Update on new Forum

[Enewton57]

Hi Everyone, Just wanted to give y'all a quick update about whats going on, learnings and progress on putting together this new Bearhawk Forum and fixing bugs. Jared Yates has been doing most of the work, for which I am very grateful. We have both spent a lot of time on the forum that covers forums, specifically VBulletin which is the software that this forum is run by. We have searched for solutions to problems and answers to our questions. We have learned a lot. This version of VBulletin is version 5. Earlier versions of VBulletin, had the ability to have email posts of every message. Earlier versions of VBulletin, (as recent as version 4) had the New Posts button which allowed you to see only posts that you haven't read yet. Why in the world the programmers took those two features out of the newest version, only they know. Many people on the various forums that use VBulletin are speaking out loudly and often about this, so we hope that the programmers will fix this. Probably when they do, it will mean a new update costing us more money to buy the update.
We have discussed going to version 4 but that would involve shutting this forum down completely and starting over with all of you having to register all over again. Not acceptable in my opinion. An workable solution is to have everyone go to "Latest Activity" or "Today's Posts" and just look for the highlighted posts. Those are the ones you haven't read yet.
Other issues we are working on is the forum not letting people sign in or they get kicked off, or timed out. Jared is working on those items. We think some of the issue is that some people sign on with www.bearhawkforums.com and others sign in with bearhawkforums.com without the "www" on the front. Leave off the "www" and see if that helps. Also, we are finding multiple people having issues using Internet Explorer. We recommend using either Firefox or Google Chrome, both of which are a free download. i use Firefox and haven't had a glitch yet. Don't forget to hit the refresh button every time you go back into Bearhawk Forums.
That's it for now, we are working on everything and appreciate everyone's patience as we work through the bugs.

[John Rheney]

Eric and Jared,

I really appreciate your efforts on setting up this forum. Although I work with and write code for computers, I have never set up a forum. I know to expect bumps and hiccups early in the deployment. I must say that with all of the problems exhibited with VBulletin I have done some reading of reviews and users/managers experiences. It seems that VBulletin was once the cat's meow but has descended to the bottom of the heap in features and customer support. Perhaps they will get the new version fixed down the road and reinstate the features and usability we want. Perhaps not. One thing I have learned about writing software is that fixing bad code can be a losing proposition. Sometimes it is just better to start fresh. I would recommend y'all set a deadline for getting this software package working as desired before descending too far down the rabbit hole. If the deadline is not met, scrap VBulletin and start fresh with another package. Painful, but better in the long run. Just my .02.

Best,
John

[N3UW]

unless the developers have given a date when the new features will be available I would not expect them anytime soon. I personally like other boards running Vbulletin but this version is very very difficult to find new posts. There is never a good time to change but now would be much better than later when lots of posts would be lost. I would recommend you consider going to version 4 right away and then later upgrading to V5 if they ever make it better. it is not that big a deal for everyone to renter their user info.

[Zzz]

A few thoughts on the issue:

Yes, this version of VBulletin is wrought with bugs. I think they completely rewrote the software and started at square one, and have some architectural issues to deal with. It was released far too prematurely to a dedicated, paying userbase who expected more. Bad move on their part. There is an entire blog site that I found dedicated to shaming VBulletin. You guys bought the software based on their reputation from previous versions.

You have 2 options:

1) Stay with Vbulletin 5. The software will get better, and they are a paid development staff so the improvements will hopefully come out more quickly than if it was open source software.

2) Jump ship to another forum software that isn't so premature. I personally don't think it's too late, as we're only a week into this forum and the people are here for a common goal and existing relationships. We will stay. I don't mind signing up again. I know the forum configuration and template customization is a pain, but it may be worth it. The new BCP site took me 7 months to build and I am still fighting bugs every day. That part generally doesn't go away.

Open source is not necessary worse. In fact, the contributing team is often larger. There's PhpBB, Kunena (runs on Joomla), Discourse, Simple Machines, Invision, etc.