Forum software migration
posted by MrBondt on Saturday, December the 26th at 12:28 PM
Greetings,
Since Las Venturas Playground's incarnation, we've been running SMF, which is free and open-source forum software used to power communities such as ours. It has served our needs well for almost half a million posts! With that in mind, we've made the decision to switch to another free and open-source option, MyBB. Some may look at this as nothing significant, as, ultimately, they both do the same thing -- allow users to post and communicate with others. There are various reasons for our decision, and whilst I could create a novel defining them all, I'll try to keep this short and sweet.
With SMF, some of the functionality we had was made possible using Plugins/Mods, and, with MyBB, almost all of these options are included as standard, such as reCaptcha, used to block spam-bot registrations, and embedding of videos from YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and so on. Relying on third-party options adds additional security risks, compatibility issues in-case of updates and so on. MyBB has lots of handy tools built-in, such as a Forum Team page, allowing you to quickly and easily identify Forum Moderators and Administrators, a Contact Form and all the other goodies you'd expect to see. We were also seeing issues affecting the usability of the forum as a result of some recent server-software updates.
The migration is now complete. User accounts, posts, private messages, avatars, signatures -- we think that everything has made it over safely, however, as with any maintenance of this nature, there is an element of risk involved, and so, if you across any problems or irregularities, please be sure to let us know!
You should be able to login as normal. MyBB also allows users to login with their Email Address, along with a username, and so if you face any problems logging in, please try with your email address. Alternatively, you may like to request a password reset. If that fails, feel free to contact us.
On behalf of the LVP management, crew and development team,
Granny & MrBondt
Since Las Venturas Playground's incarnation, we've been running SMF, which is free and open-source forum software used to power communities such as ours. It has served our needs well for almost half a million posts! With that in mind, we've made the decision to switch to another free and open-source option, MyBB. Some may look at this as nothing significant, as, ultimately, they both do the same thing -- allow users to post and communicate with others. There are various reasons for our decision, and whilst I could create a novel defining them all, I'll try to keep this short and sweet.
With SMF, some of the functionality we had was made possible using Plugins/Mods, and, with MyBB, almost all of these options are included as standard, such as reCaptcha, used to block spam-bot registrations, and embedding of videos from YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and so on. Relying on third-party options adds additional security risks, compatibility issues in-case of updates and so on. MyBB has lots of handy tools built-in, such as a Forum Team page, allowing you to quickly and easily identify Forum Moderators and Administrators, a Contact Form and all the other goodies you'd expect to see. We were also seeing issues affecting the usability of the forum as a result of some recent server-software updates.
The migration is now complete. User accounts, posts, private messages, avatars, signatures -- we think that everything has made it over safely, however, as with any maintenance of this nature, there is an element of risk involved, and so, if you across any problems or irregularities, please be sure to let us know!
You should be able to login as normal. MyBB also allows users to login with their Email Address, along with a username, and so if you face any problems logging in, please try with your email address. Alternatively, you may like to request a password reset. If that fails, feel free to contact us.
On behalf of the LVP management, crew and development team,
Granny & MrBondt