Forum Announcement

I've found that, since this announcement, if I comment on a post once I click the post reply button, my post gets posted and I get logged out.

I use the old green version too as i like it better

Hi everyone!

I've tried to answer what looks like the most asked questions you've posted - hopefully this should help clear up some of the things that you're all wondering! :beer:

• “The Forum doesn’t seem broken to me, why change?”
o The truth is that the Forum is broken, even if much of it is on the back end out of sight. Some things are visible to everyone like search being less than efficient, the day light savings controls, the recent site crashes and so on. The code that runs things isn’t out of the box: it’s been added to by a lot of developers over time to get all the unique things we have which on other platforms are now “standard”. This includes our Comping tick and a lot of things that made us unique when we implemented them. As time has passed browsers and server technology have changed and more and more custom “hacks” have broken. We’re at a point where we simply cannot fix any problems.

• “Can we keep the green version/layout?”
o Unfortunately we’re turning off vBulletin when we move over, but we’re working incredibly hard on taking the best bits with us from both versions into the new Forum. The look and the design of the forum will definitely be influenced by our Fab Forumite Feature Testing Group.

• “If you’re not keeping the Green/Blue looks what ARE you doing?”
o As far as possible we’re trying to do a “lift and shift” of the functionality we currently have and making it look as similar as we reasonably can. There will be some changes, but we are hoping you will agree those turn out to be improvements.

• “Are you going to make the new Forum all about mobile?”
o We’ve heard the rumours and can confirm they’re NOT true! Our clever design folks are working on the desktop design first and foremost, but yes the new Forum will be mobile friendly. That’s because tech has moved on and most are now created so they work on both and it won’t be to the detriment of the Desktop experience.

• “What Forum are you moving to? Can it cope with us?”
o We are moving to a platform called Vanilla. After a lot of technical meetings, long nights with our product team looking at all the options this was the best software to meet our needs. We had very strong criteria of security, stability, support availability, uptime, functionality, design flexibility and being very blunt cost is also a consideration. This was certainly not the cheap option, but it was the best across most of our requirements and it was not a choice made in a rush, far from it we promise!
And yes, they can cope with our volumes and back catalogue of posts We won’t be the largest Forum hosted by them, although I have a feeling we are heading for “biggest challenge” title quite quickly!

• “Stop allowing AE’s!”
o All this new technology should make things easier for the Forum Team and includes new tools to allow us to address AE’s and rule breaking. Much of what is new will be behind the scenes to help us look after the Forums. We’re trying to keep the front end as similar as we can.

• “Please can we have/can you change/improve this:”
o From day 1, when we go live, we are aiming for things to look as like for like as we can. There WILL be some changes to functionality, but we are trying to keep them to a minimum on the front end that you guys see. The Fab Forumite Feature Testing Group will be key over the next few months to this. When we go live we will continue to take feedback from the community and we will be able to make tweaks thanks to the new technology.

• “This is just to help you monetize the Forum isn’t it?”
o Just to be clear – no.
The Forums have always been provided free to our users with no advertising. Whilst we do use skimlinks they in no way come close to covering even a fraction of the cost of running or hosting the Forums (like not even SLIGHTLY ).
MSE operates under a VERY strict Editorial Code set out by Martin many years ago and we are very clear about how we are financed. It's all here: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/site/moneysavingexpert-finance/
We are investing a really significant amount of money in future proofing the Forum for you. We’re doing that because we passionately believe the forum and the community lies at the core of MSE.



Hope this helps! Have a great Weekend!

MSE Tine

AndyCF wrote: »

There's nothing actually wrong with VB3 to be blunt about it. V5 is pointless and V4 is a step 'sideways'

XF is a good alternative. WBB (latest one) is quite reasonable too. Both of these are up to date, secure, and relatively easy to use for both the end user and the administrators as well.

MSE_Tine wrote: »

We are moving to a platform called Vanilla.

Andy - what's Vanilla like?