At this past Spring board meeting I shared the fact that our forum software vBulletin 4, originally purchased in 2008, has reached end of life (EOL) status. This means the developers are no longer updating it aside from security fixes. 10+ years is pretty amazing longevity in the software world and it has overall served this community well.
What this means going forward is we need to start considering our upgrade options. Staying on EOL software is not desirable as it will prevent us from upgrading the underlying software (PHP) version as time goes on.
Unfortunately, the company that developed vBulletin has gone in a direction beyond just forum software with vBulletin 5 being more of a site builder/blog/calendar kitchen sink type platform. Too much "weight in the racecar" for our needs in my opinion.
The first alternative that comes to mind is a forum software called xenForo, developed by some of the guys who initially created vBulletin forums and moved on to form their own company. I'll be researching the migration path this year to evaluate if this is the best option for our community and make a recommendation to the board.
This change is not happening now. The purpose of this post is to proactively inform the community of upcoming changes. Whatever forums we do switch to, my plan would be to keep the existing structure along with all the data. Any comments are welcome.
Thanks,
Alberto
What this means going forward is we need to start considering our upgrade options. Staying on EOL software is not desirable as it will prevent us from upgrading the underlying software (PHP) version as time goes on.
Unfortunately, the company that developed vBulletin has gone in a direction beyond just forum software with vBulletin 5 being more of a site builder/blog/calendar kitchen sink type platform. Too much "weight in the racecar" for our needs in my opinion.
The first alternative that comes to mind is a forum software called xenForo, developed by some of the guys who initially created vBulletin forums and moved on to form their own company. I'll be researching the migration path this year to evaluate if this is the best option for our community and make a recommendation to the board.
This change is not happening now. The purpose of this post is to proactively inform the community of upcoming changes. Whatever forums we do switch to, my plan would be to keep the existing structure along with all the data. Any comments are welcome.
Thanks,
Alberto