FreeGameDev

Was split from here: https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic ... 46&t=14258

How about going the path of least resistance and upgrading to the latest version of phpBB. This way, we get to keep our history, and upgrade scripts are available.

Related discussion here:
https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=7780

tl;dr it's complicated and due to various factors upgrading our severely outdated phpBB will be a nightmare. Hagish just recently tried to update just the database, and even that had to be reverted.

And even the most recent version of phpBB still is not very user-friendly in my opinion.

Is it not feasible to do smaller incremental upgrades version to version in a VM that is setup to replicate this hosting environment? Then at least you can see how far it can be upgraded and that may open up more possibilities.

How about just archiving this to a (read only) forum and making a brand new forum with new accounts and all updated software. On the new forum we could have genre based sub-forums, that would make it so much easier to go through the list of game projects and find something to work on. I personally love discourse cause 2 of my favorite communities use it, but I understand some people have a hatred of JavaScript and there is also a concern about system requirements being too high. However, most any upgraded up-to-date forum that is freedom respecting software would be an improvement over this.

Yeah, something like that would probably be the best way forward. Discourse is due to technical issues slightly tricky to host on our current setup, so I previously tried it with Flarum... which got a rather luke warm response from current users (partially because of the Javascript issue).

As a result I somewhat changed my view on this: Current users seem to be either against (javascript) or mostly indifferent to a change of forum software and simply switching to a different forum software (with all the change pain that induces) isn't going to be that much of an improvement that it attracts many additional users, I guess. Hence I am rather on the lookout for something slightly different than a traditional forum, which might be able to attract new users while still work as a replacement for this forum. Federated Lemmy ( https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy ) might be just that, but it is still too experimental to deploy and I still hope that they can reduce the dependence on javascript so that there is at least a read only fallback.

I have to say forum activity really took off after switching to Discourse in the communities that I have seen. It has a system of grouping topics, reading posts, moderation, and private messaging that seems to encourage activity. One of those communities is the FSF itself for dues paying associate members, the other https://forum.becomealivinggod.com/

Yeah, that was my thinking/experience before also. And I still think that since a lot of people are using mobile devices for most of their daily community web-surfing, it is vital to get better mobile support for our forums.

But the majority of the feedback I got from current users of this forum (those still sticking around despite its many short comings I must say) was against switching to something like Discourse. Hence I am somewhat afraid to alienate those that are actually still around for the hope that it might bring in new users... I am aware that ultimately this is a lose-lose situation, but for now I lack a better idea.

Discourse has privacy issues and is non-free, so you can expect some pushback from current forum members.

A newer version of phpBB would definitely help mobile users. I don't use mobile myself, so I can't tell how convenient it really is.

Aren't you mixing up Discord and Discourse? The latter is a FOSS forum software that other than using a lot of Javacript and Ruby seems to be fine to use for us. Or am I missing something?

edit: even the newest version of phpBB is pretty bad on mobile sadly. You can buy some non free themes that are better (but use JavaScript a lot) or add a plugin for a mobile app like Tapatalk, but neither is something I see as acceptable.

Yes, I am mixing them up. Sorry.

I agree on your -1 on buying/Tapatalk.