BPsite Forums

I am planning a couple of changes for these forums in the near future.

The first will be to move to a different host - the primary benefit of this will be more space, more control (for me), and most importantly - a monthly quota of data transfer instead of the pay-per-MB transfer my current hosts force.
Which means there will be no need to set hired killers on people that post too much. ;)

The second change is a much more significant one - I plan to use Beehive forum technology, instead of the current Invision software, because Beehive has a huge number of benefits over Invision.
Here are a few of them:

• Remembers exactly what you have and haven't read (unlike Invision, which marks everything as read when you logout)
  [li]Allows replies to be sent to a specific post, or the entire thread, with notification of posts addressed to you.
  [li]Flexible relationship system, including the ability to ignore signatures from individual users (particularly those with animal obsessions :P)
  [li]Powerful and secure HTML posting that is just as easy as forumcode, but provides far more control.
  [li]An excellent poll system which quite simply puts all other forum voting systems to shame.
  [li]A per-user word filter system, so you can remove unpleasant words, or give people your own nicknames.
  [li]An optional spell checker, to help prevent typing and spelling mistakes.

And there's a lot more advantages that you'll be able to discover for yourself once it's up and running.
One more significant thing which I'll mention now is the fact that it is Open Source and better structured than Invision, meaning modifications are much easier to do, so if you manage to find a feature it lacks, adding it should be a doddle. :)

So, hopefully everyone is now very excited, and possibly wondering what will happen to this place - nothing will happen; not before I have the other place is ready, and I'll post once a date is set for the actual switch. After the switch, this place will remain, although I will probably make it read-only and stick a big "go here" link pointing to the new place at the top of every page.

In the mean time, feel free to continue to post as normal, and if you have any comments or questions then obviously go ahead and ask them.

Well, the main question has to be, will it be pretty?

argh! another forum change!

i miss our ancient purple forum.....

fun, more things to mess up and cause you grief over


i think that would be far more usable if it FORCED people to see sigs


heheheh, i have access to one of these on my friends forum, its great


can we move a few topics over to this new forum?

Cool, just one question: can I mod something?

Damn, I'll need a new job.  Anyone want to buy a second-hand MP5?

Beehive does have several advantages I'll agree, but not many people are familiar with it.  One learning curve for the masses, coming up.

ooh, it's hornet.  how's it going? :)


meaning we can expect it in the next year or two, yes? :P

I think it is. But if anyone disagrees (or has a bee phobia) then there are nine alternative themes, along with the ability to create more.


I miss the even more ancient orange one. I think the only other person from that era that's still here is Rug.


Definitely. I've been pondering whether to attempt to create an automated tool to do it, but if that's not feesible then I can definitely manually transfer some.


If I let you. ;)


Aye, fortunately there are a few good introductory guides available, which should help make the curve smoother.


If by 'year', you mean 'week', then yes. :P

hmm..I think some spamming is in order before the switch :alien:  

Hornet - maybe you should hold onto that MP5 for a little bit longer...


:alien: :mp5:


:P

beehive has three things that piss me off immensely:

1) ugly
2) it uses frames
3) its slow(er)

1) No it's not.
2) Why does that piss you off?
3) Depends on the server (unless you've done a test to prove it?)

1) yes it is
2) because
i) it makes the thing ugly
ii) it dosen't load properly on some browsers
iii) it dosen't load at the same rate because the thing is slow
iv) it ends up cutting things in two and making navigation cluttered
3) i'm getting slow loading speeds on servers that're pinging in fine. Plus they're consistently slow, all the ones that use beehive...not just one or two. Also a of mine from CSS claims he switched from Beehive and witnessed something of a difference, although a small one to be fair.

I say we get a wiki. Theres not that many of us...we all know eachother...lets get a wiki.

although...knowing the amount of self restraint present here...how long till it gets flooded with AV and Furries?

Same question here!  :D

And SS, given this resistance to the bumblebee forum thing, I wouldn't be surprised if it took several months to make the change.  :P

ARe you seriously serious about the week thing?

i) Ugliness is subjective. And you're wrong. :P

ii) Which browsers?

iii) again, slowness depends on the server. I've got a test installation on here and it's no slower than Invision is currently.

iv) Cluttered in what way? It makes navigation easier since you don't need to use multiple windows or keep switching back to the menu page.



