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This topic has moved here: Subject: Different forum software?
  • Subject: Different forum software?
Subject: Different forum software?

RIP Halo 2.

I've noticed recently that the software driving this forum is well... weak. We have no desperately needed search feature, limited option, bad text formatting, and overall it's kind of lackluster. I propose either phpBB or Invision. Both are very adaptable easy to use boards driven by php. Sure, they'll take a while to install and implement, but I'm seeing that it could even save time in the long run. And it seems you guys favor Active Server Protocol around here, but hey, maybe it's time to move up to PHP. Unless MS has an iron hold on you guys running the site, haha ;P

Also, I've noticed the site performs very poorly on non-IE browsers on mid and low range processors. Might want to see what's causing it - I think it has somehting to do with the way the bottom and top bars are drawn over the page.

EDIT: Sorry you guys had to move it. The descriptions for the two forums were kinda vague and I wasn't sure where to post. I didn't know if Seventh Column applied specifically to that Bungie group or whatever.

[Edited on 7/22/2006]

  • 07.22.2006 9:11 PM PDT
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The Marty Army

Ah, look at the lonely people...

I agree, but, the only thing we'd really get if they switched to PHP or Invision Power Board is search. Colors wouldn't be allowed, for fear of people impersonating moderators with the white text, images wouldn't be allowed for bandwidth, and the like. So, we'd have Bungie.net on different software, nothing more.

  • 07.22.2006 9:28 PM PDT
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They say, that certain features are coming soon right? Well its been along time and to be honest I agree with you that it is weak in regards to the lack of a search, but nothing else really since apart from that I think its quite good. I understand that there are alot of users here (Something like 1.9 Million accounts, so there would be alot of maintenance) but it is taking a bit long for a search. That should've been something that was implemented at the start of the new site. Perhaps Achronos could come and say why it takes so long,(The technical difficulties of it) then we would understand :) (Forgive my ignorance)

[Edited on 7/22/2006]

  • 07.22.2006 9:28 PM PDT

"I pledge to punch all switches, to never shoot where I could use grenades, to admit the existence of no level except Total Carnage, to never use caps lock as my "run" key, and to never, ever, leave a single BoB alive."

2B || !2B - Why don't you look Inside the Machine?

Just to let you Achronos has a lot more experience and knowledge about Bungie.net than you do. No offense. Also, I use IE on a low grade processor, and I find the browsing speeds just fine. I have a Pentium III processor, the computer is 6 years old. It runs perfectly.

An IdealBB or PHP board doesn't have enough power that Bungie could use to sustaing B.net. There are over 1.9 million registered users, half of which log-in and post thread/replies everyday. And the fact is that Achronos customized most of Bungie.net after they bought the software from Ideal Sciences anyways. So just let the professionals who are certified to do their job...

*I hope I didn't offend you...I didn't mean it if I did*

  • 07.22.2006 9:29 PM PDT

I hate everything, but it's not my fault.

Move up to phpBB or Invision? You know, those are free forum software, which makes them worse than our current software, which was to a large extent custom built by the Ideal Science team. This website has over 1,800,000 members and over 90,000 forums (each chapter has its own forum). Crappy free software like phpBB would crumble to the ground in seconds.

  • 07.22.2006 9:29 PM PDT

"I pledge to punch all switches, to never shoot where I could use grenades, to admit the existence of no level except Total Carnage, to never use caps lock as my "run" key, and to never, ever, leave a single BoB alive."

2B || !2B - Why don't you look Inside the Machine?

Posted by: Ghandi 2
Move up to phpBB or Invision? You know, those are free forum software, which makes them worse than our current software, which was to a large extent custom built by the Ideal Science team. This website has over 1,800,000 members and over 90,000 forums (each chapter has its own forum). Crappy free software like phpBB would crumble to the ground in seconds.


I like the way you put it, even though I said the same thing. Here lets summarize:

phpBB will crash B.net because it is < Ideal Science's manually developed software in quality and the ability to handle the vastness of B.net

  • 07.22.2006 9:33 PM PDT

RIP Halo 2.

Posted by: Zee JollyRoger
Just to let you Achronos has a lot more experience and knowledge about Bungie.net than you do. No offense. Also, I use IE on a low grade processor, and I find the browsing speeds just fine. I have a Pentium III processor, the computer is 6 years old. It runs perfectly.

There's no doubt in my mind that a paid web administrator who is significantly older than me and went to school for this knows a hell of a lot more than a 16 year old who dabbles in web and networking.

