Quote[/b] ]
Konnichiwa,
The forums were running on UBB 5.45a for two years.
The org staff has searched for a new version/entirly new forum application since early september 2002. The choice was Ikonboard 3.1.1 by Jarvis (one of the first choices).
It took a while to decide that this software was good, some reasons:
-MySQL database: everything is stored in one of the fastest databases around, is password protected and not stored in the root of the org server.
-Encrypted passwords.
-Sticky threads.
-Small in size.
-Free, UBB license is $199
-Great support, both from Jarvis and 'fan'sites.
-Customizable (the badgesystem isn't standard in Ikonboard).
-Different userlevels.
-Polls.
-Skins.
-Supports multiple language interfaces. I haven't found Spanish yet, I'm sorry.
-Extensive user control panel.
-Tools to help patrons keeping track of discussions.
A real problem for using a new board was that, the old UBB topics would be lost, combined with the user database.
Allow me to refresh some memories and explain to new members: the only reason that the totalwar.org forum has password protected accounts is that a minority of internet users (not necessarily a member) used the nick of a member to post bad messages. Allowing the public to re register established nicks was not desirable.
Yet another reason for choosing Ikonboard 3.1.1 was that there was a converter that allowed to import the UBB forum into this new board: topics would be saved and I wouldn't have to register 2400 (I prunned the old userdatabase, members with 0 posts were considered mis-registers) manually.
The import had some problems and the UBB forum was down for some 5 hours, while it could have been done within 30 minutes. The UBB is running for 2 years, and it's getting bugged.
This new forum could have been running modaynight, but there was a problem with the converter. It could import into a DBM database (stored in the root and not password protected) but it refused to import into MySQL. Importing UBB into DBM, backing-up that database and importing into MySQL like is supposed to work failed as well. That should work. The Ikonboard 'fan' support helped us out, but I live in The Netherlands and he in the USA. It was also a complex problem. The entire UBB board would be down for a long while (some 4 days). I posted an announcement that the conversion was at least 99% successfull (some UBB topics were technically corrupt), told that new topics/post couldn't and wouldn't be imported (it's an 'all' or nothing converter), that new posts could be manually copied and pasted when this new forum was running and that the old board could be used like usual until this one was ready.
It took 4 days: support had to made a customized import file, a new SQL table scheme and another small edit to allow me to import into MySQL.
I could have done a new import, there was a risk that it would fail (the UBB board is still wacky), some of the topics saved in the monday import were lost (UBB is wacky).
No posts from this discussions are deleted, not by me and I don't think the moderators have deleted any either.
The UBB forum is still open as read only, all topics and post are still there.
http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000667.html
Enjoy the new forums.
Bookmarks