Software Change

[Cam]

Hi guys,

If you've tried to access DSF these last couple hours, you might have had trouble. That's because we were in the middle of migrating over to a new forum software. As of today, we are now using XenForo, moving away from vBulletin, which DSF had been using since the very beginning. I'm sure this will be a little bit of an adjustment initially, but I hope you guys see all of the benefits of this forum software. It's certainly more modern. In posting, you have the ability to post GIFS, post all sorts of different embed media content (it goes well beyond just YouTube videos), and I think you'll find the basic notification system much more handy. You can tag users, and they'll get a notification when they're tagged. When you quote a user's post, they'll get notified about that. And then the big advantage is mobile friendliness! DSF should be much easier to use on your phone or tablet going forward. As more and more of us are using our phones, it makes a lot of sense to try and lean into that.

Anyway, I am ecstatic to bring DSF to XF! If you guys have any issues browsing the forum, please let me know. We certainly have some quirks that still need to be worked out, but some things could not be done until we actually made the final move over... And my goal this evening is to hash all that out. As always, thank you for your continued support of DSF!

Also, let's show some love to @Driven2Services, for making all this happen. Ken did an awesome job getting us moved over.

Regards,
Cam

 

[Cam]

I'm going to turn this thread into a how-to of sorts as well.

Posting GIFs:

When looking at the quick reply box, you'll see a BBCode button that is for GIFs. You click on that, and you can search anything you want. And then click the particular GIF you want to use, and it'll display in your post. For example, I searched Detroit Lions:

 

[kalinecountry]

I posted in the private room and now I don't have access.

Also I am unable to go back in a thread and edit.
You might be happy with this new xenpro but it is confusing as all hell.

 

[Cam]

I posted in the private room and now I don't have access.

Also I am unable to go back in a thread and edit.
You might be happy with this new xenpro but it is confusing as all hell.

I'm working on solving the permissions issues with not being able to see the staff forum right now. It's an adjustment, and there will no doubt be quirks that I have to work out. Part of the process.

As for editing posts, you should see an edit option:

 

[kalinecountry]

In the Tigers team notes thread, I go back to the previous year and date and add/edit before posting for the current day and year.
I was unable to. Maybe I will figure it out.
The place to post is now at the bottom of the page?

 

[Cam]

In the Tigers team notes thread, I go back to the previous year and date and add/edit before posting for the current day and year.
I was unable to. Maybe I will figure it out.
The place to post is now at the bottom of the page?

The place to post was at the bottom on vBulletin as well?

Unless you're referring to the reply button that was on top on vB:

I'm sure we can add something like that if you want.

 

[kalinecountry]

Yes, I was referring to the reply button. If you are able to add it that would be great.

All those years I never used the place on the bottom of the vBulletin to post.

 

[Cam]

Our email server should now be 100% functioning. If you have received a bunch of emails in the last few minutes, I apologize for the email spam, but it seems the server opted to catch itself back up on any emails that weren't sent while it wasn't functioning, and I didn't figure out how to fix it for a little bit there. You may be receiving email notifications by default for different things occurring within DSF, such as receiving a PM (called conversations on XenForo), receiving replies to a thread you are watching, or being quoted/tagged within a thread. You can set your preferences for what you want to receive notifications for here:

Yes, I was referring to the reply button. If you are able to add it that would be great.

All those years I never used the place on the bottom of the vBulletin to post.

I'll see what I can do!

 

[kalinecountry]

Cam, The membership link at the top of the page has a place for people to buy into the DSF?
Does that mean that all the people who accessed the DSF with vBulletin now will have to
buy a membership to read?

 

[Cam]

Cam, The membership link at the top of the page has a place for people to buy into the DSF?
Does that mean that all the people who accessed the DSF with vBulletin now will have to
buy a membership to read?

That's a work in progress, but that will be a premium offering. Everything you currently do will still be completely free. This is something extra people can pay to have access to more features, like being able to change their username color and things like that. The concept is currently being called "Legion of Fans," and we'll work on adjusting the payment tiers and changing the names to something cooler.

 

[Cam]

I've updated the menu button from "Membership" to "Legion of Fans" to avoid confusion there.

 

[Cam]

Yes, I was referring to the reply button. If you are able to add it that would be great.

All those years I never used the place on the bottom of the vBulletin to post.

I've added a reply button at the top of threads.

 

[Cam]

These styles aren't intended to be the permanent ones, but we now have both a light style and a dark style available to use. You can switch styles in the bottom left corner of the forum, by clicking on "Default Light" and then clicking on "Default Dark." Then you can certainly go back to that if you want to change it back. We do have a better style in the works though.

Thanks to @PGen98 for setting up our dark version.

 

[tomdalton22]

membership has gone down significantly over the past few years. This change may make it go down even more.

 

[PGen98]

membership has gone down significantly over the past few years. This change may make it go down even more.

What makes you say that? Moving from severely outdated, exploitable software to a more secure, robust platform makes a lot of sense. There's a transition period to get used to things, of course, but the end result will be a better, more stable platform for DSF going forward.

 

[tomdalton22]

What makes you say that? Moving from severely outdated, exploitable software to a more secure, robust platform makes a lot of sense. There's a transition period to get used to things, of course, but the end result will be a better, more stable platform for DSF going forward.

this has been a dying forum with very few posters. Most of the regulars have already left. Most of the people on this site are older. If you know anything about older people and tech, they usually don't like change

 

[PGen98]

this has been a dying forum with very few posters. Most of the regulars have already left. Most of the people on this site are older. If you know anything about older people and tech, they usually don't like change

That's fair, but the processes are more or less the same between the two platforms, they were developed by some of the same people, after all, so it should feel like second nature after a little while!

 

[tomdalton22]

That's fair, but the processes are more or less the same between the two platforms, they were developed by some of the same people, after all, so it should feel like second nature after a little while!

It was better when there were more posters. Not sure how you expand your membership

 

[Cam]

this has been a dying forum with very few posters. Most of the regulars have already left. Most of the people on this site are older. If you know anything about older people and tech, they usually don't like change

I definitely get that. The reality is that change is unavoidable at a certain point. The software we were using was released over fifteen years ago, and it hasn't been compatible with the latest versions of PHP for sometime now. The internet is always changing, and the different systems (PHP/MySQL/etc) in place that allow a forum to function are changing as well. Those "different systems" have modernized, and no longer work with the software we were using. We probably could have put this change off for another year, maybe two, but we were going to end up being forced into making a change, and that wouldn't have been on our own terms... That would have been us logging on one day and the forum being broken because of our web host making updates on the backend.

 

[Mitchrapp]

this has been a dying forum with very few posters. Most of the regulars have already left. Most of the people on this site are older. If you know anything about older people and tech, they usually don't like change

I'm 58 and I don't mind. Of course I worked in tech my whole life. As far as 'most of the regulars' that is not ture. Have you ever tried to find a Detroit/Michigan sports forum on the internet that has active members? The quick answer is there isn't any. Only option is Reddit and I wouldn't wish my worse enemy there..