Why are we migrating to new forum software?

[djensen]

No offense taken.

The primary benefits:

• Easier for me to maintain the community
• Easier for moderators (a hypothesis but other Discourse sites have seen this to be true)
• More traffic
• More users (a hypothesis)

For most of your “not concerned” answers.

• It’s terrible when I need to update something, like HBG ads or the “Buy Axis & Allies” section to the right. They may not directly affect the end user but they affect the operation of the site. I had to spend half a day on vacation last year updating HBG’s ads when they went gold.

• It’s a huge security concern. This definitely affects the end user. Back in the early 2000s, the forums was hit by a hack and we lost everything including an awesome thread with Larry Harris (who has not posted here since).

Mobile ready

• With Discourse, you can simply switch to desktop mode, just like any other site but Discourse does make it slightly easier.

• It almost doesn’t matter what the end user thinks, we play by Google’s rules. If Google says you must do mobile, then we must do mobile otherwise we lose traffic. Traffic is partially how people find us. We’ve already taken a hit in traffic because this has not been addressed earlier.

• The expectation from most Millennials and Plurals (Generation Z) is mobile ready, if we want new, younger people, it must be mobile. Gen X is either ambivalent or resists change and Boomers definitely resist change. I think the Greatest Generation just struggles (unless they were in tech in the 60s and 70s but even then still struggle).

• A huge 43% of our traffic is on a phone or tablet.

• Bounce rates are 50% on mobile compared to only 34% on desktop. (A bounced is when a visitor visits one page and leaves under a certain amount of time indicated they were not interested).

Moderator

• It’s hard work and I would like to give them better tools for their important work.

Ads

• We don’t have good ads on mobile, which is a lost revenue opportunity. I could potentially drop contributor prices if Google/Amazon/eBay revenue goes up.

Wordpress

• I would be using this plugin to post to the blog. It would get used at least once a month. Until recently there’s been zero posts on the blog.

Drafts

• If you start writing a post and your computer shuts off. Go back to the thread and voila! your work was not lost. It’s awesome.

[redrum]

@Dave - Most of your reasons align with why TripleA moved from the old SourceForge forum and warclub form to the new NodeBB based forum: https://forums.triplea-game.org/

We had an additional reason of wanting to combine the 2 forums and neither of the existing ones were that great so it made for an even easier decision. It also aligned from a technical standpoint as we moved code/maps/website away from SourceForge already.

Overall, its been a mostly positive experience. We’ve had some folks initially complain about the new layout/style/etc but its mostly just been that its different and they end up getting used to it over time. I’m sure we lost some users along the way but most/all of those were inactive anyways.

[Bob77]

Im not a techy but most of it sounds good.
I can think of a few sites i prefer nonmobile because its easier to navigate.
Scrolling is great on threads with a few posts, but when going through 50 plus pages i prefer pages. I can pick up where i left of and know what page to find something again.

Thanx for all your work and effort!!

[djensen]

@Bob77:

Im not a techy but most of it sounds good.
I can think of a few sites i prefer nonmobile because its easier to navigate.
Scrolling is great on threads with a few posts, but when going through 50 plus pages i prefer pages. I can pick up where i left of and know what page to find something again.

Thanx for all your work and effort!!

Discourse actually will keep track of your last unread post so you can jump to it when you revisit a thread. It’s really slick.

[Gargantua]

@djensen:

Discourse actually will keep track of your last unread post so you can jump to it when you revisit a thread. It’s really slick.

These forums do that now.  Or at least my browser does.

Endless scrolling sites are still a nightmare though - especially if you ever switch between mobile and non mobile devices;

I am curious to see discourse in it’s proposed format;  though I suspect it will not be as convenient to navigate - especially with the older games section, and more derelict parts of the site.

We don’t have a choice in the matter it seems. :evil:

[djensen]

The search function is very nice.

Registration is close and I have not migrated anything and there’s not branding but here it is: forums.axisandallies.org

That is also not the permanent URL BTW.

[Bob77]

Wont let me log in.

[Gargantua]

@djensen:

The search function is very nice.

Registration is close and I have not migrated anything and there’s not branding but here it is: forums.axisandallies.org

That is also not the permanent URL BTW.

Interesting - Panther says things are “clearly arranged” but I don’t see anything other than uncategorized threads. and LOL I love that one of the two threads I can see is that security is not enabled :)

I’d also like to try alternate themes - like panther - who’s correct that the white is blinding.

Can you allow a few of us to register to test things out?  I’d also like to fool with tripleA to get it to post.

[djensen]

TripleA is not  integrated with the forums yet.

Which post about security can you see?

I haven’t set up any categories or boards on there yet. I know people are concerned about multiple categories per post but I think solves issues like “does this belong in house rules or Global 1942?”

[Gargantua]

@djensen:

The search function is very nice.

@djensen:

Which post about security can you see?

David - you make me LOL so hard sometimes.

There are only two threads on the entire board man. :) :) :) And you have replied!

http://forums.axisandallies.org/t/no-tls-ssl-security/19

[Gargantua]

now THIS

btw, you can @ mention people and they will get a notification.

Is an exciting feature.

[djensen]

@Gargantua:

@djensen:

The search function is very nice.

@djensen:

Which post about security can you see?

David - you make me LOL so hard sometimes.

There are only two threads on the entire board man. :) :) :) And you have replied!

http://forums.axisandallies.org/t/no-tls-ssl-security/19

Yeah, I went looking for it.

I think I need to adjust some settings on the site. I’m not getting email notifications about activity on the board like I should be.

[Gargantua]

Ah yes - lets work on/out the bugs before we migrate haha.

Else you will end up with a Canadian Pheonix Pay Scandal.