemes can be implemented?)
 

James

Cricket Web Owner
Is xenforo the one that big_footy uses? It's pretty user friendly, and nicer to look at imo
I hadn't heard of big_footy, but checking out their site, yes they use XenForo.

The only issue that I find is that big_footy has dire ads at the bottom of the page. Big and ugly and intrusive.
We'd probably migrate the ads to display the way they are currently on CW.

Would this see us lose our user base or can these things be transferred
Everything can be transferred across so no loss of data. We wouldn't know how long the outage would be to transfer all the content to the new XenForo back-end until we do it within a test environment.

That test forum better not be how the end product actually looks. The colour scheme is awful.

I'm guessing that a lot of the facilities on that software can be tailored to your individual needs, so until that's done, the test forum isn't actually much use in helping to choose a preference.
That's right, the default colour scheme isn't the best. The demo is more meant to be a functionality test than a look and feel test. It can be customised and we can incorporate the same grey/blue colour we're using currently into it.


I am a member at one forum where the same thing happened. It run on Vbulletin for years and there was a fair share of instances when it didnt run well. The owners switched to XenForo as soon as it emerged. It has been rock solid since.
Personally the XenForo design is not my cup of tea, I like the (somewhat simplistic) visuals of Vbulletin more but hey, we cannot stop trying to improve things. A great topic to moan about about once forum migrates :D
That's right, so many sites have migrated from vbulletin to xenforo.
 

James

Cricket Web Owner
vBulletin is just so comfy though, XenForo looks rather sterile (hopefully different schemes can be implemented?)
Yes it can.

We can perhaps look at setting up a demo at XenForo in the colours we use currently if that helps people offer up opinions. Let me know if that would be useful.
 

Howe_zat

Audio File
How different are these features?

> Finding the first post in a thread you haven't read
> Advanced search function
> VMs/PMs
> email preferences

I expect these are the features people use most or would be interested in changing
 

Daemon

Request Your Custom Title Now!
Yep going to the first unread post in a thread is a must for me. If it does have that then I'm indifferent to any change.
 

AndyZaltzHair

Hall of Fame Member
If the current scheme is making things difficult to maintain, it's better to migrate. Am sure we will get used to it.
 

morgieb

Request Your Custom Title Now!
Yep going to the first unread post in a thread is a must for me. If it does have that then I'm indifferent to any change.
XenForo generally does, and actually more easily than vBulletin (if you click on a unread thread title it takes you to the first unread post).
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
Can I still like posts?
If we change software then yes. If we don't change software then perhaps not for much longer as the part of the software that allows you to like posts has been discontinued and is causing issues.
 

Spikey

Request Your Custom Title Now!
How different are these features?

> Finding the first post in a thread you haven't read
> Advanced search function
> VMs/PMs
> email preferences

I expect these are the features people use most or would be interested in changing
well bf's search sucks since the change (just hard to find old posts)
 

James

Cricket Web Owner
See inline comments below.

How different are these features?

> Finding the first post in a thread you haven't read

See http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/sit...nsidering-new-forum-platform.html#post3658171

> Advanced search function

See Search | XenForo Demo

> VMs/PMs

In XenForo, it''s called a "Conversation". If you click on a user and click "Start Conversation" that starts a chat between users.

> email preferences

You can choose to "Watch a Thread" and receive email notifications.
 

Top