Would it be possibel to set up individual threads for RSS? Say I create a threead or I just want to follow it. It would be cool to RSS it and follow it in my reader. Just a thought.

Not with the current version of the forum software that we're running, but the latest version does support this. One of the projects we plan to work on once we finish the donation drive and get the new hardware is to upgrade the forums to the latest version and re-design the skin so that it's easier to do upgrades in the future.

I paid back in September to keep our license up to date so we could get the updated version but we haven't had the time to get it up and running since our other server died back in December.

Well I think everyone would agree with me in saying thank you for all your hard work. I can't imagine the amount of time you guys put into this for free. So thanks.

So you're sticking with Invision for the immediate future?

~J

That's the plan, yes. I've used pretty much all of the packages in existence, and as far as the affordable ones, Invision is the one I like the best. What are your thoughts? I'm always open to a different perspective.

I'm not really qualified to have a take on this, as the only board software I've used to any extensive degree is phpBB. I guess I'm just being surprised at how many issues that I had assumed were software-related were actually issues with the hardware.

~J

Well, in general any issue that has caused the boards to be unreachable in the recent past has been "hardware" related, and more specifically related to the capacity of the server. The hardware isn't failing, it's just full.

There are a number of software issues, and a lot of them would be solved by upgrading Invision to a more recent release. The problem there is that it's not just a simple upgrade since the skin that we use was hacked mercilessly.

Basically what's going to happen is that we're going to install a new copy of the forums on the new hardware, migrate the existing data, and create a new skin from the base Invision skins -- hopefully one that will be a bit more maintanable for us in the future.

BTW, having "read" a good deal of the code for both Invision and phpBB, I'm very confident in our choice to use Invision. phpBB has some of the worst PHP code I've seen in a project of it's size. It's a wonder it doesn't collapse under it's own weight.

Interesting; our local tech guru had declared phpBB "surprisingly professional", but he probably has not have gone over it in-depth.

Out of interest, what parts of this skin are your hacks? Also, are you working with a yearly or perpetual license?

As always, feel free to decline to answer any question.

~J

phpBB is a poorly planned system. Doing anything with it either takes extensive knowledge of PHP or enough money to pay somebody with extensive knowledge of it to do what you want to get done.

Invision... It's a mixed bag. It's good, but there are problems. Mainly with when they update something, if you don't get that update (or do the updates progressively), it's going to screw your board up.

vBulletin is quite stable, but changing anything in it is a pain. You either need to, again, have extensive knowledge or be able to pay somebody with extensive knowledge.

Granted, there are workarounds out there that allow somebody with very little PHP knowledge do what they want, but those are generally unsafe for the stability of the forum.