phpBB software and these Boards (brog64)

Hi All, I know that frustration has been rife since the boards switched over and the experience has been less than pleasant. We have even lost members over this debacle. At first I was very supportive of the Web Team and encouraging every one to be patient but I am changing my tune now. Another MS support site “ThisIsMs” also switched their forums over this weekend. They successfully migrated the old posts, buddies lists etc and got the aesthetics right for MS vision issues. And there have been no log in issues, or outages A totally seamless transfer… And guess what? There web site is also powered by phpBB, the same software as this site. I suggest people have a look at the website to see how it CAN be done, particularly the Web Team This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community - Index page C’mon Web Team… Fix this up or demand a refund from Precedent (the developers employed by the MSS to do the job) who have failed in their brief abysmally. Belinda

Refund + a penalty fee!!! Kxx

rizzo27 wrote:

Refund + a penalty fee!!! Kxx

Good point :!: B xx

I thought “our” board briefly looked like that on Saturday - a nice, soothing blue. And I thought how much better it was. But in no time at all, they’d changed it back to MSS livery: garish orange! T. x

I don’t want to have to much of a dig, but if this had been done under my watch where I had my career, I would have rolled back to the old site until the new was properly tested and was accepted as working as it should. I don’t know forum software but I do know how to role out new system’s both software and hardware. I chose to post here after lurking for a long time because I had reached a point where I wanted to share my experiences and also take comfort and support of others. If you like therapy. However I have thought “was that such a great idea.” I have sent email’s posted questions about issues, even PM’ed people with security issues, yet all seem to have been ignored or not acknowledged. I am also not convinced about the wealth of information lost from the old forum. I know it’s unsupported but there was years of info and personal experiance’s that is now lost to the ether. Could this not be put into a simple format with a search facility?? Please don’t think I am ungrateful at what’s been done. It’s just that in my world and the world I worked in… I would have been bloody fuming… Let’s hope we get a bit of stability… Strudders

Anitra wrote:

I thought “our” board briefly looked like that on Saturday - a nice, soothing blue. And I thought how much better it was. But in no time at all, they’d changed it back to MSS livery: garish orange! T. x

I thought i’d imagined that…lol :lol: I’m not keen on the garish orange either! Kerry x

tilly wrote:

Anitra wrote:

I thought “our” board briefly looked like that on Saturday - a nice, soothing blue. And I thought how much better it was. But in no time at all, they’d changed it back to MSS livery: garish orange! T. x

I thought i’d imagined that…lol :lol: I’m not keen on the garish orange either! Kerry x

I got a brief glimpse of a blue and cream board on Saturday too. So either we are all sharing the same hallucination or it was there. And in that case, where did it go :?: :?: :?: And can we have it back, please :?: :? B x

Brog64 wrote:

tilly wrote:

Anitra wrote:

I thought “our” board briefly looked like that on Saturday - a nice, soothing blue. And I thought how much better it was. But in no time at all, they’d changed it back to MSS livery: garish orange! T. x

I thought i’d imagined that…lol :lol: I’m not keen on the garish orange either! Kerry x

I got a brief glimpse of a blue and cream board on Saturday too. So either we are all sharing the same hallucination or it was there. I do find this one easier to read though, the other one seems to have an awful lot crammed in but the colour and the smooth edges are better :? Do you think we’ll ever be happy :!: :?: :!: :?: lol Kerry x And in that case, where did it go :?: :?: :?: And can we have it back, please :?: :? B x

Whoops…I made a mess of that didn’t I :roll: Kerry x

Brog64 wrote:

Hi All, I know that frustration has been rife since the boards switched over and the experience has been less than pleasant. We have even lost members over this debacle. At first I was very supportive of the Web Team and encouraging every one to be patient but I am changing my tune now. Another MS support site “ThisIsMs” also switched their forums over this weekend. They successfully migrated the old posts, buddies lists etc and got the aesthetics right for MS vision issues. And there have been no log in issues, or outages A totally seamless transfer… And guess what? There web site is also powered by phpBB, the same software as this site. I suggest people have a look at the website to see how it CAN be done, particularly the Web Team This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Knowledge & Support Community - Index page C’mon Web Team… Fix this up or demand a refund from Precedent (the developers employed by the MSS to do the job) who have failed in their brief abysmally. Belinda

Not knowing what ‘their brief’ was, how can we decide that they have failed abysmally :?: Maybe they were asked to do everything on the cheap; which was my first impression on looking over the entire website. And to be fair TiMS only had circa 10,500 users to switch over to their new forum, 25,000 had to be brought over onto this website :o After the initial switch over, the number of users listed on here was approx. 9,000 So what happened to the other 16,000 users? TiMS has a very helpful and comprehensive FAQs section http://www.thisisms.com/forum/faq.php whereas we got a global announcement that addressed a few FAQs and many of the answers have never been checked out; had they been, it would have become apparent that several ‘options’ didn’t work. Donated, Sponsorship and membership monies all paid for this forum and I feel the Board has a responsibility to explain how the money for this forum was spent or misspent as the case may be. In my previous place of work, heads would have rolled for a fiasco of this sort. I feel questions need to be asked at the AGM Though I’ll not hold my breath for an answer! V