Note that I said non-IE browsers. I don't touch that insecure and unfeatured junk, I'm all about Firefox. I've tried Opera, Firefox, and even Netscape on my 500MHz P3 - and only IE can render the site smoothly. I think it's kind of unfair to make code that is centered around IE, most used or not (darn fools are happy with what get packaged into Windows).

I've seen some BIG Invision forums. I mean big. I'm sure there's a way to pull it off. I've also seen Invision to be pretty steady when coupled with mySQL on Apache 2.1 on a UNIX Server. Not this kind fo load, but I was impressed.

I bet we could gain colors and stuff, as I suspect the Mods would all get their custom titles and logos and whatnot that would be distinguishable enough. And I bet it'd be possible to reserve one color just for them.

Anyhoo, I'm curious as to learn for myself what the reasons for this not being done are.

  • 07.22.2006 9:39 PM PDT
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Posted by: IIDWells55XII
Posted by: Zee JollyRoger
Just to let you Achronos has a lot more experience and knowledge about Bungie.net than you do. No offense. Also, I use IE on a low grade processor, and I find the browsing speeds just fine. I have a Pentium III processor, the computer is 6 years old. It runs perfectly.

There's no doubt in my mind that a paid web administrator who is significantly older than me and went to school for this knows a hell of a lot more than a 16 year old who dabbles in web and networking.
[Sniped]
Anyhoo, I'm curious as to learn for myself what the reasons for this not being done are.


I'm curious aswell, I'm sure we will get a answer :)

  • 07.22.2006 9:41 PM PDT

"I pledge to punch all switches, to never shoot where I could use grenades, to admit the existence of no level except Total Carnage, to never use caps lock as my "run" key, and to never, ever, leave a single BoB alive."

2B || !2B - Why don't you look Inside the Machine?

Posted by: IIDWells55XII
Posted by: Zee JollyRoger
Just to let you Achronos has a lot more experience and knowledge about Bungie.net than you do. No offense. Also, I use IE on a low grade processor, and I find the browsing speeds just fine. I have a Pentium III processor, the computer is 6 years old. It runs perfectly.[/quote]
There's no doubt in my mind that a paid web administrator who is significantly older than me and went to school for this knows a hell of a lot more than a 16 year old who dabbles in web and networking.


Anyhoo, I'm curious as to learn for myself what the reasons for this not being done are.


I am sorry, I thought you mean IE was slow. My eyes are poor at night, and it 1 AM here in Florida.

But Achronos does things and reason behind them that he doesn't want to share or doesn't feel that he need to share with us sometimes. Granted that in most cases he comes into a thread, gives us an answer, and then leaves. I don't know why he does things...but he has a reason and purpose to do them. Maybe he just likes this way of doing the site because it is the easiest for him to use and update? I am not sure...

I know there are huge InvisionBoards...but Bungie.net is a more special pearl than other Forums. I can't really delve to more into this because I am not qualified and I don't want to make a fool of myself.

If you want a much more precise answer...why don't you PM Achronos and ask him? I mean he does reply to them as long as they are not ignorant I would assume. He has replied to my friend's several times. That would be the best course of action in my opinion...

[Edited on 7/22/2006]

  • 07.22.2006 9:55 PM PDT
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Posted by: Zee JollyRoger
Posted by: IIDWells55XII
Posted by: Zee JollyRoger
Just to let you Achronos has a lot more experience and knowledge about Bungie.net than you do. No offense. Also, I use IE on a low grade processor, and I find the browsing speeds just fine. I have a Pentium III processor, the computer is 6 years old. It runs perfectly.[/quote]
There's no doubt in my mind that a paid web administrator who is significantly older than me and went to school for this knows a hell of a lot more than a 16 year old who dabbles in web and networking.


Anyhoo, I'm curious as to learn for myself what the reasons for this not being done are.

[sniped]
If you want a much more precise answer...why don't you PM Achronos and ask him? I mean he does reply to them as long as they are not ignorant I would assume. He has replied to my friend's several times. That would be the best course of action in my opinion...


Well perhaps a thread is better because its more than just one person who is curious.

  • 07.22.2006 9:59 PM PDT

"I pledge to punch all switches, to never shoot where I could use grenades, to admit the existence of no level except Total Carnage, to never use caps lock as my "run" key, and to never, ever, leave a single BoB alive."

2B || !2B - Why don't you look Inside the Machine?