Which proves what? Pinging is for testing the connection to a machine, but doesn't require much processing by the machine. A PHP script will always be slower, and how much slower depends on the script and the CPU & memory of the server.

I don't suppose you've got any URLs or information?
I know of several high-traffic sites that use Beehive, and I'm only aware of one of them has an issue with speed, which has been proven to be due to the server itself.







The latest version is currently in the final bug-checking stage.
Once that has been completed then it will be publically released, and I'll be setting it up then.
It might take longer if any serious bugs are found, but I don't think there will be, and so I expect it'll be released before August.

been having problems in opera and old mozzy

yes...its a great boon...for people who don't have a 4th mouse button

it proves that it wasn't just a crappy connection thats making the thing slow

what kinda information?...go have a look on google...pick a whole load of URL's off google...go crazy, they're slow.

Opera doesn't count because it's poo.
Not sure why Mozilla would be having problems, but it's obsolete anyway.

I don't have a fourth mouse button - just a regular MS Intellimouse Optical - but eitherway, (speaking as someone who has used both interfaces for many years, and was initially in favour of Ikonboard/Invision), it's a much better interface once you give it a chance and get used to it.


Information as to what sort of server the forum is being run on - ie: is it IIS or Apache, which OS, and so on. To find out if there's a specific configuration slowing things down.
I've just gone through the list of forums (http://beehiveforum.sourceforge.net/forums.php) from the Beehive site and most were fast. A couple weren't, but none of them were slow.

SS, I dearly hope you're planning to move all information from certain forums across to the new forums. Notably the FoN dev board. We need *everything* off of there, more or less.

whoa beehive looks boring... :unsure:

hopefully it comes with good smileys :P  

We have a FoN section?  Gee, and I thought the project had died years ago.  :D

Speaking of important data being transferred... *looks at postcount*  :rolleyes:

Oh and Beehive is ugly. phpBB, damnit!

Yup.


I'll be porting the smileys from here, so you'll be able to choose between these ones, the default (but rather boring) ones, my MiniEmotes ones, and maybe the Trillian ones too.


Then you'll be pleased to know that work is already underway on the templating system that will allow the interface to be completely changed. :)

its not TOO slow...but its slowER

i demand pro speed from my forums >.>

Bah, in that case you can just use Lite mode. :P


Also, with 0.6 the database has had various database tweaks (indexes and stuff), which should speed things up considerably compared to any existing (0.5) forums.



Oh and I'd like to share this quote from someone who just got Beehive setup:
:D

That doesn't stop it being ugly!

what color will it be?  :unsure:

yich!...phpbb i do not like <_<  

Any colour do you want.

The default styles are:
apple (light green), black, blue, default (light blue), green, grey, purple, red, violet, yellow

But you can generate a new theme simply by specifing a hex colour code.



Woo, someone else with taste. ;)

Hotpink ftw!

YARR! Hot pink, me 'earties! (http://nwduneauron.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/)

Hot pink has but one use, and that's for debugging output.

For my part, I must say that there are reasons that most forums use the layout they do; it makes a lot of sense, and everyone is familiar with it.  I briefly toyed with an alternate interface for Fyreboard, whereby the forum sections were listed in a dynamic iframe at the side of the page, but decided to revert to the traditional system. Although it required more clicks to get from A to B, the alternate interface made the forum feel too disjointed, as if it were merely a list of topics rather than the online community they represent.

Beehive is open to modifications, you say?  What if I were to mod the index page to resemble a typical forum?  You'd have all of Beehive's features, and the familiarity of a traditional layout.  I haven't looked at the code yet, but I'm sure it's possible through fair means or foul.  Would that satiate the masses?

I think the world you love you if you did that, Hornet.

It reminds me of that commercial with the "pink slip virus."  :D  

can we move all the FoN stuff over first?