Verona wrote:

Not knowing what ‘their brief’ was, how can we decide that they have failed abysmally

Hi Verona, I am assuming their brief included a functioning web site and not one that was down almost as much as it is up. I am assuming the brief included successful migration of users and the ability to log in. And given that the launch date was back in May to coincide with MS Week they failed on that part of their brief too. As for the rest of it, no, I don’t know what their brief was but given the level of dissatisfaction something had gone very awry here. I didn’t mind so much until I saw what could be done with phpBB successfully. B

I think a lot has to do with the user and password migration. I do not seem to remember having to include non alpha numeric characters. However when reregistering I was expected to register with them, as my password was not strong enough. I also highlighted a security issue but have had no feedback and to be fair have not checked it since. I am sure a lot of us have backgrounds in IT, mine is service and support, that would not accept this as a delivery, however I do not know the back ground or the delivery criteria. I suspect there are guys n girls paddling like mad to shore up the new site and sort it all out and I suspect they are doing all they can. As I say, stability will be the test of time, but communication is the key. Be honest and be realistic other wise just turn off the lights. IMOI Strudders

Well said, Belinda! The migration to the new website was due back in May, we were told to wait patiently while it underwent further testing only to find that it still crashed within the first week. That’s not a success by any standards and certainly doesn’t warrant full payment. By the way I love the soothing blues of the This is MS website, much kinder on the eyes. My sister in law has ulcerative colitis and their website also has a pale blue background which is easier on the eye. I find the easiest posts to read are the quotes as they are on a much nicer background Tracey

Two things that make a huge difference to the problems of switching from one software to another are: the type of software the OLD forum/website has and the type of software the NEW forum/website has Unless the software on other site’s old an new websites were written in it’s totally unfair to compare the two. But, I do agree that the whole switchover process was handled badly. We’ve had problems during my career in software development, but have rolled back as soon sanity testing was completed and ONE of the major problems we’ve experienced was seen. Which in the case of logging in would (should!) have been found within minutes.

Hi Belinda, Yes, I have just had a look - Cor! You’re right! It looks like there has been no design to these boards at all - it looks really amateur compared - like this was slapped together with no thought in mind for the users. Grrr. Steffi xx

