Spring cleaning that has been delayed by a decade.

[TrotlDebilni]

Do you remember how the old forums looked? I haven't been here since 2007 but I remember being so excited with my 0.5mbps internet connection going onto this forum to see the happy faces. The pages took 20 seconds to load, some times the forums crashed my internet, other times my whole computer because Firefox went insane trying to load this webpage.

And now, 7 years later, look how far we've come! My internet speed got 40 times faster! Oh.. but the other shit is still the same. The forum kills my internet if I have teamspeak, GTA and the forum running at once, it takes 20 seconds to open a page, the forum just randomly dies if there are more than 30 people on here, and oh does anyone remember how silly low frame rate low quality our emoticons are..    them 2007 memes, yo'.

I mean just look at our sister communities, or even sub domains of our domain;
http://mtasa.argonathrpg.com/ (aight slow)
http://arpd.argonathrpg.com/forum/ (looks older but works better)
https://dawn-tdm.com/ (in-fucking-credible)
And even ..
http://paruni.net/index.php?PHPSESSID=nrn7t8168kseqqha40ihobpt57&action=forum
Paruni has a better fucking forum than we do.

It's been 10 years. 10 years of memories, 10 years of posts, 10 years of our life.. but at this point technology has advanced and our nostalgia is keeping us back, you want the old forum? Keep a backup, change this, the new members that want to arrive probably give up before the index page loads. Please.

[Julio.]

General browsing doesn't seem too slow for me to be honest.

Certain actions are slow though (seeing old posts or viewing your own stats), and others crash the forum... if we could somehow back up the DB and import it into a fresh forum then perhaps it would be beneficial, but without knowing the exact cause of the slowdown, this could actually just replicate the problem on a fresh forum...

[Link9rly]

If wiping a decade's worth of stuff makes the forums faster, I'm all up for it. No use in living in the past if it's slowing down the future.

[SugarD]

I offered a solution several times in different forms that could help fix this, but no one wants to bite.



versus

[Stivi]

Definitely agree. You can't use search anyway so why keep it? Keep track of my posts when I was Potenza? We need a new forum, maybe even a new landing page instead of the "Portal".

[rid]

You know something is very wrong when the forum often takes more time to load a single page in a 100Mbps/20Mbps connection than it takes for your computer to do a complete boot up.
Always hated browsing this forum for this reason.
Seems to have gotten better with time but it can still be a slow piece of garbage - when it comes to speed it seems to vary more than an emotionally confused woman on her period.

[Salmonella]

I offered a solution several times in different forms that could help fix this, but no one wants to bite.



versus

All up for this then, but I think we should never remove posts or topics for this.

Personally, I think we could go on another 20 years at this pace before it actually becomes unbearable.

It's not -that- bad.

[SugarD]

All up for this then, but I think we should never remove posts or topics for this.

Personally, I think we could go on another 20 years at this pace before it actually becomes unbearable.

It's not -that- bad.

Lately it has been better, but it is still pretty bad. Especially considering a large number of users from around the world don't have high-speed internet access.

This poor forum has been changed, updated, upgraded, abused, modified, hacked, bugged, broken, and reinstalled so many times over the years that it is well-beyond repair. Originally my idea included just copying over users, their data, and the posts to a new forum install, but the more and more complaints I hear, the more I am afraid that even that data may be corrupted now. If so, my second idea would be having Argo host the entire original forum in read-only mode on an archive subdomain, (like http://archive.argonathrpg.com/index.php?action=forum for example), and then users could still retrieve and access their old data from there, (as well as make references to it via links), and the new forum would reside where this one is now. That would also allow people to copy over their old posts that they want to keep.

Either way, I have a proof-of-concept of a forum remake already available and nearly done, (and it has been for years, but I keep modifying it to keep up with changes on the original). Unfortunately none of this is my call, though.

[Julio.]

If so, my second idea would be having Argo host the entire original forum in read-only mode on an archive subdomain, (like http://archive.argonathrpg.com/index.php?action=forum for example), and then users could still retrieve and access their old data from there, (as well as make references to it via links), and the new forum would reside where this one is now. That would also allow people to copy over their old posts that they want to keep.

I like this idea... a lot.

[Marcel]

Replace it with IPB while we're at it! The archive solution seems good Sugar:)

[SugarD]

Replace it with IPB while we're at it! The archive solution seems good Sugar:)

Eww IPB!

I wouldn't switch forum softwares. Especially to something you have to pay for.
Thanks lol

[Mr. Goobii]

Agree pretty much, new forum would be nice. It either time out or is very slow to browse around with.

We can still keep this forum for legacy memories(open for public on a sub-domain or something! 

[Marcel]

Eww IPB!

I wouldn't switch forum softwares. Especially to something you have to pay for.
Thanks lol

Got a spare license, so got that covered. IPB is insanely good.

[Julio.]

One thing I'm not too sure on is how to possibly migrate active topics if that's the plan, I guess it can be done though with some clever DB trickery. I'm sure groups with open topics etc, member pics and such would be cool to keep on a new forum!

[Mr. Goobii]

One thing I'm not too sure on is how to possibly migrate active topics if that's the plan, I guess it can be done though with some clever DB trickery. I'm sure groups with open topics etc, member pics and such would be cool to keep on a new forum!

Copy Pasta!