gcmartin wrote:Is 2013 the year to bring the forum backbone modernization forward? If so, can a small team organize to accomplish the necessary items to reasonably achieve this without taxing a single individual with this upgrade task.
In an effort to achieve such, it would mean that a Shadow (really a test site) be setup where the latest version can be installed providing a home for the movement/conversion of the DB to its new home.
Then some concerted testing to review that the checks and balances are in place.
And finally a site exchange or index movement to the newest after initial tests and shakedown is completed.
Can this be done in a team effort? I have never set up a forum, but believe that for those who understand its structure and have a reasonable understanding of the product, this can be accomplished such that it mimics what we already have and addresses @Flash and other moderator needs.
Is this reasonable? If so, I volunteer to assist in whatever way I can.
gcmartin,
Since you admit to never having set up a forum before, I'll try to explain this as clearly as possible so that there isnt any misunderstanding. (hopefully everyone will understand this as well).
I've both set up, admin'd, and mod'd Phpbb2 and phpbb3 forums before, as well as migrated a phpbb3 forum over to bbpress. So I've spent some time working with all the aspects of forum development.
Setting up a forum is really a single man job. It isnt the sort of thing that you can section off jobs to other people. Taking a vanilla software forum package and installing it, is simple enough, but then in order to set the forum up for certain functionality and features... custom editing the php pages and installing modules have to be done in sequence. Its not as if I can say "Person A: go install Module X" and "Person B: go install Module Y" Because once you install module X, that may completely change how Module Y needs to be installed. Same goes for when you are doing custom edits of the Php pages. Once you start changing things... every modification that follows must take into account all the changes that were done before. Its not like setting up a computer where you can install software in any order and it'll work.
So sadly its not the soft of work that can be shared among people. Once the forum is set up, doing the mod work can be shared, but the admin functions of the site, are pretty much single man jobs. You can have two forum admin who are active in tweaking things after the site is set up, but they have to have
VERY GOOD communication skills. And honestly, usually its just less complicated for one person to do it all.
The problem is the time element. Since all the admin work falls on one person, it gets done when they have time.
And that's all with the perspective of setting up a fresh new site with no users.
Migrating one site to another can be a complete nightmare. Thankfully going from phpbb2 to phpbb3 (for example) isnt super complicated, but doing other migrations like phpbb2 to bbpress, can be fraught with problems.
Obviously all testing would be done on a test site, that can be poked and prodded so the official site wouldn't have to deal with down time... But that testing phase could take anywhere from a few days (very rare), to months. It all depends on how much time the Admin has to work on it. Now if the community was willing to cough up a few grand to hire a web-development company to do the switch... then it can be done faster. But as we are all volunteers, it'll get done when it gets done.
There have been people in the past that have complained about the slow nature of progress. I dont think anyone right now is in that crowd, but what it takes to mirgate an existing site with 20k users and over 600,000 posts is immense. And I dont think most average users have any conception of what it takes. The DB conversion alone would probably take over a day, depending on the hardware of the server its sitting on, and how many other sites are running on it.
I can't speak for John directly, but I think if it were possible to have a team of people do the work for him, he'd probably relish the opportunity to have other people to the work under his watchful eye; but thats not really possible. And so, we all have to wait until he has the time to focus on it.
We have this place by his generosity, let's all keep in mind that running this server is not his job, and like everyone else he has other things going on that may require his time and attention.
The fact that this community has had such a stable forum for so long is something to be proud of. I'm sure when we do have some progress, it'll be worth the wait.