And we're back! Forum disruption debrief and a few questions for you

As you may have noticed, the forums were shut down for the past day or so due to the vBulletin issue recently identified. We decided this was the best course of action since it was unclear initially what the vulnerability was and who was affected. As you all know, we take security very seriously, and we didn’t want to jeopardize anyone’s information.

The problem ultimately ended up being caused by some insecure installations on one of vBulletin’s own test servers, and the fix was simply to update vBulletin to the most recent 4.x release and delete the install directory. That has been done, and there’s no evidence of any data compromise for this forum. As you’ll notice, Trevor hasn’t applied all his design magic to the new code yet, but he’ll be updating it in the days to come; we didn’t want to delay forum access while he’s working on it.

This whole issue, however, has brought up a couple questions that we want your feedback on.

#1: Is a forum the best tool for the job?

Forums certainly provide a straightforward and easily-navigable way to ask/answer questions and generally converse about different topics. However, there are other tools out there these days that satisfy similar goals. Things like Reddit, Quora, Stack Exchange, etc, offer a more interactive and social way to provide Q&A functionality and generally build community. They also have the benefit of being much more shareable, making it easier to build out and grow a community.

Which all leads to the next question… #2: If we were to move to another community tool, what would it be? Or perhaps what would they be?

For example, would an InterWorx subreddit satisfy your needs as a user? In your eyes, what would the pros and cons be? Or do forums remain the best way to go?

Looking forward to your feedback :slight_smile:

Hi Brett

You guys rock and I appreciate the amount of work involved to check if there has been intrusion.

I personally like forum, for speed and quickness, ease of use and quickness to find search answers but perhaps I’m getting old

I’m not to sure what the other methods are and I’ll have a look, but it maybe a while before I post my thoughts, I’m not to old to learn I hope, but I’m looking forward to other forum users input about their preference, and to see if there is a clear winner.

In any event, interworx needs to be congratulated on their actions to protect their community.

Many thanks

John

Brett, the forums are amazing and very helpful to the user and easy to navigate for answers. Oh and to talk with you guys and the community.

I would say though if you was to move to something maybe IPB or Xenforo would be better as VBulletin is known for bad coding practices. And I’m missing his skin already :(.

I have experience with stack exchange like systems, ‘get satisfaction’, reddit, etc. And forum remain the best solution.

If you look at YOOtheme (Support), issues are often missed or overlooked, Forums remain the easiest tools to navigate, though you could always look in to EasyDiscuss, as they have the ease of search like stack exchange, as well as the navigation of a traditional forum. Their other products like EasySocial, kommento, EasyBlog might also be of interest.
I would be willing to offer my time, services, and expertise in joomla, and StackIdeas products (mainly EasyBlog and Kommento, but it translates to the rest as well), to get something up and running together with Trevor.

A joomla based system will also let you interconnect with other systems like billing (Invoice Manager),Subscription systems (AkSubs, RSMembership), ticket management (ATS, RSTicket).

One of the ticket systems that I didn’t mention with the others is OTRS. It’s a separate system, with a bridge available for joomla. OTRS is an Open Source, ITIL compliant ticket system. I have used it in the past, and It would satisfy even your most advanced requirements. While still letting you present the frontend in a uniform manner to the end user.

Now, I understand that you might be reluctant to gather all the systems under one roof, due to fault tolerance. But there are ways to make it possible, while still lowering the maintenance labour from your current setup.

Might have gone a bit off topic from your original question, but this is something that I have been thinking about for a long time with your site, and I have previously discussed it privately with Trevor.

Very interesting – thanks for all your input so far!

I’m not a member of Reddit, Quora or Stack Exchange… So my preference would be to keep the same format with vBulletin. However, I’m one of vBulletin’s earliest and longest-time customers as well, so I might be leaning towards vB as it’s most familiar to me.

