Time for a board upgrade? (vBulletin)

[Andrew NDB]

The latest version of vBulletin (the message board software) is 5.3.0 and the Drome is still running 3.8.7 which is a few years old at this point. Any chance of an upgrade to 5.3.0?

Anyone curious to what a 5.3.0 vBulletin board looks like, I just completed installation and customization of the Official Highlander message board, which you can see here: http://www.highlander-community.com

You can integrate Facebook, there is Likes, and it's mobile friendly out of the box.

[DestronMirage22]

I honestly like the way the boards are now.
It's all simple.
And kinda quaint.

[snake]

No, it's perfect the way it is.

[Krutch]

I don't like change.

Never change the 'Drome.

I like what I know to expect :D

[Powder]

It should remain as it is now forever.

[Netkeeper]

I wouldn't object. But I don't think it will happen, either.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Prowler]

The forums work fine the way they are now and it's had this look since the very first day. So yeah, no need to change just for the heck of it.

Also, that's a really subtle manner of promoting your own message board, Andrew :P

[Stephen]

It probably will have to be upgraded eventually, if they stop providing security patches for 3.x

[Cure]

I've read plenty of people say "I wish I could like this!" so if this that makes that possible then I say go for it, but who knows what Krang and Shredder think.

[Andrew NDB]

Phones is the big thing. A lot of people aren't just sitting at home on their computers browsing forums anymore... they're on their phone. And good luck trying to efficiently browse and post on the Drome from your phone.

5.3.0 makes it really easy. It recognizes when you're accessing it on your phone and lays it out perfect.

[Cure]

I'm using the mobile version of the Drome right now. There's a thread about it in this very section.

[The Deadman]

I have no problem browsing the forum on a phone.

[TurtleWA]

Not sure what others see on desktops I only have a phone. I see first image then press default and see second. I don't really have enough information to have an opinion either way. Would hate to upgrade to a version that was not as "good" and want the old one back.

[IndigoErth]

Not sure what others see on desktops I only have a phone.
Same as the image on the right, just not as narrow.


Another vote for leaving it alone.

Only if there was ever reason it was forced to, and in that case I'd hope it would keep a same/similar color scheme since it is easy on sensitive eyes.

[TigerClaw]

As much as we like the forum as it is, you have to take into account, the new version probably patches some of the security issues from a previous version, so it would be wise to upgrade the board to a newer version, to help keep it from getting hacked in the future.

I read about message boards getting hacked, and then the admins restoring them from a backup, and this is cause they are using an old version of the message board, so upgrading them to the latest version will prevent them from getting hacked again.

[Stephen]

I have no problem browsing the forum on a phone.

There's also this https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=http%253A//forums.thetechnodrome.com/

[FredWolfLeonardo]

I still use the normal layout of the drome on my phone despite being able to use the mobile versions, it all works just as good as it would on the computer.

The mobile version is simple, but the default layout has many more features which is why I use it more often, unless I'm travelling and have limited data.

[sdp]

About ten years ago Krang told me he was trying to update the main site to make it modern. I'm guessing he'll get to the forums once Thetechnodrome.com hits web 2.0 in a decade or so.

[CyberCubed]

This forum feels like it's from the year 2001.

[IndigoErth]

This forum feels like it's from the year 2001.
But look at it this way, it can help you cling to your youth. ;) lol

[Coola Yagami]

I post on my phone all the time and never had a problem.

[The Deadman]

But look at it this way, it can help you cling to your youth. ;) lol

Im surprised he didnt give a rant on how forums werent a thing back in 2001...

[Netkeeper]

Probably because they were?

[Andrew NDB]

I'm sure the license is expired by now. I just went through it all and the price tag for a full upgrade would be under $400. If Krang doesn't want to pay I'm sure a Gofundme would work. I'd chip in.

[Powder]

I'd donate to keep the site alive, should it one day be necessary, but not to upgrade it.

#dontchangethedrome

[CyberCubed]

Just think in the unlikely event the forums ever close down, the only place to discuss TMNT left would be twitter or tumblr. The horror.

[Nortock Diab]

I'd participate in a funding as well.

[myconius]

i'd donate to keeping this forum going as well, if it needed to.

i'm not really sure how to feel about the thought of an upgrade?
i like the look and feel of the drome the way it is now, though an increase in security is never a bad thing.

[myconius]

any news on this?

[TigerClaw]

i'd donate to keeping this forum going as well, if it needed to.

i'm not really sure how to feel about the thought of an upgrade?
i like the look and feel of the drome the way it is now, though an increase in security is never a bad thing.
Upgrades to message boards are necessary, cause they are prone to being hacked if some hacker finds a vulnerability in it.

