Upgrade Forum Software - Poll!

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LISTEN TO US! WE WANT A BETTER SOFTWARE, NOW!

Wrong Planet is a very popular Autism & Aspie site, and it's a good one. It's estimated to be worth around 30K on websiteoutlook.com. Wrong Planet makes about 40 dollars of adsense a day, 40 dollars a day is lots, plus donations. (Virutal Private Servers are usually 300 dollars per a month, they can afford it). ANYWAY. I believe that this forum COULD ATLEAST be upgraded to the newest phpBB3 software, at least, vBulletin or IPB is a good option too.

I'm just wondering, or is everyone still obessed about phpBB2 still?:P

PS. I don't like the before and after pics of those people, my mum is looking at my weird O_o

Last edited by Anicho on 15 Aug 2009, 6:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

Have you ever tried to upgrade a PHP-integrated site to a new forum package? I have. It sucks. PHPNuke does not work properly with phpBB3. He'd basically have to rebuild the entire site from scratch. There's a reason it hasn't been upgraded yet.

I've converted many forum software's databases before - not easy, but it is worth it in the end, for you and your members.
phpBB2 to 3, it's easy, trust me, it's the same forum software.
I'd think phpBB2 to vBulletin WOULD be hard.

Bump.

Even after the recent server hardware upgrade, WP has been a bit sluggish. If your numbers are accurate, I see no reason why WP shouldn't upgrade to the latest and greatest. Even if it means as much as a couple days of downtime while everything is getting back up, it would be worth it.

Now, curiosity compels me- are the cited numbers accurate? $40/day seems rather high for ad revenue, especially when so many block ads or just don't click on them.

It seems not. I entered the details of a site with zero ad revenue, and very little traffic. Websiteoutlook returned a value of $1200 with ad revenue of around $2 a day. In fairness, they do point out that the system they use has limitations.

Are you volunteering?


So if the site with no traffic and no ad revenue (and therefore very little value) comes back with an ad revenue of $2 and value of $1200 on website outlook the percentage of difference, is, um, infinite. If I could put together something that made even $2 a day, I might keep my site up.

I would do it, if I was offered. I got do backups incase things go to the unthinkable.
Alex would probably prefer a professional do it though.

I own a vBulletin License - and trust me, it's cheap. It's only 160 dollars and it's worth it, you get heaps of mods, etc. Plus, you get free software to convert to vBulletin from phpBB2.

Alex isn't struggling with WrongPlanet, look at the ads, I'm blinded in them, there's like one, two, three, four banner ads, too many. Yet he still thinks hes struggles, maybe in real life? But just LOOK! just LOOK

426 members.
Registerd: 28643... thats heaps of revenue.

Hmm.. here's the deal Alex, if you are seriously struggling, I'll donate my vB license to WP, all you need is a 20USD support renew for the latest version, and I'll transfer it directly to you

No it's not. Most of those are not legit members- I think there are ten, twelve thousand or so members with zero posts. Many of the others are sock puppet, troll, banned, or duplicate accounts. And despite my high post count, Alex has zero revenue from me as I never click ads- in fact, I don't even see ads on WP because I use a Firefox extension to block them. I suspect many other posters are the same- seriously, who clicks on those scam ads at all?

If you want to offer help or a donation, you should probably PM Alex directly as I don't know how closely he watches this forum. But it's doubtful whether he would be interested in such a radical change as switching from phpBB2 to vBulletin.

What definition are you using of "legit members"? Do you consider someone as not being a member if they chose not to post public forum messages? I was a member for about eight months before I made a post. I don't think I'm unique... indeed, I know of one member who took considerably longer, before posting.

Just under 2.5% of the 28,000 members are banned... and the majority of those have been, I think, spammers. There are very few duplicate accounts.

Actively posting members. Meaning not banned, and actually visit the site. Lurkers occupy a bit of a grey zone I suppose, but there are a large number of members who made a couple posts and then left, or perhaps registered for an account and never used it. I would not consider those to realistically be members.


Some people lurk before becoming members. I was a lurker here for quite some time before I started posting. I registered when I decided to start posting. But it is a web forum; it hardly seems that a passive lurker who makes no posts is actually a member.


It's rather hard to know for certain how many duplicates there are, but out of 28,000 it is probably not a huge percentage.

I think it's pretty well-known that the 28,650 member count I currently see at the left of my screen is grossly inflated... we don't have nearly that many posters here.

Your definition of "member" is your definition of member.

Your definition of "grossly inflated" is presumably equally strange.

Would you care to say who you think has typed the 2.3 million posts? (Or is that another "grossly inflated" figure?)

A member of an online forum would be someone who posts there, yes?


Not really. There are thousands of people who signed up for an account and never used it, and likewise there are a great many who posted for a while and then left the site.


I don't contest that number. If 10,000 members (under 35% of the listed number of members) averaged 230 posts each, that would account for the number of posts. And of course, many members have left the site, but their accounts are never deleted. I wouldn't consider someone who posted a couple times when the site first started and then never came back to still be a member.

Anyways, we're off topic. I should have been clearer by saying "active members" as I don't think you would even try to pretend that we have anywhere near 28,683 active members.

I pretend nothing. You pretend that whenever you say "member", you mean "active member". If you were to say "active member", and provide a clear definition of what you mean by an "active member", then you could make comments about your estimate of the number of "active members" - a figure that is not reported by WP.

I don't think he was pretending to mean active member when he said member, since he was responding to the statement that the number of registered members should yield a large revenue. Whatever the reasons for registered members not being active, only members who visit the site can be taken into account in reference to ad revenue. What Orwell was explaining was that the number of registered members are not the number of people viewing the ads on the site. It looks to me like he just used the wrong word by saying "legit members" instead of saying "active members" to begin with.

i moderate/administrate on a few boards that are phpbb based and all (i think) are using phpbb3 version, alex, make it easier on yourself and GET PHPBB3, i just dont see the point in keeping an old version that may have some less features and security holes/flaws in it, i know WP is popular but keeping it up to date and with the necessary snap in's may help darw attention too as well. if its about the graphics (blue and green earth for the read/unread posts or the favicon thing, those things can be turned on or off at admin's choice on server end the settings for the phpbb application on server,

if its about the report posting feature, that too can be set on or off with the admin contorl panel.
about the legit memebers thing, i am in process of getting owner of the board i moderate to get a snap-in to help stop or cut down on the spambots from joining, dropping their spam and abandoning the accounts.