I've been planning to do that myself, but I'm waiting for the template stuff to be ready because it'll make it much easier to do.

But you could do it with the current one if you want - just make a copy of thread_list.php and do the relevant modifications, then add a link to the top-bar menu and an entry under the starting page preference in Forum Options, and that should be enough for both interfaces to co-exist.

If you've been thinking along those lines as well then the chances are many other people have been doing the same, so it may be easier to wait for someone else to do it (the joys of the GPL) and beg/borrow/cadge their efforts.

Given the general reaction here, I'm curious as to why you didn't forward the suggestion before.  Anyway, I've only given their documentation a glance-over, and as you say templates would indeed help the issue.  But I suggest waiting for it to be finished before we start tweaking it; that's not a mistake I'm going to repeat. *curses Nullsoft*

I didn't want to forward it sooner because:
1) I still think people would like the frame-based interface if they give it a chance.
2) I wanted to be more sure about the templating stuff, and had just seen a simple example of it before posting that.

As for the waiting for someone else to do it... possibly; a few other people have murmured about it, but I haven't seen anyone conclusively say "I'll do it"... although I'm not sure if I've stated that myself either. :mellow:

Anyhow, yeah, I don't think it's going to die half-way through or anything, but I definitely agree with waiting.

I'm not concerned about it dying, just that it's infuriating when something small but vital to your mod/skin/whatever is changed in a critical way, and you're force to redo a load of work because you didn't wait until the release version.  I had to rewrite the better part of a Winamp3 skin when they 'tweaked' Wasabi; for the same reason I've paused my Atom (http://ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-atompub-format-10.txt) editor until the format's been finalised.

no clue what you guys are talking about, but do I get the hint that this requires waiting longer? :huh:

Hmm... ditto, but I heard FoN in there, so it must involve waiting a LONG time!  :D  :withstupid:  

I almost ordered the hosting last night, but had a few questions I wanted answered first. :P
Which they've answered this morning, so I'm going to go ahead and order it tonight.

Anyone have ideas for a domain?
(I'll be keeping this one, but I can also get a free com/net/org with the hosting...)

www.bluepeterfansite.com

Let me rephrase that: Anyone have a good idea for a domain?

:P

How about.. bpsite.net?

bpsite.yiff, .... did you say we can create our own forum themes>?

.yiff isn't a valid TLD. :P

And yes... forum admins can nominate a colour and auto-generate a complementary theme from it, or you can manually edit the stylesheet and give it to me to upload.

Also, was trying to think of something more imaginative/interesting than bpsite.xyz
Except my imagination is dead at the moment, so I might as well just use bpsite.net

Wow! That was quick: It's all ready already.

Even the domain is active, in under an hour!

You took that (http://www.bpsite.net), how bloody unimaginative.

What do I get for winning the competition? It was a competition, right?

you get...all your homework done for you for a month! how novel

But I don't have any homework this month o.o.

well damn, i must have missed that


no lessons all day  <_< i was so bored...until i started blowing things up for the yr 10's

You can be one of the privileged few who get access to the very latest (unreleased) Beehive code, and help me try to break it. :)

(Just as soon as I've uploaded all the files and got things setup.)

Bah, I got that for this place too.

Well then you're obviously very lucky aren't you. :P

Anyhow, I've got the test forum setup (http://bpsite.net/beehive_test), so feel free to pop over and register and play with it.

Ewwwwwwwwww... it's ugly and confusing!  I miss these forums already... o wait, they're not gone yet!  :)  

Um, where are the threads/ forum sections? :/
It just appears to be a welcome message, I think you forgot something...

Have you clicked on the "messages" bit at the top?

Here's a quick start guide:
Quick Start Guide (http://beehiveforum.sourceforge.net/docs/?id=UserQuickStart)
And other user help:
User Docs (http://beehiveforum.sourceforge.net/docs/?id=UserDocs)

And here's another guide:
Using Beehive Forum Software (http://canadian-politics.com/forum_guide_directory.htm)

If you're still confused after reading those, then you'll have to elaborate more.

Oooh I see, you click on messages and it appears on the left, whilst the thread is on the right. God, how confusing.