I seen forums getting hacked and then they have to restore from a backup, and then upgrading to a newer version that fixes those security issues.

[myconius]

Upgrades to message boards are necessary, cause they are prone to being hacked if some hacker finds a vulnerability in it.

I seen forums getting hacked and then they have to restore from a backup, and then upgrading to a newer version that fixes those security issues.

is Krang the only one in charge of starting the upgrade then?

[Andrew NDB]

is Krang the only one in charge of starting the upgrade then?

Yeah. The only one.

[myconius]

Yeah. The only one.

well.... i guess we wait.

hope for the best...


i'll still donate, if and when the time should come.

[Andrew NDB]

** bump **

[sdp]

Krang doesn't care about the drome, I hope if he ever loses interest to continue paying the server he'll at least let someone take it over.

[CyberCubed]

Krang doesn't care about the drome, I hope if he ever loses interest to continue paying the server he'll at least let someone take it over.

I'm surprised these forums still exist after 17 years. At some point they'll die and we'll all have to go to tumblr.

[Coola Yagami]

I hope not. Tumblr sucks, at least when compared to a real message board.

[Casey]

I love it the way it is, but I use my iPad and iPhone way more than my computer, so the mobile friendly site would be awesome.

[CyberCubed]

I hope not. Tumblr sucks, at least when compared to a real message board.

All TV shows, movies, comics are now discussed on tumblr. They also post and reblog gifs and screens from episodes for easy viewing.

Message boards are for old timers, tumblr is the new hotness with today's modern society.

[ABrown]

TFW2005 did an upgrade within the last year. It hasn't gone too bad. It's about 1,000 times better than the mess that they've got going on over at Toonzone.

[CyberCubed]

Toonzone has also been dead for a while. I just started posting random stuff there in the DC section to try and liven it up. :lol:

Every message board or forum I've visited over the last 15 years is now either barren or completely dead. I have no idea what's going on. Even hugely popular sites like IGN don't have anywhere as much activity as they used to.

[snake]

I'm surprised we're as active as we are.

[CyberCubed]

Because this place is filled with old disgruntled 25-30+ year old adults.

All the young teen/kid fans of Nick's TMNT are on tumblr. They post all about the episodes and everything TMNT on tumblr now. Same for a lot of other franchises I follow. It's the only reason I started lurking tumblr at some points.

Forums are for dinosaurs. They are like VHS tapes and tumblr are "DVDs."

[Andrew NDB]

Because this place is filled with old disgruntled 25-30+ year old adults.

All the young teen/kid fans of Nick's TMNT are on tumblr. They post all about the episodes and everything TMNT on tumblr now. Same for a lot of other franchises I follow. It's the only reason I started lurking tumblr at some points.

Forums are for dinosaurs. They are like VHS tapes and tumblr are "DVDs."

Newer versions of vBulletin are dressed up a bit more "modern" sensibilities. You can "Like" threads and connect it to Facebook and such. This board is two core versions in the past. vBulletin 3.0 came out like 10 years ago.

[***First of Two Latin Kings***]

I almost think all the venom spitting keeps this place alive.

[Vegita-San]

I almost think all the venom spitting keeps this place alive.

While that may be sadly true, as we know adults love 'drama'..

I'd be more than happy with LESS activity and LESS venom.

Message boards have gotten far too insane lately with combative personalities. and people are too afraid to deal with them or too nice to get rid of 'em.

I do miss the old days of the internet with more discussion. although, with older properties, I guess alot of the same things keep getting discussed, which may be another reason why people are abandoning message boards for other areas.

as for forum upgrades.. i like the classic look, but I WOULD like an option to like posts. Sometimes a post doesn't require a reply, but it's liked and appreciated. I keep looking for the like option and forgetting it's not on here :).

TFW2005 did an upgrade within the last year. It hasn't gone too bad. It's about 1,000 times better than the mess that they've got going on over at Toonzone.

Toonzone. i forgot about that place. talk about the early days of the internet.

is it still active?

[ABrown]

Toonzone has also been dead for a while. I just started posting random stuff there in the DC section to try and liven it up. :lol:



Toonzone. i forgot about that place. talk about the early days of the internet.
is it still active?

Yeah, Toonzone is pretty much a post apocalyptic barren wasteland these days. But the reason that I don't go there much is cause their system is ALWAYS having problems. They're the perfect example of what can go wrong with a forum upgrade.

