The future of the yabbse community?

[charlottezweb]

Will that site remain, and if not, at what point will it be closed?

Jason

[David]

With the release of SMF 1.0 the YaBBSE site will be closed.  Whether it will all be made read only or really closed is undecided.

[Jeff Lewis]

It will probably stay up a for a little bit but will eventually close.

[charlottezweb]

I think it'd be useful to have an option to access the database (maybe through a SMF engine) on an archive site, because (and maybe i'm wrong here) I think there are a lot of topics/resources that will still prove very useful.  Read-only would be fine.

Just my 2cents...

Jason

[Douglas]

I know that with our new support tool, I'm grabbing some of the most common questions and directions that I ask and putting them into a template system for me to make my job easier.    I do agree that the database should at least be available via a specialized search query.

I would also recommend a 404/redirect page that puts people over to SM.org after X seconds.

[Juvenall Wilson]

Yeah, it would be nice to see the old site stay open. I've put quite a bit into into reworking SE on the installs I did for myself and it would be nice to still be able to expand on that.

If needed, I would run it myself on one of my servers. Either way..

[Joshua Dickerson]

why would you want to continue to support it?

[charlottezweb]

If you have clients that you setup on yabbse and they don't want to pay you to upgrade them to SMF, you might occassionally need to support them.

I'm not in that boat, but I can see it happening...

Jason

[[Unknown]]

The only change in requirements is that MySQL 3.23 is required... which I understand was already technically the case.

The upgrade is painless... why wouldn't people want to go ahead?

I don't plan on supporting YaBB SE after this is done... if you really want the site to stay up, maybe we can work something out... but, ...why?

-[Unknown]

[charlottezweb]

We're just referring to keeping the forum up...not necessarily providing support

If you're motivated, you can find most of what you need there.  So i think it's advantageous to everyone to have it available as a reference.   Hell, I might host it if you want.

I think there are topics/discussions there that are useful regardless of what YSE/SMF version you are running.  That was my point.

Jason

[andrea]

I vote for let the site up for say a year or so. At least until the majority of members has converted to SMF.

[charlottezweb]

as a side note, how many times have mods had to scold people on the support forums for advertising their boards when they're on 1.3.x or whatever...

My point is, if it's not broken, don't fix it.  A LOT of users will be slow to upgrade.

Jason

[Juvenall Wilson]

why would you want to continue to support it?

Well, three reasons really. The first and really the most important is I know that there are people, including myself, who have developed heavely into the last few versions of SE. In fact, those that have seen a few of my SE installs wouldn't have a CLUE that it was an SE if it wasn't for the copyright tag. There are tons of both code changes (custom mods I've developed and never had the chance to let loose) and visual tweaks (lots of nasty tables removed..heh) that sort of set it apart. Christ, it's almost a version in itself..lol

Second, there are lots of people who won't want to "upgrade" to this version for a while. That's really standard with any new version. In this case however, the old community is really sorta gone. That leaves them out in the cold. Not really a huge deal, but it's still a reason to keep it up. Now I know the old boards are still open, but with a shift in the focus to SMF, that leaves a lot of people stuck.

Finally, I like the YaBB name..lol

So I'm not really stuck on the idea and in time, people will move on (if SE is dead for good and dosn't stick around). It would just be nice to see stay . Like I said, if needed, I've got a few dedicated servers that arn't doing anything..lol.

[David]

We all understand this will not be an overnight change, just as people do not upgrade to a new version overnight.

[[Unknown]]

Yes, but... as Andrea hsa said - it becomes tiresome for the support team to traffic back and forth.

I would give a grace period - not a year, but maybe two months - and end the support.  You can keep using it, but you won't get suppport for it - you'll have to upgrade for that.

And this is the case in many modern companies.  If you call up McAffee or something and ask for support on their first version - they're gonna just say "we don't support that version anymore, please upgrade to the most current one."  And when you say "I don't want to" they will say "Then I can't help you."

Sure this may be "mean".... but, it's the only way to do things.  YaBB SE and SMF are alreay so different, I often write wrong queries in the YaBB SE support boards.... because I am writing them for SMF and they simply will not work at all with YaBB SE.

It's hard to be versed in two seperate forums at once - so why should the support team do so for a whole year?

Anyway... keeping a backup might be okay - but why not just use the "waybackmachine"?

And, Juvenall Wilson... probably 80% of your modifications would be theme-related.  And, if they are mostly table removals... we plan on having a theme/all themes like that.

-[Unknown]

[charlottezweb]

win 98 support was just recently discontinued support wise (or is going to REAL soon if I'm off)

My issue is with stuff of the old yse forums that will apply to any forum...some of the info does

Jason

[Juvenall Wilson]

And, Juvenall Wilson... probably 80% of your modifications would be theme-related.  And, if they are mostly table removals... we plan on having a theme/all themes like that.

Not really. Only 5 out of the 30 some mods I have myself would fall under the "theme" related category. The rest are features I wanted that never got added. Like my own version of the "Add more Membergroups" mod, a much smaller scale template engine, a different user management system, a total rework of the profile just to name a few. I've also tweeked a number of the files quite a bit as well as created my own portal based around SE for use with some of my clients (after getting a basic working module for postnuke). The reason why some of those things never became public can be found in the YaBB staff forum.

The tables that were removed were the ugly ones that were encasing things like the board description, but I give visual changes little weight next to feature additions.

[[Unknown]]

Sorry, I said that based on the fact that I've only seen mods for cosmetics from you..

YaBB staff forum... never seen it.. mind PMing me like a few words, I'm curious...

-[Unknown]

[Juvenall Wilson]

Sorry, I said that based on the fact that I've only seen mods for cosmetics from you..

Oh yeah, I figured . No biggie though, I'd think the same thing considering.

YaBB staff forum... never seen it.. mind PMing me like a few words, I'm curious...

Doing it now

[Ben_S]

as a side note, how many times have mods had to scold people on the support forums for advertising their boards when they're on 1.3.x or whatever...

My point is, if it's not broken, don't fix it.  A LOT of users will be slow to upgrade.

But you could argue 1.3 is broken as it has numerous security holes and is horribly inefficient.