Awww... This is depressing...

I tried to invite some more people to vizzedboard latley.. They all had the attitude "Wow... hello 1990!"...

Apparently acmlm boards layout is letting us down.

Was wondering (Question to David mostly), would anyone else support a forum system change?

Of course it wouldnt go live until it had its RPG stats back in and stuff. But it might be possible to transfer with aid of a script, the current database over, so no information would be lost.

I'd support the move for a few reasons.
1. Does acmlm get supported anymore?
2. Is it possible to get different layouts that dont just change colors?
3. Wouldnt a faster forum system be better?
4. From 3.. I think the programing behind the boards system is lagging behind the ages...
5. Modding vizzed is hard.. (maybe not so for Randy), and layout stuff is embeded IN pages.. making it hard for stuff like 2 to become possible.

IF this was to happen. I'd recomend PHPBB3, I've done alot of work with it lately, and I think I'm in love! Would enable us to have external from the board stuff (EG arcade, games room) more easily linked to user base.

So what do people think?

We would be able to even make an acmlm style skin for the new board!

1. Does acmlm get supported anymore? (It was never supported in the first place so I'll promptly say no)
2. Is it possible to get different layouts that dont just change colors? (Well if you completely redid all the code, i.e not worth it)
3. Wouldnt a faster forum system be better? (Acmlm board forums are believe it or not actually very fast)
4. From 3.. I think the programing behind the boards system is lagging behind the ages... (It was lagging behind when it was first made. )
5. Modding vizzed is hard.. (maybe not so for Randy), and layout stuff is embeded IN pages.. making it hard for stuff like 2 to become possible. (Acmlm board coding is a clusterf***, enough said)

I, personally am despite all those points against an board system change. I like the style of Acmlm Board systems a lot and as such would like to keep it.

But if we change then at least don't make some silly web 2.0 s***. I hate flashy flash menus and similar things.

Yes in no way do I think the board is slow. What is the function of the forum? its not facebook or social networking, its about the exchange of information ideas thoughts etc. and right now it does that we well as we'd want it too. I'm not against change.... I vote for a change. Something more ergonomic wouldn't be amiss and do we really use the rpg stuff anyway?

If you had seen vizzed code, and knew a heap of preformance imporvements for PHP you'd see why I call it slow..

As for using the RPG stuff.. thats my bad again.. I should done something with it. Well, I had, no one tested it for me

This forum system is fine. A change is not needed at all for these reasons.

1. No lag, I havn't experienced any lag at all. David hosts this on a server and from what I can tell it is top notch. PHPbb3 is SLOWWWWW from my experience by it could have been my host as I am on shared hosting.

2. This is the most unique forum I have ever been on, no other forum gives you customization options like this current one.

3. Would take way too much time it just wouldn't be worth transferring to another system. Performance wise needs no changing, design wise is awesome I never get sick of it.

4. Less support isn't always bad, it can actually be better for several reasons even on a security level.

My conclusion... why spend time transferring to another system when we can make it ourselves from the ground up? I'm in the process of developing my own forum for Magnum Directory and it's not hard at all, well the programming is but layouts are a piece of cake. I agree though, modding layouts on prebuilt forums is a nightmare.

I know David is wanting to update this forum in the future and... well David told me an idea he has about his own forum system and that I believe is David's next step.

1. I dont mean 'lag', I mean the code is written pretty awfuly.. Even check the generated html, im sure its a mess to.

2. just the item shop?

3. I love the design, dont get me wrong. But it seems to be hard to recruit new members because they think the layout looks historic. I had 6 people refuse to register within 5 minutes becuase the board looked outdated.

4. Err.. So all the bugs we got, and security holes, that any decent acmlm hacker knows about.. is..... a good idea we dont get them fixed (I dont know them myself, just word of mouth).


Im not saying 'LETS DO THIS 2MOROWZ!', im just throwing the idea in the ring.

1. So you mean badly written code is the laggy part? Oh I thought you meant it was a different kind of lag I agree, toss the HTML tables and update it with CSS would not be so entangled.

2. I mean the posts layout is customizable. I like how everyone can make their own layout, usually its just a signature you can change on other forums.

3. That has got to be a pretty aweful reason not to sign up somewhere. Wouldn't you agree??? People should sign up if their interested not if a site looks good or not. If that is why they don't sign up then that is a pretty bad way to go about the web.

Is it really that bad??? I mean there are no pop ups and stuff. I agree looks mean a lot but not to the extent they take it. Stuff now and days is all corporate looking, I think vizzed is a nice alternative to those other same futuristic style forums.

I do agree though there is always room for improvement. I think David is already planning on saving up to invest in a new vizzed board, it's going to be awesome he should make a post about it!

"1. So you mean badly written code is the laggy part? Oh I thought you meant it was a different kind of lag I agree, toss the HTML tables and update it with CSS would not be so entangled."
Its not that.. the way the HTML is generated is behind the times... phpbb have used templates for along time. Makes customizing WAY easier.


"2. I mean the posts layout is customizable. I like how everyone can make their own layout, usually its just a signature you can change on other forums."
Pre-sig is defenatly something I'd want, Im going to make a mod for that on my forum. (Acmlm probably would have started heading that way.. but I think the last update was just before the dinosours were all killed)

"3. That has got to be a pretty aweful reason not to sign up somewhere. Wouldn't you agree??? People should sign up if their interested not if a site looks good or not. If that is why they don't sign up then that is a pretty bad way to go about the web.
Is it really that bad??? I mean there are no pop ups and stuff. I agree looks mean a lot but not to the extent they take it. Stuff now and days is all corporate looking, I think vizzed is a nice alternative to those other same futuristic style forums."

