- 14 Mar 2002
- 21,050
- 18,904
JREF Forum Update
Dear valued Members,
we are working hard on converting the forum to a new software.
THE FORUM
Skip this part if you are not interested in forum history.
Our forum has been online in its current format since 2002, relying on vBulletin software from the very start. vBulletin, founded by a few devoted British PHP wizards, was until recently considered to be the vanguard of forum software. Along came the vultures of venture capital in 2008, took over and wrecked one of the most popular forum scripts in less than four years. Not only that: they drove away the vB core team, who, not idle in the least, recreated the most amazing and promising piece of forum software, in the best tradition of vB's heydays.
Xenforo, innovative, fresh and written from scratch, seemed to have posed a substantial threat to Internet Brands, the vulture: they sued the enthusiastic team of XF in both, US and UK courts on various grounds, one more ludicrous that the next, thereby frivolously jeopardizing development as well as developers' and webmasters' livelihoods for two years.
Long story short, the case was dismissed "with prejudice" (the actual settlement remains confidential), and development was resumed four weeks ago. Late last summer the vultures released their concept of vBulletin 5 which is nothing short of a development disaster, prematurely released, half-baked, sluggish and devoid of any features. I have therefore decided to move the JREF forum to Xenforo as soon as possible.
Last Sunday night we converted our sister site, tokyocycle.com, to XF. The overall user feedback is very positive, given the fact that users in general hate change. We received tons of feedback and suggestions, which we implemented right away. See for yourself.
The software is very intuitive, user-friendly and easy to grasp for anyone who has used vB. It increased (inter)activity of and among users, who love the speed and the features, in particular the Like and the trophy system!
On top of that, the gallery and the classifieds will remain integrated into the new forum software.
However, there's
THE PROBLEM
Our database is eleven years old. The forum is of course bilingual, English and Japanese. Back then when we launched it in 2002, UTF-8, the lingua franca of encryptions, was not yet available. The collation of the database tables is Latin-1, the language MIME is x-sjis, and over the years many tables, but not all, were converted to UTF-8. The database is therefore a weird potpourri of standards which has effectively prevented us from migrating.
Many of the problems relating to the display of non-standard characters, mojibake, and many editor issues reported over the years arise from those database discrepancies. I have already invested countless hours in that mongrel of a database, to no avail. The Japanese content is not being converted and/or imported.
However, I haven't given up yet. I will keep on experimenting and, just a few days ago, made contact with a Tokyo-based database expert with connections to other MySQL sages. While spirits are high, we do have to prepare contingency plans.
One if them would be to turn the current Japanese language section here at the forum into a read-only repository and allow users to post related question to the new language subfora on the updated forum. So basically an archive of Japanese language users can browse, but not post to. Japanese content in other sections will have to be manually edited.
PLEA FOR FEEDBACK
I would like to invite our regular users and veteran members to share their opinion. Would a "nihongo repository," still accessible to the general public and Google, be an acceptable and viable solution to you? Are there any other suggestions on the issue? Please post them right here.
Furthermore, if there are any other wishes, ideas, complaints, suggestions of whatever nature, or features you would like to see in the future, please do not hesitate to voice them. You can also contact me privately by PM.
PERSONAL
Davey, our tireless co-admin, will - for the time being - lay down his official functions here at the forum due to a flurry of work-related and private issues. He will remain an active member of the forum. We wish him all the best on his endeavours.
Dear valued Members,
we are working hard on converting the forum to a new software.
THE FORUM
Skip this part if you are not interested in forum history.
Our forum has been online in its current format since 2002, relying on vBulletin software from the very start. vBulletin, founded by a few devoted British PHP wizards, was until recently considered to be the vanguard of forum software. Along came the vultures of venture capital in 2008, took over and wrecked one of the most popular forum scripts in less than four years. Not only that: they drove away the vB core team, who, not idle in the least, recreated the most amazing and promising piece of forum software, in the best tradition of vB's heydays.
Xenforo, innovative, fresh and written from scratch, seemed to have posed a substantial threat to Internet Brands, the vulture: they sued the enthusiastic team of XF in both, US and UK courts on various grounds, one more ludicrous that the next, thereby frivolously jeopardizing development as well as developers' and webmasters' livelihoods for two years.
Long story short, the case was dismissed "with prejudice" (the actual settlement remains confidential), and development was resumed four weeks ago. Late last summer the vultures released their concept of vBulletin 5 which is nothing short of a development disaster, prematurely released, half-baked, sluggish and devoid of any features. I have therefore decided to move the JREF forum to Xenforo as soon as possible.
Last Sunday night we converted our sister site, tokyocycle.com, to XF. The overall user feedback is very positive, given the fact that users in general hate change. We received tons of feedback and suggestions, which we implemented right away. See for yourself.
The software is very intuitive, user-friendly and easy to grasp for anyone who has used vB. It increased (inter)activity of and among users, who love the speed and the features, in particular the Like and the trophy system!
On top of that, the gallery and the classifieds will remain integrated into the new forum software.
However, there's
THE PROBLEM
Our database is eleven years old. The forum is of course bilingual, English and Japanese. Back then when we launched it in 2002, UTF-8, the lingua franca of encryptions, was not yet available. The collation of the database tables is Latin-1, the language MIME is x-sjis, and over the years many tables, but not all, were converted to UTF-8. The database is therefore a weird potpourri of standards which has effectively prevented us from migrating.
Many of the problems relating to the display of non-standard characters, mojibake, and many editor issues reported over the years arise from those database discrepancies. I have already invested countless hours in that mongrel of a database, to no avail. The Japanese content is not being converted and/or imported.
However, I haven't given up yet. I will keep on experimenting and, just a few days ago, made contact with a Tokyo-based database expert with connections to other MySQL sages. While spirits are high, we do have to prepare contingency plans.
One if them would be to turn the current Japanese language section here at the forum into a read-only repository and allow users to post related question to the new language subfora on the updated forum. So basically an archive of Japanese language users can browse, but not post to. Japanese content in other sections will have to be manually edited.
PLEA FOR FEEDBACK
I would like to invite our regular users and veteran members to share their opinion. Would a "nihongo repository," still accessible to the general public and Google, be an acceptable and viable solution to you? Are there any other suggestions on the issue? Please post them right here.
Furthermore, if there are any other wishes, ideas, complaints, suggestions of whatever nature, or features you would like to see in the future, please do not hesitate to voice them. You can also contact me privately by PM.
PERSONAL
Davey, our tireless co-admin, will - for the time being - lay down his official functions here at the forum due to a flurry of work-related and private issues. He will remain an active member of the forum. We wish him all the best on his endeavours.
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