David,
First most - thank you for making a separate thread about this - I really appreciate it.
Second - i want you to know that the A&A.org deeply appreciates your longtime stewardship and progression of the site. We are glad you are with us and host us.
Third - I know you are a tech savy/loving guy, who’s ahead of the curve and living the dream in the city by the bay. Please do not be offended by any of my jurassic comments below; they are just personal opinions; that I think represent a decent cross section of users here.
Overall - my take is that there is no tangible net benefit to the end user from these changes… I’ve commented on why below.
I know you had a “test” site up at one time, and maybe we do that again? and then have a poll if people want the change? whether you care what they think or not… I guess you’ll get to decide to be Axis or Allies on the matter :)
- SMF (the current software) has terrible software design. (not concerned)
- It is very difficult to make changes to the theme and UI (not concerned - it’s not like these would be welcome anyways, as the vision for the site was basically white space when I asked.)
- It is very difficult and sometime impossible to install plugins (not concerned - is there some plugin we need that dont have?)
- Plugins are not actually plugins, they directly modify the code (very bad) (again not concerned)
- Plugins sometimes make updates impossible**(Again this does not effect the end user - not concerned)**
- We’re currently stuck at 1.x and going to 2.x wouldn’t be worth the time (What difference will that make for us?)
- SMF doesn’t update very often, this is a security risk. Luckily that risk is offset by the lack of popularity of SMF.
- SMF is not mobile ready A&A.org Works fine on my phone - and quite frankly I hate it when my phone goes on to a “mobile” site, or a “download app” site. Just give me the regular site when I request it. Mobile sites in general are terrible, and lack the features of the regular site that a user like me wants; I end up forcing my phone to just look at the normal site and it’s a pain.
- It would be very frustrating to make this happen on SMF (not concerned)
- Google penalizes sites that are not mobile ready (not concerned - when you google axis and allies - you get a&A.org as #3); an the main site outside of the forums seems mobile ready anyways
- SMF has problems with setting up moderators; just ask any mod, the first few days they usually can’t do something until I track down the right setting (not concerned - we did fine with no moderators for YEARS - and the new ones are doing a great job)
Discourse benefits
- Mobile ready out of the box (+0)
- Addresses SEO, Search Engine Optimization (this means more or the same amount of Google traffic) (+0.5?)
- Has a great plugin system with a ton of officially supported plugins we would use (Can you specify a plug-in us dinosaurs would use?)
- Ads plugin (Is this not the same item as before?)
- Discobot, a forum bot for dice rolling and other fun stuff like a tutorial for the new software (sounds interesting, but +0, is this really a benefit?)
- Reply to a post via email +2 would be welcomed
- A good moderation/moderator system (in place now?)
- I find it fun so I’ll be hanging out on the forums more often +3 would be welcomed, but you could just do this :)
- Very good integration with Wordpress Maybe this would drive more article traffic, but I’m not really sure it would be all that used.
- I’ll be able to take some of your awesome posts and publish them to the Wordpress side of things
- A comments plugin so that all the post comments will live on the forums
- An API to make it easier for TripleA to integrate Need more info - so far everytime we have changes tripleA suffers for a brief period
- Posts can have multiple categories (no more of “this doesn’t belong here”) Dinosaurs gun git confused
- Drafts we have preview function?
- Bookmark a post or reply browser does this
- Like a post or reply we have +1-1 now - and had to modify because of abuse already
- Browser notifications (if on Android, then you also get push notifications)
- Endless scrolling for posts what a NIGHTMARE - no one will ever be able to look at the FAQ thread or threads like it. PLEASE DO NOT IMPLEMENT THIS; there’s nothing I hate more than endless scrolling and I dont believe I am alone.
- IMO a very well thought out user interface well that’s nice…?