There arnt popups, but there are ads (not everyone is running adblock plus ).
Its hard to get people interested until they are apart of the community and they can see how things go. And they wont join, becuase it looked a mess. Fair enough, lame reason to join, but still..


"I do agree though there is always room for improvement. I think David is already planning on saving up to invest in a new vizzed board, it's going to be awesome he should make a post about it!"
A new forum would be awesome. I think we've been planning that for some time now...

Got any examples of good PHPBB forums? Or maybe one you made?

David has a pretty awesome idea, don't want to give it all away but I do know it will have universal members. I think he plans to make his own forum system and basically like other forum systems but better. Say you instal Vizzedboard on your server, the members you have will also be members on every other vizzed board. Kind of confusing but he can explain it better since it's his idea But yea I expect the next vizzed board to be massive in change I hope.

Vizzed is perfect as it is. Acmlm is very fast. I know message boards that go 2 miles an hour. This one is really fast. I can click something and it instantly loads

yeah, eveything is running pretty well. iBOCK couldn't have said it better

I'm a little late on response to this thread but here's all of my input (my post in broke down into sections but does not correspond to the previous):


1. If I was going to transfer to any other forum, it would have to be vBulletin, for my experience, that seems to have the most features, most mods and be the most powerful (although it costs money but would be worth it); but I don't see myself transferring to any other forum for certain reasons (refer to #3 and #4).

2. If it's the look of the forum that's bad, I can come up with a new design and me and bigbob (or randy) can work together on implementing that to make the board have a new look (would require coding though since the board is pretty limited on what you can do with the design).

3. Even though PHPBB and vBulletin and some other forums out there have more features and are better in some ways, vizzed board (and the acmlm board system) just have a feel to them that makes you feel at home when posting... if we can just work on improving the look we can find a way to keep the system and still appeal to new members. Additionally, having a system like acmlm board that isn't popular makes us at less of a risk of receiving spam bots (hasn't happened yet on acmlm board).

4. As Jigsaw mentioned, I do have huge plans for a new upgrade to vizzed board in about a year (which I plan to invest a lot of money into). Basically I'll work on having our 'acmlm board' system converted into our own 'vizzed board' system and it'll have a lot of innovative and powerful features which I've come up with. On top of that, it'll have many ways that will allow the board to gain lots of activity, I will make a thread about it in the development forum sometime eventually (don't reveal to much more about it though jigsaw).

JigSaw, http://ipf.insaneparadox.com, missing members, and posts... But example of how much better the skinning can be.

Example of what i mean about lag, goto new posts. For me, it draws the header, than hangs for 1-2 seconds before printing up the table. (Firefox 3.0.4).

David, #2, if we did a design, we should study into template files. Then we can practicly do ANYTHING with the layout. Have acamlm style, phpbb style, vbulletin style.
Also, phpbb3 has a new caching feature to speed up forums. If we could implement something like that..

Cant wait until you reveal #4.

I don't see a new post thing on your forum or are you talking about Vizzed? If Vizzed, can't view that page at all shows up just as a blank white page and still puzzled by why I'm the only one who can't see it.

I see what you mean though your forum does look pretty dang nice.

Here's my forum for Magnum Directory LOL... this is only day one on it but I'm getting around. http://www.magnumdirectory.com/forum/

As for template files... I can do those! Heck we can have it built into database for each user. Say they want layout 1, enabled layout 1 their prefrences in the database and it's all set. That's just one way of doing it. But I am working on my very first forum from complete scratch so I will be more then happy to help make the new vizzed forum if given the opportunity

Must of missed this thread. As I've said elsewhere I personally prefer SMF (Simple Machines Forums). They are free, get some great mods, the admin database is well done.

Plus you can get themes from various places. Bobby and David go check them out.

http://www.simplemachines.org/

The main problem is we probably couldn't transfer stats.

And we'd use talk about member above you.

I think we could transfer stats we would just have to reprogram and redesign stuff if moved to a new board... that's probably why it's best to make a new one from scratch, then we can have anything, anywhere we want.

@JigSaw, I ment on vizzed. Its not a blank page, its slow loading.
Template files as in index.php.html, where its alot of HTML, no PHP, and you have things like
[code]<-- IS_MOD --!>{IP}<-- END IF --!>[/code]

Where IS_MOD is set from a diff PHP file, and {IP} is also loaded by a diff php file.

@Vash, Actualy, I use afew SMF boards. And they are quite nice.

@JigSaw (Again), we could make a new vizzedboard folder, and duplicate code, use same database.. and re-write the display parts of vizzedboard. Could incorperate themes and stuff.

It shows up blank on my computer with no load bar or anything. I even let it sit for a minute or two and still no loading or anything.

Loading exturnal files like that from my experience have been nothing but trouble. The only thing that runs smoothly is the header and footer files but if I try to add say a connection to a database and stuff in seperate files it does not work at all. I can see those really slowing up everything.

That is exactly what I had in mind. Since it is David's board he would probably want to design the default layout and structure but if he needs someone to code it I can do it all in CSS

You can code in Counter Strike Source!?!?!?