[QUOTE=Evanion;24793]
Might have gone a bit off topic from your original question, but this is something that I have been thinking about for a long time with your site, and I have previously discussed it privately with Trevor.[/QUOTE]
You’re a wise man, Evanion. It’s good to have you around for software advice :slight_smile: When we decide to make a move, I’ll look you up for suggestions :smiley:

Yeah, I like forums as well. We updated to the latest 4 and we’re sticking here for now. 5 got terrible reviews, and PHPBB would just be a lot of work to get it to look and work exactly how we have our current forums. :slight_smile:

I re-interworx-ized them a bit, and if any of you find any bugs, hit me up :smiley:

I think forum is still a good community tool, and I like this community a lot (we have friendly developers and helpful members!), please don’t take it away! I personally use xenForo for my forum, xenForo is lightning fast and have a responsive design, simple enough for Interworx’s community, maybe you guys can consider it. Don’t change the forum to other tool :frowning:

Hi

I hope you don’t mind but I’ve been thinking about this, and to be honest, I think I may surprise you a little.

I am thinking, that as VB4 is working as expected, and the insecurity which was notified has been patched/fixed/doesn’t apply (albeit it didn’t apply to IW VB4), I think honestly, I would prefer efforts to be not diverted away from IW development, and simpy leave VB4 as the forum for the next few years.

There are a few reasons for thinking this are as follows:

Resources are better served to develope IW further
VB4 working
Changes which may apply within a few Years to SEO etc…

I will though, as I have not had a lot of time, still look at the suggestions for other forum software, but Xenforo, I know would be my choice if changing, but that may change, and the reason for this is, very good at stopping bots etc from registering, use of the Honeypot listings, good seo etc built in, speed, searchability etc and ofcourse, it is developed by the original VB team.

I hope you don’t mind my thoughts

Many thanks

John

:smiley: Well put, d2.

Did you see some of the mouseover tooltips I added? Mouse over your experience bar or an icon.

Yeah, seems me you and d2 are on the same page.

PS: I saw you sticking up for us on WebHosting Forums, Shyuan. You’re the man!!!

I was having a bad day, and I saw you saying nice things about us on there and It made me really happy!
<3

Don’t worry. We won’t change them anytime soon. and xenForo looks sweet :smiley:

[QUOTE=IWorx-Trevor;24845]Yeah, seems me you and d2 are on the same page.

PS: I saw you sticking up for us on WebHosting Forums, Shyuan. You’re the man!!!

I was having a bad day, and I saw you saying nice things about us on there and It made me really happy!
<3
[/QUOTE]
No problem Trevor, glad that it made your day! :stuck_out_tongue: Whenever I see “Interworx” on WHT’s RSS feed, I will take a look and see what they say. (Only if we are talking about the same thread :P) I really dislike people using the words “horrible” and “worst ever”. No matter how bad a piece of software is, there’s still efforts that have been put into it. What’s more Interworx is a good software which doesn’t even deserve it. :mad: Also, we are not “horrible” Interworx users. :eek:

Although xenForo can be great, I do like all the nice touches and modifications you’ve done to IW forum and we can of course stick to it if that’s what majority wants and if there’s no planning in converting to xF! Besides, while I do agree with John that it would be better off spending time on IW development, I would still love to see those modifications again. :slight_smile:

Hi Guys

I hope you don’t mind, I too miss the mods, which kept it clean looking.

Also, I would like to clarify re Interwrox Development, I was not inferring that this was been delayed, it was just a point so as not to place forum above development. Even now, as I read this it sounds more confusing about what I am trying to express, so I hope you understand, and I have only added this as it is an open form, so I just wanted to clarify.

Off Topic, I think I have found the post you both refer to, and my personal view is, as the poster did not quantify their reasons for stating their opinion, I think any reasonable person would either make their own mind after looking at Interworx, which is good, as it should drive more traffic to you, particularly with Shyuan reply.

I do like the mouse overs and the autosave feature when typing, you guys rock

Many thanks

John

[QUOTE=d2d4j;24848]
Also, I would like to clarify re Interwrox Development, I was not inferring that this was been delayed, it was just a point so as not to place forum above development. Even now, as I read this it sounds more confusing about what I am trying to express, so I hope you understand, and I have only added this as it is an open form, so I just wanted to clarify.[/QUOTE]
No worries John, I understand well your meaning even before you explained it. :stuck_out_tongue:

Now this is what I like to see:

bro.png

Hi Mr T

Haha you guys rock, cheered me up thanks

Many thanks

John

Hahaha! That picture is so weird… But thanks! :stuck_out_tongue:

Haha yes, I’m just trying work out if that makes Mr T Mr Crabs haha what’s worst is, we all know the program haha