In 2020, is vBulletins The Best Platform for TMF?

[Straps&Laughter]

Like many here, I grew up with the message board forums for every topic and interest group under the sun. AltaVista was the search engine, 28.8 was the connection speed, and Reddit wasn't a thing.

In the 20-ish years since I joined the TMF, we have had at least one major overhaul of the infrastructure. Technology has leapt forward in staggering ways.

Setting aside matters like archival content and nostalgia, is there a better way for all of us to interface?

(Disclaimer: Not an indictment of our current system or our mods who do tons of pro bono work to keep things running smoothly. Endless gratitude for their work. This is a purely technological questions we move into a new decade.)

 

[Comfort Eagle]

A traditional "message board" works better for me as a hub for video clips, and I feel like this board not having a Reddit style upvote/downvote system prevents opinions from being buried. There are other avenues to interact with tickle fetish communities, but I don't think the traditional forum method is useless.

 

[chicago]

I think it's fine and I see how mods and admin have been constantly doing what they can to improve things.

Maybe it's not the best, but I appreciate all we've got here at no cost to us.

I'm unaware of any other cost effective options but I'm not super techy

 

[TMF Jeff]

Vbulletin is definitely an out-of-date platform. And I'm hoping to save enough money this year to upgrade us to a newer forum.

I just upgraded us to a newer server, which I felt was more important. But the next thing I'm going to try to get done is a forum upgrade.

If you want to help, support us on patreon by the link in my signature 🙂

 

[Yote]

VBulletin has that "old" look and interface, but it's fine for me. If the moderators want to upgrade to a new platform, that's their decision.

I feel like this board not having a Reddit style upvote/downvote system prevents opinions from being buried

I also agree with this.

 

[weezl]

Vbulletin is definitely an out-of-date platform. And I'm hoping to save enough money this year to upgrade us to a newer forum.

I just upgraded us to a newer server, which I felt was more important. But the next thing I'm going to try to get done is a forum upgrade.

If you want to help, support us on patreon by the link in my signature 🙂

In total, how much is needed to do a complete upgrade to a newer forum?

 

[Lisatheticklee]

Yeah I actually quite like this place and at least on the surface it looks fine.

 

[TMF Jeff]

In total, how much is needed to do a complete upgrade to a newer forum?

I'm not sure, I haven't looked into it yet. It probably depends on which one we go with.

 

[TMF Jeff]

Yeah I actually quite like this place and at least on the surface it looks fine.

Ya, it looks ok.

My concern is that the interface it out of date - a lot of new people can't figure out how to do attachments. And on some platforms, it doesn't work very well because it was developed so long ago.

Also, it's not compatible with https without doing a lot of tweaking, and that's increasingly becoming an issue.

 

[asutickler]

I know I haven't been around a lot lately, but I kind of enjoy the old school feel of the TMF. Then again, I'm also that guy who hates change and keeps a cell phone for ten years just to avoid learning a new one.

Sherdog (the MMA site) ran the largest vBulletin forum I've ever seen for a very long time. A few years back they swapped to a platform called Xenforo, which was apparently created by a bunch of former VB developers who left. It's pretty clean looking, and it sounds like it was a relatively easy (doesn't necessarily mean outright easy) transition.

 

[Straps&Laughter]

I'm happy to contribute - just joined the Patreon at $10/mo, a fraction of what I spend on adult content, for a worthwhile cause.

I'd also be interested in some funding drives and brainstorming ideas to meet financial goals for the forum, when specific targets become more apparent.

In the interim:
~ Our chat functionality is a bit clunky. Do we operate a Discord/Slack?
~ Forum members: what are the key improvements you would like to see in terms of forum capability?

 

[weezl]

I'm not sure, I haven't looked into it yet. It probably depends on which one we go with.

Can you look into further and we can discuss it? I recently inherited some money and depending on how expensive it is, I'd like to completely pay for the new platform upgrade.

 

[His Divine Shadow]

~ Our chat functionality is a bit clunky. Do we operate a Discord/Slack?

Full disclosure: I don't use the chatroom, so most of my thinking around it comes from the position of someone who installs/maintains it but does not use.

