[ファブリス]

I've started looking into MyBB! Did a basic conversion test today and the forum seems really fast.

It might take 2-3 weeks.. I have to solve

- conversion issues (ironically kanji appear fine, but french characters like "ç" don't)
- creating a basic theme, at least to get some familarity over (colours)
- port over the custom anti spam measures
- adapt layout for the current advertiser Nihonshock.com cheatsheets
- port the existing avatars if I can
- get familiar with the gazillions of settings ..


Some features I'm looking forward:

- the rich text editor (tired of typing all those [ bbcode ] tags, ugh... especially URLs)
- embedding videos (youtube mainly)
- MyBB has full unread message tracking


Some things I'm not sure about:

- rating users and posts : I don't believe down votes / ratings are helpful in any way. I hate them on Reddit. I have a custom style that hides all Reddit down arrows, and honestly the experience is so much better when I can just focus on upvoting / showing appreciation for posts I like. If I can't do that, then I'm inclined to disable this feature entirely.


If there are any plugins or themes you like for MyBB then let me know and I'll look into it.

I'm just experimenting at this point. If there are any good reasons to pick another platform, I can.

ファブリス Wrote:- creating a basic theme, at least to get some familarity over (colours)

The default theme works well on mobile, but it seem that most themes aren't yet responsive. I'm sure that will change over time, but perhaps it's best to copy and adapt the default unless you find a responsive theme you like better.

ファブリス Wrote:- get familiar with the gazillions of settings ..

yea, there really are a lot. fortunately there is a search box in the settings page to find what you are looking for quickly.

ファブリス Wrote:Some features I'm looking forward:
- the rich text editor (tired of typing all those [ bbcode ] tags, ugh... especially URLs)

OMG, yes please!! A reason to change in itself

ファブリス Wrote:Some things I'm not sure about:
- rating users and posts : I don't believe down votes / ratings are helpful in any way. I hate them on Reddit. I have a custom style that hides all Reddit down arrows, and honestly the experience is so much better when I can just focus on upvoting / showing appreciation for posts I like. If I can't do that, then I'm inclined to disable this feature entirely.

Agreed. I think a "useful" button would go a long way towards marking high value posts. I can't stand reading threaded views like on reddit and I don't know about ranking people based on number of posts. Maybe based on useful posts if that's an option.

ファブリス Wrote:If there are any plugins or themes you like for MyBB then let me know and I'll look into it.

There's a facebook login plugin that makes it a one click registration if that's desirable.

Looks like there's a way to disable the post rating feature:
http://community.mybb.com/post-590384.html

EDIT: One plugin that might be good is the "View Unread Posts" plugin. I go to some forums where it's used, and I find it super useful.
http://community.mybb.com/mods.php?action=view&pid=116

Also, one of the "Thank You" plugins might be nice.
http://community.mybb.com/mods.php?actio...cbf8ac60aa

[ファブリス]

I guess the Facebook plugin would be good to attract new users. I'll give it a go.

I want to take this opportunity to clean up all the unused accounts so we have a meaningful registered user list. A preliminary test today left approx 4500 users with at least one post. Then I will try to maintain accounts with 0 posts that have been signed in within the last few months so as not to bother people with creating a new account.

@Bokunesou Thanks. Come to think of it, I can maybe just remove the unwanted bits from the template and keep an upvote feature for posts / threads. Maybe I'll try that and see how it goes, and it can always be disabled later.

update

- There is a simple like system plugin where you can give a thumb up to a post and each users has a likes count in their profile.

[ファブリス]

Oh man their PunBB merge script is barely working.

Today I solved latin1 and utf8 conversions... all the Japanese text is stored natively in utf8 instead of html entities... which may solve the issue which prevents searching for Japanese text.

Now I have to figure how to convert all the internal links between threads and posts ( [ url = .... ] ) which the merge script doesn't deal with.

[ファブリス]

I've got the conversion to MyBB almost done.

Solved internal links & avatars.

Still quite a bit of work to do: I need to redirect old links (incoming visits) to the correct topic / post. Since MyBB doesnt have a "viewtopic.php" file, I think I will simply use that for redirect so there is no Mod Rewrite overhead. It will be transparent for people following links from Reddit and elsewhere.

I think I will put up a test version of the forum so that you can help me verify there were no conversion errors, that the Japanese text translated fine, etc. But first I need to figure out the robots.txt because I don't want Google to crawl the copy of the forum until this one is replaced.