[snake]

What exactly went wrong with Toonzone? I don't browse there but I'm curious. I thought it was just an inactive site.

[sdp]

I posted a lot on ToonZone since it was the place to talk about the DCAU and after TT and JLU finished I ventured into other parts. After a few years I was banned for being "antagonistic", which was me just pointing out hiphopcracy of the moderators which they would delete or modify posts to not leave evidence. I was finally permabanned for sarcastically pointing out that their April Fools celebration was just spamming and not funny or a joke.

I kept posting for another year under an anagram of sdp and it took them a year to find out and ban me. :lol: I made a third account but I guess by then the place had already changed since I really didn't use that account anymore and stopped posting. Like a year or two after that I was emailed and told that my permaban had been lifted and to please join the discussions in the new TZ forums. So, I guess they were hurting for users by then since they unbanned me and I'm guessing everyone but that place was already dead, the last few times I've tried going is a huge mess of a site, I can't use the forums because of all the added crap that no one wants to use.

[Vegita-San]

things i learned the hard way. when a place has mods as bad as some of the users you are not fond of, that choose sides and call names just as easily?
Best to avoid contact.....the ONLY place i've been banned, for pointing out that the mods where not doing their jobs, and if they'd just prune members who constantly cause problems, i wouldn't feel the need to defend myself so many times.... was one of those times.

At that point i was ready to leave anyway if the wrong thing happened..so i was rather grateful in the end.... once i got over the witch hunt feeling of it all..took a while since i was there for 7 years with no problems. sigh :)

but sadly lots of places are getting like that now adays, and you can't escape it, which is probably why message boards are going the way of the dodo..

[snake]

The worst board I've ever been on was Jedi Council/TheForce.net.

What a sh*thole. Some of the worst, most uptight mods I've ever seen. It's basically reddit; since no one is allowed to speak their mind, you have this faux-niceness attitude going on and it's annoying as f*ck.

The best forums are the ones with lax or absent mods. Like here!

[Cure]

things i learned the hard way. when a place has mods as bad as some of the users you are not fond of, that choose sides and call names just as easily?
Best to avoid contact.....the ONLY place i've been banned, for pointing out that the mods where not doing their jobs, and if they'd just prune members who constantly cause problems, i wouldn't feel the need to defend myself so many times.... was one of those times.

At that point i was ready to leave anyway if the wrong thing happened..so i was rather grateful in the end.... once i got over the witch hunt feeling of it all..took a while since i was there for 7 years with no problems. sigh :)

but sadly lots of places are getting like that now adays, and you can't escape it, which is probably why message boards are going the way of the dodo..

You need a hobby outside of the internet, man. For real.

[Vegita-San]

Yeah, Toonzone is pretty much a post apocalyptic barren wasteland these days. But the reason that I don't go there much is cause their system is ALWAYS having problems. They're the perfect example of what can go wrong with a forum upgrade.

i'm rather surprised they are still around. they where once the only game in town, now they have competition.

[CyberCubed]

Toonzone used to be a great place to discuss western cartoons especially in the early 2000's. The whole DCAU board was active for all the DC shows and the Justice League and Teen Titans review threads went on for hundreds of replies.

We had TMNT 2k3 review threads there too when the show was airing, and a whole bunch of activity for all of Cartoon Networks shows there.

Toonzone sort of fell off a cliff around 2010, somewhere around that point it stopped being as active and now we're 7 years later. I only browse it to find out news about Young Justice nowadays.

[Prowler]

Some vBulletin forums nowadays have the like giving feature and also a reputation system. If you're suggesting updating the boards to include such features... probably not that great of an idea. The last thing these forums would need now would be tools that make circlejerking even more evident and easier to get away with.

[frank_one]

I use the forum on my phone and I think it is perfect as it is. We're all quite old people here, we don't need social upgrades. The pages have a simple layout and load quickly, that's all we need.
I would not suggest to upgrade to a newer version unless some security problem starts to show up.
And now please get off my lawn :D

[newfan]

I'm happy we have the drome at all and am content using it how it is.
Only on a couple of occasions have wanted to use a 'like' feature, save wasting space replying just cause you liked a comment, that being said the downside is it may discourage actual discussion and also can be used for liking jerky posts.
I don't feel a personal need to link here to social media to here either.

[frank_one]

Only on a couple of occasions have wanted to use a 'like' feature, save wasting space replying just cause you liked a comment, that being said the downside is it may discourage actual discussionI agree. This is a discussion board, we are here to talk. Everything that could prevent us from discussing or disincentivate the discussion should be left out of this place. A Like button is cool, I know, but this is not where it should be, that is not the form of interaction we really need here.

