Would there be a major issue if I Upgraded now ?

[glennk]

Really fed up of waiting. Google are about to penalise sites with poor Mobile display. Would I face major issues if I upgraded to the beta version now ?

[margarett]

Well, yes, honestly. Your forum should work properly for the most part, but there are things that still need fixing (that we know of, and some others that we don't know yet )

Where did you get that information about Google?

[Illori]

it is a dumb email that google is sending out telling people their forum does not render correctly on a mobile device. same as we have seen increase in people asking about responsive etc for 2.0 because of google being dumb. people are smarter then robots. humans may not have the best or ideal experience but it does work on a mobile device.

[glennk]

Hi Margerat,

Webmaster tools already highlights the curve theme in the old smf as a poor uer experience for users. As from April they will promote mobile friendly sites over mobil unfreindly sites.

SMF should have been on this years ago. 50% of my users are now on mobiles and complain constantly about my forum display>

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html

[margarett]

Check this topic
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=534808.0
(amongst others)

You will find links to Bloc's responsive themes there and even a link to a topic by Antes that should allow you to add basic responsiveness to Curve

[vbgamer45]

I am getting emails now about my impressions views in app search on google now too!!!!

Your app in Google's Search results: this week's stats on clicks and impressions

To: webmaster of http://www.smfhacks.com/

Now that you've implemented App Indexing, we thought you might be interested in how your app's doing in Google's search results. As of 2015-03-23, we've discovered 2,491 app pages in total, of which 99 pages have been indexed so far. And below are the impression and click stats between 2015-03-17 and 2015-03-23.

    This is the aggregate information for the web pages of http://www.smfhacks.com/ which have been properly associated with an app page and successfully indexed.
    Impressions: how many times users who have your app installed saw search results associated with app URIs.
    Clicks: how many times users clicked through to your app.

[Kindred]

google is being stupid.

As for upgrading..... no. 2.1 is not recommended for production sites, at all!!  !!!

[Biology Forums]

I got a notice too, but I haven't experienced any decline in visits.

[TarantinoArchives]

Aside from the Google aspect (they are just doing what they can to nudge webmasters into making sites more mobile-friendly in a time where more and more people access sites mainly on the go), I understand if some users are concerned about waiting a long time for a more 2015-appropriate version of SMF

I think 2.1 beta looks great, and I hope it comes along quickly. Others arent sleeping however. Discourse looks amazing, and phpBB is seeing lots of activity, too... even though their progress isnt as groundbreaking as Discourse...

[Kindred]

Discourse looks amazing, and phpBB is seeing lots of activity, too... even though their progress isnt as groundbreaking as Discourse...

ROTMLMAO......   Seriously?   Discourse?

Wow... I needed a good laugh this morning.

[Deaks]

Discourse looks amazing, and phpBB is seeing lots of activity, too... even though their progress isnt as groundbreaking as Discourse...

ROTMLMAO......   Seriously?   Discourse?

Wow... I needed a good laugh this morning.

This post is why SMF needs a like feature ... one moment I need to send Arantor a link to this he will love Tarantino's post!!

[Arantor]

Discourse... Wow. The one forum I know that uses Discourse has a thread running for almost a year entitled "vote of no confidence" relating solely to the software and the bugs that are *still* found near daily.

Yes, it looks reasonable, hope you never actually want to post from mobile, and be prepared to pay for a VPS since that is the only way you can run it. Oh, and the forum I mentioned has a 4GB VPS, runs out of server space regularly because of Discourse's features. Some of which have legal ramifications and when the devs were made aware of this, the reaction was "not our problem".

In fact, the lead Dev repeatedly told us that we were "using it wrong" as if an online community of programmers would not understand how a forum works (including people that have worked on forum software)

Could not recommend.

[TarantinoArchives]

Well maybe I am too progressive-minded. I am not saying Discourse is the perfect new beacon on the hill, but at least it is a breath of fresh air and innovation. SMF looks - seriously - like it is from the 90s. I think it is time to move things into 2015, and Discourse is doing some things really well conceptionally... but it is very young so obviously it is not as mature a software yet. But let's wait and see....

[Kindred]

Thanks. .. I needed another chuckle.

[Deaks]

Well maybe I am too progressive-minded. I am not saying Discourse is the perfect new beacon on the hill, but at least it is a breath of fresh air and innovation. SMF looks - seriously - like it is from the 90s. I think it is time to move things into 2015, and Discourse is doing some things really well conceptionally... but it is very young so obviously it is not as mature a software yet. But let's wait and see....

You will be waiting a while before Discourse is even presentable in an aesthetic manner never mind any other form.  Please dont hold your breath.

[Arantor]

Discourse has been in *production use* for over a year on sites. It hit "stable 1.0" months ago, and new bugs are still found regularly.

There are also some seriously messed up design decisions, like limiting the number of things you can like per day, limiting the number of threads you can bookmark per day, ability to auto promote users to partial moderator status without any proper control on the admin's part.

It looks nice enough but it is so fragile, consumes vast amounts of resources on both client and server and falls over under even modest load. Not to mention, they couldn't decide whether to use bbcode, raw HTML or Markdown, so they use all three at once and they all trip each other up.

Any bug you report has a 50% chance of you being told that it isn't a bug and you're using it wrong, as though it is their right to tell you how you can use the software. (Compare and contrast the attitude here of "yes, you could do it but it isn't designed for that so is not going to work so well")

[TarantinoArchives]

Well I'll keep an eye on it. It definitely looks interesting from an outside perspective...  I have been using SMF for almost as long as it existed, but there is an impatience growing inside me to try new things

[Arantor]

Trying new things is fun, until you begin to understand that the structures SMF and friends use follow the principle of form-follows-function and that they were well established and understood before internet browsers even existed. Trying to reinvent such things requires far more care and thought than Jeff "coding horror" Atwood and friends currently put into them.

For example, trying to cite Stack Overflow as an example of a 'great forum'. I don't know about you, but Stack Overflow is hardly a *discussion platform*. And I'd be wary of anyone whose stated mission is creating 'civilised discourse' because that implies they will dictate how you could/should have discussions (e.g. a forum software that can't really cope with long threads and "encourages" you to create many many shorter threads)

Bold and experimental in a lot of ways but it would be smart to at least listen to people who do understand rather than ignoring them because of someone who thinks he knows best.