Next there is the theme. The default MyBB theme is a little bit dense. I'm not sure yet if I want to use a cleaner theme or start from scratch. I might have to start from scratch to learn my way around the templates because god knows what pre-made themes do to the templates, what is removed, etc. So I'm thinking about replacing basically all TABLE code in the templates with pure grids, a mobile-first responsive grid system, which I started using on Kanji Koohii. That's a lot of work, but I don't need to do the admin, and can focus on the index, thread and post reply pages first to get 90% of the activity covered.

@Bokunesou : missed your edit, yeah I can add "View unread posts". I have so much to do, I'll start a thread when the new forum is up, keep bugging me about it. First let's see how the "view new posts" work, I'm still not clear exactly what "new posts" does since MyBB claims to have "full unread post" tracking. Is "new posts" just based on a time span, or is it like PunBB based on last visit and disappear after some time? In the thread view, some topics are bolded. Are those new posts or unread posts? There is a lot of options and settings that I haven't figured out yet

Thanks or Likes plugin, sure! Probably one of the best reasons to upgrade the forum. This Thank You/Like system seems very complete. However right now I am still knee deep in the conversion, and haven't spent much time reading those docs. I am very confused as to what is the difference between likes and thanks. I think thanks displays a list of who said "thanks" .. but the Likes system does the same right? Same thing here, keep bugging me about it after the new forum is up because there's so much to do so I need to focus on a working upgrade, get it out, and then work from there.

Thanks for all your hard work Fabrice.

@Fabrice Thanks! Glad some things seem to have been sorted out. I agree with Splatted, I think we're all really appreciative of all the work your doing.
"New posts" are posts that were posted fairly recently, so it's based on time span, while the bolded topics are unread. Unread posts and threads never become read unless you actually read them or mark them as read. Feel free to ask more questions anytime! I've used MyBB as a user as well as a mod for around half a year now, though not as a admin, I should say. Others here might have used it as one though, so it never hurts to ask. ^-^

I think "thanks" and "likes" only differ in name, though I could be wrong.

[ファブリス]

What is the purpose of Buddy List?

Oh, I think I can answer this. Some members' posts are often of a much higher quality than others. Sometimes I read something by a particular member and I want to see what else they've written. I can search by member name and see what they've written in the past, but going forward, I might like to bookmark that person and check what they're writing a month or so later. It's probably also good if you're doing a lot of PMing, it's a little like an address book. I haven't done this much, but that's what I'd use a buddy list for. It's probably not something that most people would use, but it seems to have some utility.

And let me add my voice to the chorus of people thanking you for your continued effort keeping this site running smoothly.

[ファブリス]

You're welcome

What about "post icons" (and thread icons), do we need this? I'm tempted to cut it out of templates to simplify the layout.

Nope. I would cut them out if it would make things easier.

As long as I could easily identify the new posts from the old, I wouldn't miss any icons. I like the idea of elimination clutter. I think thats what you are asking about, the dark circle that says the thread contains new posts..

Wait, the dark circle that says the thread contains new posts? The one that brings you to the first unread post in a thread? That is useful then.. as sometimes it takes a little while to figure out exactly where the new posts start.

[ファブリス]

No, no, these. Literally associate an icon with a post, or thread.

I could see a use for it for a community that shares different kind of medias, but even then MyBB has a "prefix" option that lets you tag threads with a prefix and search by prefix.. so I'm not sure what the icon is for.

Oh, OK. That's what I thought they were at first. They're pretty useless, since any decent thread title should be enough to convey what the thread's about.

Oh yea, sorry. Those are pretty useless.

ファブリス Wrote:so I'm not sure what the icon is for.

The post icons are really there to help break up posts into different categories. Like imagine someone has a question, they choose a ? icon, lets say someone wants to ask something about a translation they could choose a J-E icon or something like that. They are basically like prefixes but more condensed.

[ファブリス]

Today I've experimented with merging the now defunct "Reviewing the Hanzi" forum and it appears to work.

So I'm tempted to merge back the Chinese & Hanzi discussions: 235 topics, 2450-ish posts. The idea is to put it all under one sub forum. Because the forum was originally detached from here, users like bflatnine will find these posts merged back into their account here. I just have to do some additional checks for the avatars, but everything else seems fine.

I didn't have a problem with the sub forum, it was only removed from here when I had hopes for "Reviewing the Hanzi". Since the RevTH site is closed, I don't have an issue with reopining chinese & hanzi discussions on here. Even if it's not very active, there were some great posts; and it may also help a bit with SEO (more crawlable and indexable content).