The forum, its present and its future

digitalscream

Right, after a day spent fucking around trying to get the Vanilla layout to work, I've make the somewhat-scary decision to abandon it and rewrite the thing with a proper responsive framework, most likely Foundation since it does a lot of the things I've got in mind and I'm pretty familiar with it already..

While it increases the amount of work I was originally planning, it makes life easier in all sorts of ways - most notably scaling across different resolutions. That means there will no longer be different versions of the site for desktop and mobile (and, even better, I can make something that's specifically designed to work well on tablets, rather than being stuck with the too-restrictive mobile or the too-crammed desktop site).

I'm going to make it look as close to this design as I can, but there will be differences.

What does this mean? Well, for starters I'm going to need a lot of testing and focused feedback from you guys in the new year. Secondly, I may need a little help when it comes to CSS; I'm reasonably good with it in a technical sense, but I'm not a designer.

bingefeller

Lee, have you ever thought about just setting up tFB on a Facebook page?  I know you're re-writing the software and you're happy doing that, and I'm not disputing your decision, but I'm just wondering and taking the opportunity to ask here. 

Sporky

Using the Facebook might present problems for some of us. I cannot have a Facebook profile for work reasons.

Some may see that as a strong reason to do what you've suggested, of course.

guitartango

digitalscream said:

Well, now. It's been so long since I've started a dev project from scratch. It's really quite liberating. I'm actually starting to enjoy coding again, after just a couple of days of noodling around with no pressure.

Also...compared with the blob of shite that is Vanilla, the data access is fucking lightning quick. I always thought the performance issues in Vanilla were down to the sheer quantity of data that we had, but this has totally proved that wrong.

To put it in context...with a properly-designed database, I'm pulling back three-page threads with all the comments, user records and auxiliary data in less time than input latency in my audio interface, and that's without any caching or deliberate optimisation.

I'm really quite optimistic about this.

Look forward to this Lee , Our old digital marketing manager said he was an expert with php/mysql and had done many websites (they did look really good) , shame he didnt know how to secure php.ini

  // create authenticated HTTP client for Picasa service
    $svc = Zend_Gdata_Photos::AUTH_SERVICE_NAME;
    $user = "me@...";
    $pass = "educat10n";
    $client = Zend_Gdata_ClientLogin::getHttpClient($user, $pass, $svc);
    $gphoto = new Zend_Gdata_Photos($client);

I had to clean up after him and change persmissions quickly as someone started to upload some choice pictures . Then had to give all his clients the bad news... yes you have guessed it

bingefeller

Sporky said:

Using the Facebook might present problems for some of us. I cannot have a Facebook profile for work reasons.

Some may see that as a strong reason to do what you've suggested, of course.

I'm sort of in the same boat - I choose not to have a Facebook profile either... partly due to work reasons.  Well, I did set on up to try and sell a guitar on Facebook and had one friend.......@heartfeltdawn .  I did however deactivate it and probably wouldn't reactivate it unless I was selling something I couldn't get rid of.  In other words, I'm a non-Facebook person as well! 

It does seem that loads of people on here have FB profiles and I have often wondered if tFB was on Facebook, and had a page, what would the membership numbers be like?  All it would take would be for people to join the page via a like button, or whatever Facebook have.  They wouldn't have to bother thinking of a username as their profile is essentially already set up.

Paul7926

I have FB but am moving away from it wherever possible.  In my view it's not very good for passing information over time.  If you are not constantly glued to it things disappear and there is no structure of search facility.  One thing I've done a lot since getting here is be able to search the forum for answers to my noob questions that have been asked and answered in the past.  A forum is a much better knowledge base than FB can ever be.

ArchtopDave

I too have very little use for Facebook. I'm only on there for 2 private groups, and, at best, I'll just have a brief look once a week.

Snags

Facebook is an absolute piece of crap for any kind of serious discussion, compared to forum software.  And if you think the search facility in Vanilla is bad ...

digitalscream

bingefeller said:

Lee, have you ever thought about just setting up tFB on a Facebook page?  I know you're re-writing the software and you're happy doing that, and I'm not disputing your decision, but I'm just wondering and taking the opportunity to ask here. 

Facebook is an entirely different proposition from a forum - it's inherently unstructured data, and encourages chat rather than discussion on specific topics. Trying to find a thread from a few days ago in a busy group basically involves ten minutes of scrolling, especially when there are many discussions on a similar theme. 

bingefeller

digitalscream said:

bingefeller said:

Lee, have you ever thought about just setting up tFB on a Facebook page?  I know you're re-writing the software and you're happy doing that, and I'm not disputing your decision, but I'm just wondering and taking the opportunity to ask here. 

Facebook is an entirely different proposition from a forum - it's inherently unstructured data, and encourages chat rather than discussion on specific topics. Trying to find a thread from a few days ago in a busy group basically involves ten minutes of scrolling, especially when there are many discussions on a similar theme. 

Ah yeah, fair enough, good point.  I'm not overly familiar with FB groups so I guess it's more of a live feed like Twitter kind of thing. 

fandango

Facebook/Farcebook? Please don’t. For the love of Gibson and all things with strings, just don’t. 

guitars4you

Please no Face Book - I detest it - come the day of the revolution they would be first against the wall

bingefeller

There won't be a Facebook group....I was just asking lol and DS has said his reasons why he wouldn't want to be admin of one lol. 

digitalscream

bingefeller said:

There won't be a Facebook group....I was just asking lol and DS has said his reasons why he wouldn't want to be admin of one lol. 

Ironically, I am an admin of one - Drew's!

crunchman

guitars4you said:

Please no Face Book - I detest it - come the day of the revolution they would be first against the wall

Even before Piers Morgan and JCon?

WiresDreamDisasters

digitalscream said:

bingefeller said:

There won't be a Facebook group....I was just asking lol and DS has said his reasons why he wouldn't want to be admin of one lol. 

Ironically, I am an admin of one - Drew's!

hahaha! True story!

bingefeller

WiresDreamDisasters said:

digitalscream said:

bingefeller said:

There won't be a Facebook group....I was just asking lol and DS has said his reasons why he wouldn't want to be admin of one lol. 

Ironically, I am an admin of one - Drew's!

hahaha! True story!

So you all secretly do prefer FB! lol

Bridgehouse

bingefeller said:

WiresDreamDisasters said:

digitalscream said:

bingefeller said:

There won't be a Facebook group....I was just asking lol and DS has said his reasons why he wouldn't want to be admin of one lol. 

Ironically, I am an admin of one - Drew's!

hahaha! True story!

So you all secretly do prefer FB! lol

Facebooks threading and discussion/comments setup gets up my nose nearly as much as Jacob Rees-Mogg

guitarfishbay

digitalscream said:

bingefeller said:

Lee, have you ever thought about just setting up tFB on a Facebook page?  I know you're re-writing the software and you're happy doing that, and I'm not disputing your decision, but I'm just wondering and taking the opportunity to ask here. 

Facebook is an entirely different proposition from a forum - it's inherently unstructured data, and encourages chat rather than discussion on specific topics. Trying to find a thread from a few days ago in a busy group basically involves ten minutes of scrolling, especially when there are many discussions on a similar theme. 

This is why I use the save feature and put things in collections, though I agree about the observation in general 
.

EricTheWeary

I'm on big Facebook groups and people don't seem to read anything already posted .You get that here a bit ( recommend me an analogue delay next to recommend me an analogue delay) but on Facebook groups posts have a lifespan of minutes.