Slack is not really what the chatroom is for, or at least what I see it used for. Yes, you can do real-time chatting, but Slack is more of a collaborative system that, at least to me, would be geared at vBulletin replacement than anything else. I'm not sure if one can link a membership database to Slack in such a way that accounts seamlessly transfer. I am sure it is possible, but it might be an expensive, corporate-product. They also tend to charge by the user for all but the free product, which is an issue. The current chatroom has the advantage of being a wee drop-in that slides right into the forum and does its thing fairly independently but by talking well with vBulletin's database.

We have talked about Discord. Integrating it into the TMF is a pain. One might say that is not an issue, but an absolute hard stop for us with chatrooms is that the room must mandate that the person chatting has to use their own TMF account and be linked to it. We already have issues with folks catfishing, for example, and by default (and without a lot of work) Discord does not easily integrate with an existing membership database. There have been some add-ons written where a Discord bot must be PM'd a certain code and will then transform the Discord user into their equivalent from another database, but that seems rather clunky to me. ArrowChat (what we use now) is a reasonable solution and integrates well, but I'm always looking for better chatrooms to consider. Jeff has been watching another brand whose name escapes me right now but who has delayed release of their integratable product (i.e. will link with TMF accounts), so we have not gone for them. Ideas always welcome!


Re: forum software, we're talked about XenForo vs vBulletin 5 vs Invision PowerBoard. vB5 is the easiest path, but I've seen more bad than good about it. XenForo is well liked, but even its second version is, by the admission of fans of it, not as feature-rich as vB4 (or even vB3.8, which some greybeards consider the best forum software ever released even years later). Granted, we don't need all the features in vB4. IB I know less about, but it doesn't seem to be considered superior to either of the others. The number of internet forums on vB3.8 or vB4 is testament to how little newer offerings really have improved.

 

[Tenebrae]

Full disclosure: I don't use the chatroom, so most of my thinking around it comes from the position of someone who installs/maintains it but does not use.

Slack is not really what the chatroom is for, or at least what I see it used for. Yes, you can do real-time chatting, but Slack is more of a collaborative system that, at least to me, would be geared at vBulletin replacement than anything else. I'm not sure if one can link a membership database to Slack in such a way that accounts seamlessly transfer. I am sure it is possible, but it might be an expensive, corporate-product. They also tend to charge by the user for all but the free product, which is an issue. The current chatroom has the advantage of being a wee drop-in that slides right into the forum and does its thing fairly independently but by talking well with vBulletin's database.

We have talked about Discord. Integrating it into the TMF is a pain. One might say that is not an issue, but an absolute hard stop for us with chatrooms is that the room must mandate that the person chatting has to use their own TMF account and be linked to it. We already have issues with folks catfishing, for example, and by default (and without a lot of work) Discord does not easily integrate with an existing membership database. There have been some add-ons written where a Discord bot must be PM'd a certain code and will then transform the Discord user into their equivalent from another database, but that seems rather clunky to me. ArrowChat (what we use now) is a reasonable solution and integrates well, but I'm always looking for better chatrooms to consider. Jeff has been watching another brand whose name escapes me right now but who has delayed release of their integratable product (i.e. will link with TMF accounts), so we have not gone for them. Ideas always welcome!


Re: forum software, we're talked about XenForo vs vBulletin 5 vs Invision PowerBoard. vB5 is the easiest path, but I've seen more bad than good about it. XenForo is well liked, but even its second version is, by the admission of fans of it, not as feature-rich as vB4 (or even vB3.8, which some greybeards consider the best forum software ever released even years later). Granted, we don't need all the features in vB4. IB I know less about, but it doesn't seem to be considered superior to either of the others. The number of internet forums on vB3.8 or vB4 is testament to how little newer offerings really have improved.

Thanks for this very complete explanation

I personally like that the TMF has not changed too much. If anything, it makes me think that I have been 20 forever, and that feels good for a nostalgic type like me 😀 All kidding aside, I would rather have little tweaks like we've had so far rather than a radical change. I appreciate that you all are going through painstaking efforts to preserve the database, fight against impersonators and generally making this place worth staying at.