You are right Blasphemy...well I am sure Achronos will address this as he see fit. I am done trying to help where I am not qualified. It isn't because I don't want to, it is because I honestly can't.

  • 07.22.2006 10:10 PM PDT
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Posted by: Zee JollyRoger
You are right Blasphemy...well I am sure Achronos will address this as he see fit. I am done trying to help where I am not qualified. It isn't because I don't want to, it is because I honestly can't.


All good, now we wait :)

  • 07.22.2006 10:11 PM PDT
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Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell, / Buried alive;
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Who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong / And dare not speak.

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Posted by: Achronos
The IdealScience software we have is not something you can buy - we paid them to develop forum software for us. They then used this base to develop their current ASP.NET forum product they sell to others.

We worked very closely with them, and I have made numerous changes to the source code of the system to make it work with our account, content, security, and rendering systems (among other things).

Most likely, what you saw was some CSS foul up that either scaled the images down or caused your browser to not be able to load the images. In that case, your web browser displayed the text version of things. If it happens again, try and send a screenshot and some reproducible steps to bnetbugs@microsoft.com.


This quote isn't as detailed as I had hoped it would be, but I think it works. Basically, they can't just switch over to different software. The Ideal Science we use is stronger than any free forum software you've used on other sites.

Someone else brought up the fact that any software they use would have to be able to support the thousands of group forums that are hosted on b.net. The workload for this site is immense. Anything that was used would have to be modified severly. It doesn't make much sense to do that when we already have one that works great, at least in my opinion.

EDIT: I don't like to wait. ;)

[Edited on 7/22/2006]

  • 07.22.2006 10:14 PM PDT

§NiNjA§ ╪D e L i V e R a N c E╪
No cake for the impurator
___.............._______/```````````````:::--..
| ««,-§§. ____:.______ __' __'__' _ _ _ \=
|............... ||7 ......//--'---,,, ,,, ,,, ,,, ,,, /=
`-.,._._._..||__ //

It would be neat if Bungie messed around and tested with new software for B.net.

  • 07.22.2006 10:37 PM PDT

RIP Halo 2.

Shame there's so much tiem and effort behind revamping a website - too much for one guy for sure. I think the site looks a bit dated - I say move onto the world of php and a new layout, the site seems a bit dated to be coming from such a hi tech studio.

  • 07.22.2006 10:45 PM PDT
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This may or may not have been mentioned in this thread already, but I think another big deal about just switching forum software lies in the databases and all the information they hold.

That's a lot of stuff to just lose simply by switching to another forum system that may not even work out too great for the community it's meant for. It seems like a rather large risk.

Now I don't know too much about database transfering, but I don't think a DB being transfered from an Ideal Science forum system to an Invision Power Board or PHPBB system is going to work very well, if at all.

Besides... the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" always comes into play for things like this. Sure there's a few bugs here and there, but if you look at how much this particular system has been customized and worked on, you'd realize that it still seems to serve its purpose fine... bugs and all.

[Edited on 7/22/2006]

  • 07.22.2006 10:50 PM PDT
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Posted by: Tazmaniandude
This may or may not have been mentioned in this thread already, but I think another big deal about just switching forum software lies in the databases and all the information they hold.

That's a lot of stuff to just lose simply by switching to another forum system that may not even work out too great for the community it's meant for. It seems like a rather large risk.

Now I don't know too much about database transfering, but I don't think a DB being transfered from an Ideal Science forum system to an Invision Power Board or PHPBB system is going to work very well, if at all.

Besides... the old saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" always comes into play for things like this. Sure there's a few bugs here and there, but if you look at how much this particular system has been customized and worked on, you'd realize that it still seems to serve its purpose fine... bugs and all.


Somewhat agreed, add a search and get rid of the "link bug" when editing posts and Blasphemy would be ever so happy :)

  • 07.22.2006 11:17 PM PDT
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I love this forum, its so clear and easy to read, use.

I think it puts every other forum to shame.

  • 07.23.2006 10:42 AM PDT

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Visit us and check out our games at Sandswept.net!

~~Pardon Our Dust.~~

Eh, I personally love the current Bungie.net. It's like no other forum out there.

And the search feature works fine for me.. I'm not sure why everyone has so much trouble with it.

  • 09.21.2006 9:57 AM PDT

-S

This thread is two months old. There was no reason to resurrect it.

  • 09.21.2006 10:02 AM PDT