The forum, its present and its future

digitalscream

m_c said:

digitalscream said:

Discourse (written in Rails and Angular, I think) was an option, but it's so prescriptive in terms of the architecture that it wouldn't leave us too many options for hosting...and all of them relatively expensive.

By comparison, I can write something that's exactly what we need without too much trouble (forums aren't actually as complicated as people seem to believe). I'm in no absolute rush to get it done, and I'm not setting any arbitrary deadlines.

@TimmyO ;

Yep, that's it - the only available distribution is via Docker, which is masses of overkill for the way we host (which is optimised for cost and speed, with the tradeoff being maintenance overhead). Essentially, it would slow things down - we'd be running a virtualised environment (Docker) within a virtualised environment (Linode's hosting infrastructure). Not to mention that it's got a ludicrous number of moving parts which would necessitate a more expensive hosting solution just to spin it up, much less run it at speed for the amount of traffic we get.

TimmyO

Ah. 

Yeah, don't know what levels of cost constraint you're having to operate at and it's always a trade-off. I suppose I was lucky in the past to be worked ngbwith clients for whom getting all that done robustly and with minimal time overhead was worth the cost. None of them ever regretted it though (but if it's not affordable then that's moot obv) 

monquixote

It was considered for the forum initially but at the time it was in beta and so too risky.

TimmyO

monquixote said:

It was considered for the forum initially but at the time it was in beta and so too risky.

aye all you can ever do in projects like these is make the best decisions at the time - c'est la vie.

Starting again does present new opportunities though. 

It sounds like there are big plans for making it a "thing" beyind just the bounds of the forum - which is exciting times. I'd be thinking of the cool ways to use tech/techtime to tie those things together rather in brilliant ways than recreating core stuff - but obv I don't know the master plan.

I wish you all good things with it! 

PolarityMan

Dont you need a client for discourse anyway? I thought it was more a live chat type thing.

digitalscream

TimmyO said:

It sounds like there are big plans for making it a "thing" beyind just the bounds of the forum - which is exciting times. I'd be thinking of the cool ways to use tech/techtime to tie those things together rather in brilliant ways than recreating core stuff - but obv I don't know the master plan.

That's kind of the idea - but the forum will essentially be the centre of things, and thus...having it built on a platform we can control and build out basically gives us the right foundations. At least, that's the idea.

TimmyO

PolarityMan said:

Dont you need a client for discourse anyway? I thought it was more a live chat type thing.

probably thinking of DISCUS which is the chat feature on a lot of websites 

PolarityMan

No it was discord

TimmyO

PolarityMan said:

No it was discord

ah yeah that's the voice chat one isn't it? I think it's the one my son uses to talk to his gaming friends 

RandallFlagg

How's the new site coming along?

digitalscream

RandallFlagg said:

How's the new site coming along?

Slowly. Current focus is on The Guitar Show, and there have been some significant server issues that needed my attention. Development will resume next week...once I've had a bit of a lie down.

snakemanStoo

A suggestion based on the phantom loller of Drews post in the retirement thread, and I didn't want to derail that thread.

If you do keep frets then could it be made that they're not anonymous.

It was like that on a forum I used many years ago and it meant that people could see exactly who they'd amused/annoyed etc.

Not sure how easy that would be, or whether you think it would cause more or fewer arguments.

As with all suggestions, feel free to ignore it if it's a pain in the arse.

Bridgehouse

snakemanStoo said:

A suggestion based on the phantom loller of Drews post in the retirement thread, and I didn't want to derail that thread.

If you do keep frets then could it be made that they're not anonymous.

It was like that on a forum I used many years ago and it meant that people could see exactly who they'd amused/annoyed etc.

Not sure how easy that would be, or whether you think it would cause more or fewer arguments.

As with all suggestions, feel free to ignore it if it's a pain in the arse.

The non-anonymous way is actually the norm. It makes you think about it before you do it as well. 

crunchman

snakemanStoo said:

A suggestion based on the phantom loller of Drews post in the retirement thread, and I didn't want to derail that thread.

If you do keep frets then could it be made that they're not anonymous.

It was like that on a forum I used many years ago and it meant that people could see exactly who they'd amused/annoyed etc.

Not sure how easy that would be, or whether you think it would cause more or fewer arguments.

As with all suggestions, feel free to ignore it if it's a pain in the arse.

That might not be a bad idea.  On the other FB you can see who has liked posts.  It would probably make a difference.  Would take a bit more coding though.

fretmeister

The post reactions on Basschat shows who reacted and how.

Seems to work.

EricTheWeary

snakemanStoo said:

A suggestion based on the phantom loller of Drews post in the retirement thread, and I didn't want to derail that thread.

If you do keep frets then could it be made that they're not anonymous.

It was like that on a forum I used many years ago and it meant that people could see exactly who they'd amused/annoyed etc.

Not sure how easy that would be, or whether you think it would cause more or fewer arguments.

As with all suggestions, feel free to ignore it if it's a pain in the arse.

I did post on TDPRI a bit ( I did a bit of a quiet flounce but that’s another story...) and you get a notification if someone likes or quotes your post and everyone can see who has. Like is a bit of a weird blunt tool but notification that you have been quoted is useful and missing on here. 

PolarityMan

fretmeister said:

The post reactions on Basschat shows who reacted and how.

Seems to work.

I like your post.

GoldenEraGuitars

Yip, great idea. It would certainly show up the real twunts for who they are too. I’m sure the fret count would soon drop off when people realise that it’s visible for all to see 

CHRISB50

PolarityMan said:

fretmeister said:

The post reactions on Basschat shows who reacted and how.

Seems to work.

I like your post.

Yours smells

fftc

fretmeister said:

The post reactions on Basschat shows who reacted and how.

Seems to work.

That might be the only improvement after the big re-vamp last year! Shame as I used to really like that place.