[Zulithe]

an update would breathe new life into the forum, i've seen a lot of boards switch to XenForo (which is awesome) and people love it, and a lot more threads and discussions have been happening after the update.

I'd love to see XenForo here. Very modern, tons of features and extension options.

Also it looks really good on mobile. the drome is pretty bad on mobile... you can manage, but once you've seen some of what the newer forum software can do and how much better it works on phones and tablets, it's hard to go back.

see for yourself... two popular examples would be neogaf and resetera (regardless of if you like those communities or not, I'm talking specifically about the forum software)

[Vegita-San]

i'd rather see some board organization than an upgrade at this point.

for example, I Think that we can combine certain areas into one section. TMNT Merchandise can be all one area. you don't need separate sections for games and toys anymore.

Eliminate some of the lesser used areas. Make Fan art one whole section.
get rid of some general section areas like video games...collectibles, art and music, and forum games.

stuff like tmnt merchandise, fan art, and 'everything else' should be under one tab to make it look a little more organized. if things where condensed a little more, it might make it less confusing for newer people. and other areas would get more traction that might be forgotten about.

[Wesley]

I'm happy we have the drome at all and am content using it how it is.
Only on a couple of occasions have wanted to use a 'like' feature, save wasting space replying just cause you liked a comment, that being said the downside is it may discourage actual discussion and also can be used for liking jerky posts.
I don't feel a personal need to link here to social media to here either.

Agreed. The drome is perfect the way it is imo.

[Metalwolf]

Agreed. The drome is perfect the way it is imo.

Me too. I'd rather have a comment saying why someone liked a post, then have several 'likes' that wouldn't really add any substance at all. At least with a reply you can sometimes find something in it (even a misinformed opinion!) to keep the conversation rolling, but with 'likes' there isn't anything to comment on, only knowing that just some people like it.

Also I've seen conversations drop on other forums once the 'like' system is installed. No longer is a particular opinion debated or changed through long detailed posts by a bunch of other people, the person only sees a bunch of likes on 'popular' posts and not his own, and stops bothering to try arguing his point because by now it's a popularity contest.

[Vegita-San]

sometimes a post is so basic, it doens't need a response, but a like will do. so, I can see the appeal of that. but, yeah. likes might actually cut down on conversation a bit and make this place even more desolate.

[Leo656]

I've had many private conversations with people here in which they've confided in me that they actively avoid posting because they don't want to be attacked or shouted down. As I've said elsewhere, "Let People Enjoy Things" is only a mantra in this place when the majority of people agree with you. Otherwise it's a dogpile.

Likes or Votes or whatever would only make things even worse. Me, I always know that whatever I say is going to be the polar opposite of 99% of the people here, whether it's about politics or Crunchy vs. Puffy Cheeze Doodles, but some people don't take the casual hostility that passes for "normal" around here very well at all. I know this because they tell me often.

There's already a lot of social-climbing and circle-jerking going on that makes people stifle themselves more than they should. We don't need anything to add to it.

[Prowler]

I've had many private conversations with people here in which they've confided in me that they actively avoid posting because they don't want to be attacked or shouted down. As I've said elsewhere, "Let People Enjoy Things" is only a mantra in this place when the majority of people agree with you. Otherwise it's a dogpile.

Likes or Votes or whatever would only make things even worse. Me, I always know that whatever I say is going to be the polar opposite of 99% of the people here, whether it's about politics or Crunchy vs. Puffy Cheeze Doodles, but some people don't take the casual hostility that passes for "normal" around here very well at all. I know this because they tell me often.

There's already a lot of social-climbing and circle-jerking going on that makes people stifle themselves more than they should. We don't need anything to add to it.
Or worse. Upvotes and downvotes like in reddit. If your post on a reddit thread gets downvoted it will go to the bottom of them page and people will have to click on it in order to view it. You'd think it's a good mechanism to silence trolls... but people use the feature in order to simply downvote people they disagree with.

[Leo656]

Now I understand why some want this to be a feature. Especially whenever I show up again. :lol:

[IndigoErth]

Yeah, sometimes I wish I could give someone thumbs up, but agree that having an up/down vote system is inviting abuse of it. Where anything along those lines ever a thing, I'd much rather simply a kudos points system (TMNT themed of course) than a vote system with two options.

That said, the forum is fine the way it is imo, and having an older computer and browser it's an appreciated lighter load than so many sites these days that are bogged down with so much nonsense that make them slow loading.