17 replies to this topic

[Roger]

Hello everyone, just wanted to bounce an idea off of all of you.

As some of you might know, we've been getting many errors on the CC server (Db errors) and have been constantly under DoS-type attack for the last few month (resulting in 500 errors). While looking for a fix to all these issues, I kept reading about alternatives to vBulletin and how vB's new development/release schedule is no longer up to par with other competitors. I can relate to those comments since every upgrade is followed by some kind of fire drill for me.

The most common alternative I read about is IPB's IP.Board. It is offered in a hosted version - so potentially, we can offload the server part completely to IPB and just focus on running the forum and adding features. Right now, my time is always spent on server admin stuff, which I'm by no means an expert at.

So, the question is, has anyone out there had any experience running IP.Board (either hosted or non-hosted)?

Your thoughts??

[Edit] Just posting this, I got a DB error! Argh!

[WingedPanther]

I wonder who we pissed off...

[Roger]

It's not a true DoS, but rather someone from a German edu who was running some sort of scrapper/crawler against the site. Since they are on school IP's, I just put a block on the domain/IPs.

Anyways, if you have thoughts about going to a hosted forum system, which will introduce some changes (new, good and bad ones) to the current site, please let me know either here or via PM. I want to gauge the community's feeling before doing more research on this.

[cppnewbie]

The lack of control you get with a hosted system make it not worth it IMO. This is especially true on a technical site where you are likely to want to introduce more customisations and should have the talent from the member base to overcome any problems you encounter.

In my experience SMF is the best forum system there is.

[Roger]

Let me take a look at SMF. I have played with it a long time ago.

I am actually consider between the installed and hosted version. It sounds like basically the same system, except that with hosted version, they handle the server for you (economically). Their servers are also optimized to run their code, etc.

As for customizations, in the past, too many custom mods tend to break vBulletin when upgrading. I've adopted the "minimum set of mods necessary" mentality to provide a good forum environment for the users. Sometime, it's easy to install mods that really offers no real benefit to the community. It only slows down the server.

[Alexander]

I have experienced nothing but good thoughts when on IPB powered forums.

Some thoughts:
It is old enough to have a more mature standing, 2002
Has slightly more complex than vB CMS component IP.content
Receives a fair amount of exploits as does vB, due to its breadth of implementation
Has limited user profiles, blogging, and most features we have.

[Roger]

I also heard good stuff, but didn't know about the exploits. For the hosted version, they have incorporated blogging and some other features. And their CMS looks much nicer than vB's.

My biggest concerns with such a big move would be:

• Users adapting to new UI
  
• Users might need to reset some profile info (icon, etc.)
  
• Some links might not port successfully
  
• Key features that we have today on CC might not be present in IPB

I read somewhere that their SE traffic actually increased after a move due to the IPB site structure, although I'm not sure how valid that one case is.

I'm trying to see if the pro outweighs the cons.

[Edit] Also read up on the features of IPBoard, it's a very nice platform IMO. IP.Board - Features

Edited by Roger, 22 December 2011 - 11:43 PM.

[RhetoricalRuvim]

Roger said:

Let me take a look at SMF. I have played with it a long time ago.

I am actually consider between the installed and hosted version. It sounds like basically the same system, except that with hosted version, they handle the server for you (economically). Their servers are also optimized to run their code, etc.

As for customizations, in the past, too many custom mods tend to break vBulletin when upgrading. I've adopted the "minimum set of mods necessary" mentality to provide a good forum environment for the users. Sometime, it's easy to install mods that really offers no real benefit to the community. It only slows down the server.

By mods, you mean moderators? Or modifications? Or modes?

Roger said:

I also heard good stuff, but didn't know about the exploits. For the hosted version, they have incorporated blogging and some other features. And their CMS looks much nicer than vB's.

My biggest concerns with such a big move would be:

• Users adapting to new UI
  
• Users might need to reset some profile info (icon, etc.)
  
• Some links might not port successfully
  
• Key features that we have today on CC might not be present in IPB

I read somewhere that their SE traffic actually increased after a move due to the IPB site structure, although I'm not sure how valid that one case is.

I'm trying to see if the pro outweighs the cons.

[Edit] Also read up on the features of IPBoard, it's a very nice platform IMO. IP.Board - Features

I really like the settings page, on CodeCall, because it has links to unread posts; I really don't want that feature gone. Also the forum stats at the top of the forums index page is nice, and it helps us (I think) know more about what's going on on the site and maybe even find threads to post in, with increased chances of users being active - at least that what I think, I don't really have facts or statistics to back that up.

[Roger]

mods, in this case, are modifications.

As for the two features you mentioned, IPBoard has them both, although in a slightly different format.

I setup a 5-day free demo board for myself to play around with. Feel free to look around (but don't setup any users): CODECALL Programming Forums

[RhetoricalRuvim]

It lets not-logged-in users reply in threads? I didn't log in or anything, and tried replying, and then it asked me for my name and the hard-to-read-letters verification code; I just clicked 'Cancel' , because I don't really have a reason to actually reply, I was just playing around with it.

Overall, it doesn't look too different from what we currently have.

Though where are the forum stats? Also the banner is not very CodeCall-like.

Some more (I decided to put it inside a list, to make it easier to read):

• Is the link to the settings page in the same position on the page, when logged in? I couldn't really look at that because you said not to make any users or anything.
  
• Does it have a double-post-preventing system like CodeCall has?
  
• Would we lose all our posts if we migrate?

EDIT: How frequently does the bad guy try to crawl this site? Maybe there could be something that catches IPs that connect to the site more than a certain number of times per second or something.

[Roger]

The site should look similar, just a bit more updated look on IPBoard vs. vBulletin. The site is currently in demo mode, so feel free to do whatever you need. It'll all be wiped out in 5 days.

Forum stats is a module that needs to be enabled. There are also other modifications that can achieve the same. I haven't played with all the front-end stuff since we're still evaluating the back-end to make sure that it can handle all the admin/mod features that we need for the site.

The settings page will be linked off of the right-end upper corner still, but (from my view) it will be a javascript windows that can be opened after you click on the user name.

Double-post prevention - haven't seen anything, but will do more investigation.

Previous posts - all of your posts will be migrated, so nothing will be lost. I am concern about some FURLs, but IPB assured me they'll be fine once I put in some .htaccess rewrites. All this will be tested before a switch happens.

As for the crawl/attack that happens, it's very irregular. Sometimes, I think it's some student just trying to grab the whole site to read off line or something. It's usually from a single IP and blocked easily.

The main problem is still the DB errors that happens. I'm just fed up with vBulletin's continuous code upgrades and decide to try something more stable (and pretty) like IPBoard.

Still in the evaluation stage, so appreciate all the comments and feedback so far. Please keep them coming.

[wim DC]

Nevermind :p