8 replies to this topic

[Feld0]

Hey everyone,

I've mentioned it a few times in the chat, but in case you don't go there much, or simply happened to miss it, I wanted you all to know that we're not gonna be stuck on phpBB forever. I feel this place has enough potential, and all of you deserve it, to get an upgrade to a nice, paid forum system. Having played around with a few of them in the past, and being the current administrator of a large vBulletin forum, I honestly have to say that free forum systems simply cannot compete on their level.

After doing a ton of research and experimenting, I've settled on IP.Board as my forum script of choice. It is a simply wonderful system, and you guys will all really enjoy using it very much. Among the new features IP.Board will support are group private messages, post reputations, Facebook-style status updates, visitor messages, customizable profiles, and an utterly beautiful interface.

I'm planning to purchase an IP.Board license and carry out the board conversion as soon as: 1) we reach 1500 or more posts; and 2) we reach 75 or more members. The posts probably won't be a problem, but we've probably still got a while until we get 75 members. If you want it to happen faster, by all means feel free to share any ideas you may have for promoting the site.

Anyway, I'm pleased to announce part of my roadmap for the future of Wii 2 Blog and Wii 2 Boards. There's loads more I've got planned for after the upgrade, but I don't want to drop any spoilers on it all just yet.

[Wertville]

Best way to promote the site? Signatures.
If you can make a forum sig or two, it's pretty much free advertising from people who use other forums

[dannyboy]

Best way to promote the site? Signatures.
If you can make a forum sig or two, it's pretty much free advertising from people who use other forums

Oh he's already done that on the 3ds buzz forum he had a link to here in his signature. That's how i found here

[Feld0]

I could put together a nice forum sig or two. Gimme a few days, and it will be done.

On a bit of a somewhat random side note, I'm strongly considering moving the forums to wii2blog.com. There are an awful lot of advantages to that SEO-wise. I'm probably not gonna do it quite yet, because we all probably love our wii2boards.com (and I bought the domain not that long ago, so it would be a bit of a waste); but when the inevitable day comes on which I'll rename the site to whatever the Wii 2 is actually going to be called, I'll move the forums to the main blog's domain for sure. Along with that, I'll be adding a www. to every URL then, too.

On another note, I ran my third test conversion to IP.Board the other day. You might've noticed this place being down for a few minutes while I was doing that - the first two times I ran the conversion, I left wii2boards.com live, which seemed to screw up the process somewhere and led to disjointed topics, incorrect linkage of accounts to posts, and all sorts of other weird hullabaloo. Third time's the charm, as they say. Anyway, I wanted to say that we've got nothing to worry about in terms of losing posts or anything like that when I do finally carry out the upgrade.

[AMAC]

Is that the same sort of board as 3DS Buzz? It looks similar on the link for invisionpower.com. It has reputation which should be a nice addition.

[Feld0]

3DS Buzz has vBulletin, which is similar to IP.Board, but a bit clunkier. IP.Board has pretty much all the same features, plus a lot more that vB doesn't, as well as a super-slick interface. Best way to describe IP.Board would be as a cross between vBulletin, Facebook, and Twitter - it's packed with a bunch of social networking-esque features, too, like status updates and custom profile pages.

I guarantee you'll love it.

Umm...I meant to tell you something about the 75 users thing. It refers to 75 legitimate users. Many of the users that register are, in fact, spambots that never post and only add useless rows to the user table in the database. I usually always delete those accounts when I see them, because I want the member list to actually be a list of, you know, members. Hope you guys understand; and it might mean that the 75-user goal may take a little longer to reach than you might've hoped.

[AMAC]

It sounds good. I have a couple more questions though. Do you know if this new board will work on the Tapatalk forum app? I often use it for 3DS Buzz, so it would be great if it supports I.P.boards too. Finally, will all the posts and user data on this site be moved onto the new one?

[Feld0]

I don't have a smartphone myself, so I can't test it first-hand, but yes, IP.Board is listed as a supported platform on Tapatalk's website, so you'll be able to access it through that (for that matter, phpBB is on the list, too; you just reminded me to install it on here). As well, IP.Board comes with its own mobile skin, which looks quite nice.

All posts, topics, polls, users, avatars, and attachments will make the transition. The custom profile fields I've added (fandom, caption, and gender) might get lost in the transition, but won't be too hard for you guys to add back.

Private messages physically made it into IP.Board's database from my own tests, but don't seem to show up in the private messaging area for some reason. I'm looking into it, but it's very possible that you might lose all your private messages in the conversion. phpBB makes it pretty easy to back them up, though; just use the "Export as CSV/XML" option at the bottom of the PM area.

If you guys have any other questions, please ask. I want this transition to go as smoothly as possible for all of us. ^^

[Feld0]

Because the upgrade is now complete, I'll lock this topic. You may discuss IP.Board in this topic from now on.