Is anyone experiencing broken links or any other strange problems on the WorldWorks site?

I've had some real headaches with my host lately and I am considering moving WorldWorks to a new server. If you are having problems with the site please let me know in this thread. Thanks  ;D

The link buttons on the front page randomly disappear on me. I find I have to refresh periodically.

Accessing the forums have taken MUCH longer than normal lately

I finally found a java bug that was causing the broken links issue. It was sitting nicely hidden in the navigation bar on the Chunky Dungeons page. What really sucks about this is that the site problems coincided almost exactly with my press release on TMP.

Long story short is that there are likely a few new visitors who think we don’t know what we’re doing  :P . Oh well, roll with the punches

I've also noticed the forums being almost unreadably slow recently. Can't say as I've had any problems with the WWG homepage recently, though I haven't poked into it in depth since the week it went up.

 D

Yes, the forum has been really slow lately. This is has to do with two issues. The server I'm currently with is fraught with problems (I'll be moving soon) and the message board software I’m using is outdated. Unfortunately at some point in the near future I’m going to have to upgrade the message board software. I say unfortunately because it’s a monumental pain in the butt to move all of the topics and have users re-register. A task I'm not looking forward too. Anyone tech heads out there have any suggestions that would help make the task easier?

Do you know what message board software you're moving to? Knowing that would make it easier to know what you're up against. As you've said, migrations can be a pain.

If you don't already have a new software in mind (or heck, even if you think you do), check out phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/). Very similar to YaBB, only better/faster/stronger/etc. I'm not sure if there is a YaBB converter available or not.

Whatever you choose, moving your users over will probably be the easiest part of the conversion, except possibly for passwords, depending on how yaBB stores passwords, and for custom permissions. The real pain is in moving topics and messages, then making sure they're all in the right forums, they retain their formatting and all that good stuff (major ick). A pre-built converter would be really nice for that, and save you a tremendous amount of work, so if you're intent on migrating your current archive of topics/messages, definitely check to see if your new software has any converters written.

(If no automated converters are available and you find the schemas of your MB databases are just too different to convert it yourself, a low tech, brute force - but effective - way to do this kind of migration is to disable the read functions on the current message board, launch the new one with a link back to the old "archive", and each day make a point to move over a few messages, one by one. Again, ick, but at least the archive remains available for everyone.)

phpBB is probably your best bet.  Not to mention it looks better with Mozilla!   ;D


Hopefully you can keep the post counts.  I wouldn't want to lose my Modelsmith status.  ;)

Thank you everyone for the advice! PHPBB sounds like the one to go with and many servers offer it bundled with their service. I've heard that there are Yabb to PHPBB converters but I'm worried that they wont work with this old version of Yabb SP 1.1 . I'll have to dig deeper. Thanks again.

For me the biggest problem with the message boards are the backgrounds - it takes a long time to load, and because of the white text until the background is loaded the text is unreadable. (And by slow I mean load times of thirty seconds or mor. Going to another tab and waiting simply delays the matter, it syill takes a while of looking at the screen before the background is placed.)

The Auld Grump

It is much, much faster without the background!

The Auld Grump

The only thing I've noticed is my custom avatar has gotten stretched to fit the "frame."

Yeah, I thought Zeke (that's correct, right?) was looking a little 'thin in the face' of late

My biggest issue with moving to a new message board? I'll lose my place as the number 3 poster

Wow, I didn't realize how long I was gone. My username was removed already. Well, I've been busy with other things (learning php and MySQL mostly) and figured I'd add my 2 cents here. I set up a domain recently and am starting to use PHPBB for a role playing game. I found a converter over at phpbbhacks.com for YABB to PHPBB (not sure what version of YABB though, unless SE is a version?) but the guys there are pretty helpful when you have questions (I need to set my date ahead about 50 years and they are helping me with that). Anyways, here's the full link: http://www.phpbbhacks.com/category.php?id=5&version=2