just a few thoughts about the forum, and looking for some feedback. I put it here rather than the announcements section, as people may miss it. Note that I'm probably not going to do anything in the next week or so... just looking to see that people think.
The forum has been around for close to 10 years now, and for a few reasons I need to do some work on it.
1. The forum uses PHPBBv2 which works fine but it pretty dated now, and I've put a whole bunch of plugins into it (Small ones, and larger ones such as the garage and classifieds)
2. I've left it on phpbbV2... the main reason is the mail2forum plugin. This is a complex plugin that allows people to receive emails from the forum and if you reply by email, the posts get plugged back in. This was no small feat for the developers and no other forum that I know of has this even today (including phpbbv3) viewtopic.php?t=86
3. The forum is on a colocated server that is costing me lots of money now (they keep increasing my fees) and I need to move it off to reduce stress when the bill comes around every month. I have other places to put it, but transferring as is is a bit of a mission to do so for a number of technical reasons. I've never charged for forum/ad use and even resisted putting banner ads up. it gets 6000+ unique views per month and uses a fair bit of bandwidth.
So, I could move it all across, but I have a few security concerns and there are some existing bugs (plus it isn't really useable with newer versions of php as it is). I'd rather start from something known.
So... I'm thinking I might:
1. Upgrade to phpbbv3. It is prettier, maintained by the developers and I should be able to pull most of the existing content and the users etc across.
2. Maybe rebrand it - I have a couple of ideas. "Mx5forum" is a bit boring and you guys are a bit of a community together, so it would be nice to have a brand and people in the past have suggested a sticker & stuff you can put on your cars etc (someone can help with that if they like) like some of the other NZ car forum communities.
3. Tidyup the layouts a bit and rationalise the forums/topics maybe? Suggestions welcome.
4. I'm still not keen to charge or put ads up, but it may happen sometime. People who know me will know that likelihood is pretty low. Donations to my mortgage are always welcome though (my wife made me say this)
HOWEVER - if I move to phpbbv3, a few things will have to go.
a) Mail2forum will go. I will miss this, but not sure what else to do. You will likely still be able get email for every post, but replying won't do anything. Not really sure how many people actually use this now anyway or even know it is possible - most of you youngies probably just type it into the browser. I can probably plug in tapatalk or other system anyway so you can use a phone app.
b) The Garage... will go. I will also miss it, but there isn't one for V3. I might be able to find something similar, but no promises. I'll give people plenty of time to take any content they want to keep, and will archive it.
Your thoughts.... Go
