Conversion from phpBB to Xenforo

Tony Crocker

Administrator
Staff member
A few of you noticed when FTO was down for about 6 hours today. The result is that FTO is now running on Xenforo instead of phpBB. I am the new admin, though I don't plan on changing any screen names!

I've browsed around some and it sure looks like nearly all content including pictures has been carried over cleanly. Pictures that were not embedded in narrative may show up as thumbnails at the bottom of a post. But you still get full size when you click on them. Missing pics AFAIK are only those before 2004 that were lost in a prior phpBB upgrade. Harvey's prediction of a nearly painless transfer from phpBB to Xenforo seems to have been realized.

I posted a new TR from Nov. 10-11 at Mammoth. Xenforo did not allow me to add new pics >1MB. That setting can probably be changed. There was a 10 picture limit which I requested the tech guy remove.

Anyone who sees problems, please post them here. The conversion process is not complete. FTO is still on the prior admin's server. The Xenforo tech has not been able to get it working on a new server yet.

So far all I have had to do is buy a Xenforo licence and sign up for new server space. The non-forum pieces of FTO are supported by Wordpress and I have never been directly involved. The Xenforo tech says I will have some work to do there.
 
Thanks for underwriting/leading the conversion, Tony. Great that all of our content and reports won't go poof. As a symbolic inaugural admin gesture, I think that you should ban Marc C so the new forum can restart with clean juju.
😬

It's a first-world problem but I assume that it's not possible to import the php smileys/emoticons into XenForo? I liked those ones better!
 
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That is a nitpick @jamesdeluxe. If you really have one you like from the past, you can copy and paste it. I like the guy eating popcorn and copy and paste that one. I'm pretty sure you can have any you want, but their might be big fish to fry.

First thing to do is get an SSL so the site is secure - https vs http. That's not a XF thing it's hosting. It's cheap or even free.

Lose the XF logo at the top and put an FTO logo there.

XF has a gazillion features and customizations. We've been using it for a year and a half and I still don't get much of it. Still I bet I can help with things.

ACP is the slang for the Admin Control Panel. If you care about customizing start with the ACP > Settings and go through each one. There are a lot. I'd love to dump the 44 off my name too, easy for the admin to do. :)

The Support Forum is full of knowledgeable people but there is a bit of a game to get help. I've found the other members more helpful than the guys running it. I mods there seem to expect that running a forum and learning XF is your full time job and they can give very minimal guidance. Always correct but your are like WHERE IS THAT FEATURE. Don't act entitled over there and always LIKE any help you get. <Seems odd but it matters. The hardest core XF admins track their post to positive reaction ratio, if you help them improve it they are more likely to help in the future.

If you care about revenue, adding advertising is easy, if you have a google adsense account. My forum revenue, while still low is 3x what it was under nabble.

There are things called AddOns that are done by private devs that can also be very useful. One I use makes is super simple for the admin to rotate iphone pics that are sideways or upside down. If you use add-ons make sure to choose an established and reputable one. And if the Addon guys quits the business (stops supporting it) remove the addon as it can become a security risk.

If you want you can make me an admin. I won't ban James or anything like that and wouldn't do anything you don't ask me too, but I could help figure out things. Some of this stuff, you'll only ever do once, so learning it yourself isn't always the best use of time.
 
Thanks Harv. These are complementary forums that are worth cross-posting, with NYSB weighted more toward the northeast and FTO having more western/Alps discussions.
 
OK, here are a few copied from Alpinforum, which is still running on a later version of php. I wonder when they're going to convert?

grin.gif
icon_eek.gif
icon_neutral.gif
popcorn.gif
boese.gif
icon_biggrin.gif
icon_confused.gif
icon_cool.gif
icon_neutral.gif
icon_neutral.gif
icon_sad.gif
icon_smile.gif
icon_wink.gif
lach.gif
rolleyes.gif
 
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You could create a sticky thread where all the old emojis live.

Not very elegant I admit, and it's quite likely there is a way to officially bring them in.
 
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Tony... does FTO have a logo?

The XF logo at the top (rightly so) links to the homepage and should logically be a FTO logo, not the default XF logo.
 
No, I meant -- how long will Alpinforum stay with php before converting to... uh, is XenForo soon going to be the only forum game in town?
php is a programming language. Almost all forums use it. Nabble didn't which I think is the reason I couldn't convert to XF.

Last I looked XF was maybe 35-40% but many of the others are not growing.

I think the total market is shrinking.
 
eusa_boohoo.gif
emoji-head-banging.gif


I have been given instructions about the emojis, not sure when I'll figure that out.

I've asked the Xenforo tech about the logo; no reply on that yet.
 
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If you have a logo I can upload it. I think. PM it to me or upload it here.

Can you approve my request to change my screenname? I see I'm an admin, but I must be a lesser admin than in my forum. The backend looks different, with less features.
 
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Great start on the switch guys... I'll test posting my ski day (Loveland) by tomorrow at the latest...
 
Not great. It's not really a logo and it's way too small on mobile.

Any logo designers in the house?

ETA: I looked at what we did on NYSB. It's done the same way but our logo is much simpler and works small.

LMK if you'd rather have the original XF logo or the current one that doesn't work on mobile.
 
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Nice job transferring stuff over, Tony. I enjoy the periodic conversations here, and even though I don't do trip reports anymore, i still enjoy others. At some point, I might try and do a few more again, just not really into the whole photobucket thing, or whatever it is that hosts images these days. I also really slacked off on Facebook, too.
 
The text in the home page logo looks about the same size as the "Xenforo" that is there now.

I'm clueless about mobile. Many ski area websites are seriously degraded on mobile IMHO. The one that executes really well IMHO is OpenSnow. You can find every scrap of info there as easily on mobile as on a computer.
 
Just noticing that not only are the old emoticons not available for new posts, but the old posts no longer have any of those emoticons showing either. They were various puctuation/text snippets that were interpreted by the prior software into displaying the right icon.

Not that there is likely much that could be done to alter that on the old posts. Makes for interesting reading at points to see the random text info.
 
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