Chaos Dwarfs Online currently runs on MyBB forum software that I installed nearly a decade ago. I’ve tweaked and customized it with my own code and various plugins which has made it difficult to upgrade without losing this functionality. I’ve been content with things the way they are, but the fact remains that an update or upgrade is inevitable and preferable to stagnation.
I’ve been on the lookout for some kind of free software that combines the functionality of a forum, website, blogs and wiki for a while, but haven’t found a satisfying solution. Do you know one?
I’d love to find a great piece of software on which we can build the foundation of a brand new CDO. Perhaps you’ve seen some other website with a great piece of community software.
Any software suggestions you can offer will be appreciated.
Very nice post Xander. The “brand new CDO” might be the way to go. Here’s what I would really like to see in an upgrade:
Not lose content / a way to transfer forum posts and threads. The galleries and blogs simply cannot disappear ever.
An easier main page / wiki solution. The whole PHP coding, server back and forth, ftp thing is time consuming and not easy. So a platform (perhaps just for the main page) where Admins can easily log in, make army galleries and so on would be really nice.
We don’t have AC and SC contests on the main page. Would be lovely to have, but the time and trial/error it would take me to make based on your tutorial is daunting.
Perhaps it doesn’t have to be free? I know we don’t really want an economical aspect of CDO, but I’m sure a lot of members would be willing to donate towards whatever platform we choose. I will gladly donate towards some server/platform/solution that makes it easier to update main CDO.
As for the forum:
Our medals are such a great thing! The slaves are very funny. Trade Rep is very useful. Upgrading to another forum platform I would say:
1. Medals is a must
2. Market Rep is nice
3. Slaves - are meant to be sacrificed and if the system can’t go with an upgrade, so be it.
What I would like to see in a new forum:
Tagging @users in posts is very nice. It’s used on both BoW and Mantic forums where I’m active, and it’s a very nice tool.
Wiki / forum dual user. I don’t know how something like this would work. Our Wiki is nearly complete.
Everything must be renewed from time to time, but I have some thoughts as well:
1) Don’t implement a renewal that won’t support the forum history. I want to be able to reread old threads from 2007 on wards. It’s our community’s history and achievements and I will not sacrifice it for modernity or functionality. Safety might convince me.
2) Do not implement the changes if they aren’t an upgrade. Getting used to new designs are hard and often people implement changes because they spent time on it, not because it’s an upgrade.
If we go on another platform, we will loose the old messages, the compatibility is really hard to keep.
I did a migration from a phpBB forum to Joomla, we manage to keep the posts and users, but a lot of messages were unreadable because of a different syntax between messages (BBCode on phpBB, ?? on Joomla).
Joomla has a lot of different modules and is a good option, but present things very differently than phpBB. Forum is much more simple and as good as phpBB.
Maybe an upgrade to the latest version is phpBB is the most secure thing to do ?
This forum could use edit buttons on posts. Some of us need that to kill iGadget induced typos. ;/ I confess to being a bit spoiled by those on other forums.