By the way, whoever said it loaded slower was right, large change in load times for me.

That might be the server's fault though; I managed to get this earlier: [ Script Execution time: 196.8987 ]   [ 13 queries used ]   [ GZIP Enabled ].

No joke, that was the result of checking the days active posters.

i like the poll system; but yuch! the layout is horrid and i mean really horrid

You've spent less than two minutes using it so far - you can hardly get an accurate picture from that. Especially when you haven't even got the files cached (like you will do for here).

See? Ugly.

" "

QFT

:miffed: Quantum Field Theory?

Quoted for truth, foo'. :P

thats the stupidist abreviation eve

even worse than kk

QFT doesn't appear here (http://www.tomax7.com/html/chat_abbrevs.htm) therefore I must conclude Ripper is making shit up.

ahaha i read that as chav abbreviations

"YMMVG - Your Mileage May Vary Greatly " who the hell says...?

YMMVG from other people's in the use of that abbreiviation.

oh god...

i still like OMGWTFBBQ ^_^  

Um... still no.   :P

Where'd you find this site from; I've never seen half of those abbreviations before.  :miffed:  

Pff, go read any non-self respecting gaming forums.

Talking about forum changes, is it just me, or are these forums slowing down quite a bit?

Annoying people, because it's a shite saying and an even worse acronym.



It's not just you - I've been getting it also.

My hosts claim that everything is fully operational and there are no known problems - but then they always do. :angry:
One of the great things about the new hosts is that they actually have active support forums and will tell you if things go wrong.

[ Script Execution time: 4.3315 ]

Ouch. :|

Script Execution time: 0.2864

same as ever really

are these boards updating themselves at all?

Sometimes this place is normal/fast, sometimes it isn't... haven't spotted a pattern yet.



We wont be switching across to Beehive before:
1) 0.6 is officially released.
2) I've converted the relevant data.

I'm going to start properly looking at doing a conversion system tonight, but I don't know when 0.6 is going to be declared finished - I think there are still a couple of bugs which cropped up with RC2 which need fixing first.

well, before you switch us over to this new place (WoW has eaten my time, dont have the chance to see what the new site address is) just make sure we know aight? id hate to lose folks in the move.

There'll be a large announcement at the top of the page with the new forum address before the forum is taken down, and it'll be replaced with a redirect when it does go down. Don't worry, you won't miss it.

Aye.


It's also tempting to e-mail all 400 (:notify:) members on here and say "look! shiny new stuff! come back to us!", so we'd end up gaining rather than losing.
Except I'm uneasy about doing that, since it might annoy some people. :unsure:

Don't do it. Some forums prune inactive members; we switch board every so often.

but well end up with what? 25-30 members? not a bad prune

Bah!  It's so much cooler when you have 400 members instead of 30.  And as I always say, AWGTHTGTTA.  :P

I say you send out that e-mail, SS.  Look at it this way- some of those old online games coughKoCcough still send me mail announcing a new age has begun!  ;)

We'll get more members at the new forum, from things that are actually active. Rather than have 400 members, ~20 of which actually post.

As I'm off to Pickering in about 12 hours, enjoy your week without me, enjoy the new forums if we switch whilst I'm away.

hahahahahahahaha Do you really think we're ready to switch forums?  I mean, it's only been a few weeks since SS announced the move... I give it another month, at least.   LOL  

hah no wonder you couldnt remmeber the name of the place

[SMOff]

BUAF  -   STB

[/SMOff]

We're still here!

Hehe... told ya.   :D  

I did mention that we wont be switching until the new version comes out.

Which it did on Friday.


Except I haven't got my convertor thing done, and I doubt I'll have it ready in the next week, and I'll be going on holiday on Saturday, so... first week in September if you're optimistic... third week would be more realistic though.
:)

odd i think ive heard this before. but dont worry mnost people wont even have read this till your ready  ;)  

procrastinator...

can I squeeze a "next" in that statement before september? :P

As in "next year" or "next decade?"   LOL  

no no you see what ever date he sets multiply the difference by 4 and itll be around then so be careful what you add