Trouble is forum software isn’t always compatible for importing/migrating- I think the old MS software fell into that category. As for the garish orange colour…( yup it was a tad bright) but isn’t that the MS society’s trademark colour . Forum software is so involved. I used to have a dog forum with good old old MSN. They decided to close all their forums, so people had to make a choice of where to go… Nothing was compatible with MSN apart from something called " Aimoo" which looked suitable for a teens forum . I opted for vBulletin… quite expensive . Got several themes for my guys only to have moans about colours…( they had 6 to choose from, which I paid for) . As I said on another thread, " you can’t please everyone". Just to give you an idea… look below… this bit only talks about “tiers”. And I’m guessing the old MS software fell into category 3 ? These are the currently 3 tiers of import systems. Note : All MSSQL importers, or MSSQL within systems that also have MySQL support are all classed as 3rd tier Tier 1 Tier one systems are fully supported by the support team and development, they are the most active and common imports that customers do. These importers were either upgraded or have been recently developed as all new importers are tier one. Tier 2 Systems in this tier are the less common imports and legacy systems. Tier 2 systems can be promoted to tier 1 if there is enough demand, or retired to tier 3 when the source system reaches end of life or demand falls below a level that makes their existence viable. Tier 3 This is the graveyard of importers, these importers are not supported. There are three reasons imports make it here. Firstly is because their source system has reached it’s end of life and the source data model isn’t changing any more so there are going to be no future updates. Secondly, that demand for them is so low that it is not viable to offer support for them as it makes no business sense (though the importer is here for people who want to delve into it). Thirdly, that the source system is such a challenge to import from that the time typically taken for each import far out weights any sensible decision to try to support each individual import that would take hours per client with customisations. Tier 1 Eve 1.3.4 / Groupee 4.0.3 1.3.4 - 4.0.3 fusionBB 2 2.1 Ikonboard (MySQL) 3.x Invision Board 3 3.0.3 Invision Board 2 2.3.0 Photopost 5.1 phpBB1 1.4.x phpBB2 2.0.22 phpBB3 3.0.5 Simple Machines Forum 1.9 SMF 2.0 beta Snitz Mysql & MSSQL 3.4.04 Text file importer 0.0 Infopop UBB.threads 6.5 Infopop UBB.threads 7.2 vBulletin 3.7.x WoltLab Burning Board 2.3.3 wbb3 3.0.3 YaBB 2 2.1 YaBB SE 1.5.5 Tier 2 ASPPlayground 2.5.5 DCForum+ MySQL 1.27 InstantForum 4.1.4 Invision Community Blog 1.2.4 MyBulletinBoard (MyBB) 1.4 Allaire 3.1 ASP-DEV 2.0 ASP-DEV 2.0 bbpress 0.9.0.1 beehive 0.5 Community Server 2.1 CuteCast 2.x Discuz 2.5 dotnetBB 2.42 dotnetBB 2.42 dragonfly 9.2.1 Drupal 4.7.0 dzoic 3.5 eshare 0.0 ExpressionEngine 1.6.2 FUD Forum 2.x FuseTalk 2.0 fusion BB 1.0.3 JForum 2.1.5 Jive 5.5 Jive Forums 4.0.0 megaBBS 1.69-2.2 Phpwind 3.3.1 Simple Board 1.0.4 vBulletin 3.0.* - 3.5.* wowBB 1.63 YaBB Gold 1.3.1 Tier 3 CHC Forum 0.0 DiscusWare 4.x Pro tab file data 4.x MxBoard 1.1.4 Infopop Open Topic 4.0 PNphpBB2 (Post Nuke) 2 Advanced Electron Forum 1.05 w-Agora 4.1.7 BuildACommunity 0.0 bbBoard 2 CFBB 1.3.1 Deluxe Portal 2.0 DigiPost 2.0 DiscusWare (file based) 4.00.6 Discuz 4.0.0 e107 0.7.8 Edge CMS 13-11-2005 EncoreII 2 fireboard 1.0.4 freethreads 0.0 Geeklog 1.3.10 Invision Power Board 1.3 Seditio (LDU) 121 Max Web Portal 0 mercuryboard 1.1.4 miniBB 2.0.1 mmforum 0.1.5 mvnforum 1.0.2 mysmartbb 1.50 MyTopix 1.3.0 openBB 1.0.7 Oxygen 1.1.3 Phorum 3 3.4.8 Phorum 5 5.0.16 phpMyForum 4.0.1 PHP Fusion 6.00.301 PunBB 1.2.10 SiteFrame 3.1.8 SiteNet BBS 2.0.3 ThWboard 3.00 Toast Forums 1.6 Tritanium BB2 2 Alpha 7 trollix XForum 2.0 TruBB 1.1 ttCMS 3.1 Infopop UBB classic 6.3 - 6.7 Ultraboard 2000 versatile Bulletin Board 1.0 RC 1 vBJournal 1.0.2 vBulletin Forum 2 Blog 3.6.8 vBlogetin 1.0 Beta 3 vanilla 1.1.4 vBulletin 2 2.3.10 vBulletin lite 1.0 vbzoom 1.1 webbbs 5.30 Webcrossing 5.0 Web Wiz Forums 9.08 WordPress 2.3.1 XMB forum 1.9 Xoops - Newbb 2.0 Xsorbit X5 x5 Yet Another Forum 1.9.0 Yahoo Groups access dB download 0.0 Yahoo groups (raw text) 0.0 zeroforum 2.1.0 Anyone read this far ? lol :lol: :o

Hi everyone The site you’re talking about is using phpbb in it’s “out of the box” state whereas we have done a great deal of custom development to the basic platform as well as integrating it with several other systems. We did this in order to provide the features that users of this forum and other ms society services asked for back in 2010 when we started scoping this project; things like anon posting and tagging posts by topic or “not ms” and creating one login and user profile for the forum and the rest of the site. These features were also designed to help people using the rest of the site to get help and support from this forum. The post tagging feeds back into the rest of the site showing relevant forum posts on pages about the issues they relate to. For example someone who has just been diagnosed will see posts from " newly diagnosed" in paces about coping with diagnosis and so will immediately know there’s a community here to help them. One login for all online services is designed to make life easier for people using the site. For example someone who’s in the campaigns network, subscribes to an e-newsletter and uses the forum only has one password to remember and only has to change their details once if they need to. We also asked precedent to develop the site so anyone registering on the site for any reason is also automatically registered on phpbb so they can easily get help and support from his fantastic community if they need to. Thats where the 25,000 people I referred to came from. They don’t show as forum members until they actually log in hence why the numbers don’t match at the moment. The fact is this is complex, ambitious development and despite rigorous testing in the weeks before launch, one element of it - tagging of posts and integration if this with the rest of the website - caused a problem after we went live. As I said before this was something we couldn’t have predicted. It’s a real shame and I am devastated that this has happened as me and the team have been living and breathing this project for the past 18 months of our lives. This will all be up and running very soon so please bear with us for a few more days. I’ll be at the AGM on Saturday to answer any questions. Thank you. Bob

Sorry for the typos btw. Am posting from my phone…

bob barbour wrote:

Sorry for the typos btw. Am posting from my phone…

Thanks Bob. I guess I am just getting frustrated too now… Not meaning to be narky with you and the Team but I am narky with Precedent. :twisted: But I am sure your frustration levels are a million miles worse than mine by now. And for classic typo errors from iPhones have a look at Redirect Notice :lol: :lol: :lol: B

A real disaster, what a shame, :oops: S