Forum Software issue

[Chris Hall]

Another two hours this morning with admin work on the forum. I found that the new anti-spambot measure I had configured was still not keeping the spam-bots out. Then I discovered a new type of captch called key-captcha which looked like it might be the ticket. I tried to get that working however it appears that because the phpbb forum version is so out of date, I cannot add the key-captcha feature.

That lead me to look at updating the forum to the current version, something I have shied away from in the past because it involves doing a bunch of programming stuff in the web hosting sites control panel. it's complicated. This morning I decided to try again, and ended up with the host's tech support for a couple of hours. Not my idea of a good time particularly.

Anyway, long story short, I wasn't able to update the forum version after two attempts, walking through it with the tech support people. The problem was that neither of them had even heard of phpbb before, for starters, and thus were not especially familiar with it.

Phpbb is an open source bulletin board software, and I thought it was one of the standard ones out there. Turns out that it is rather less common than I had thought. The issue with using it though is that there is no tech support available except for their own online forum where you can post your questions. It's not terribly helpful, and when i read through the tech support questions and answer I find a good portion of it unintelligible.

Anyway, the difficulty in keeping the forum software up to date is one that needs addressing. I'm strongly considering switching altogether from phpbb to vbulletin - - which will cost money, both to migrate and to host.

If I migrate, it is possible that members here will need to create new passwords, however that is about all the inconvenience I am anticipating.

I will research this a bit more, and if the best way forward turns out to be migrating the forum over, I will post up a notice letting you all know when that will take place.

[Cole]

You can't go wrong with Vbulletin. I highly suggest it.

[Chris Hall]

Thanks Cole.

vBulletin is $250/year however. Not a 'break the bank' sort of number, but makes it a less easy decision.

I'm looking into an alternative, which is to migrate the same forum over to another hosting service which is savvier in regards to phpbb.