Xenforo Software - Troubleshooting and Questions

Hello, everyone. Just to let y'all know, I'm awake and back online. I've been up since 21:00 Eastern, mostly working on the database, and am now back in this thread.

There's a ton of really good information here that we need to act on, and many good questions that we need to dig into and follow up on. Let me tell you a little bit about how I propose to go about it.

First of all, I would like to give y'all an overview of how we are approaching this process.

We have 3 admins here - Politicalforum, also referred to as "the owner," Falena, and myself. Technically I am also an owner, but I didn't join up until 2012, and since Politicalforum founded the board herself in 2004, staffmembers always refer to her as "the owner."

The 3 admins divide their duties, and in the case of this migration, even moreso. The owner handles almost all technical and administrative functions, while @Falena is the one who basically runs the entire operation. She has absolute and complete authority to make any decision that needs to be made, on any issue, at any time, without checking with the 2 owners or - for that matter - even telling us what she did or why. In the day-to-day operation of the site, her word is law, and I don't believe either of the two owner/admins have ever felt she made a significantly wrong call. She runs the place better than either of us could, and while she is perfectly capable of handling the tech end of it, she usually focuses on the operational dimension, because that's the one thing she alone can do the way it needs to be done.

So. The way we're doing this one is that Politicalforum and I are are handling the front end, while Falena plays the drums and keeps the band on time, doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

Now... of the two admins who are doing the hands-on with this transition, I am the only one who is both working on the problems and interfacing with the members. I think it is absolutely essential for me to be doing it this way, because my role here is to hear what the members are saying, and then translate that into solid, substantive, software solutions.

Trouble with that is that I get spread a little thin. I'm a lot slower than I would like to be when it comes to addressing member concerns, because I'm spending so much time in the database. But I think it's important to do it this way, because we need to incorporate member concerns into every solution right from the very beginning. Makes for more efficient solutions, because if we just tweak something without having paid direct attention to what the members felt needed to be done, then we just have to do it over. Extrapolate that out over a hundred minor-intermediate issues, and it's a lot of hours of doublework down the road. This isn't about "well, we don't care what y'all want, we're gonna do it this way." We want to incorporate member concerns into the final product to whatever extent is possible.

One thing members should know is that there's a good reason we're not hitting some of the problems as quickly as we would like. While most things are generally working well for most of the members, we are having some serious functionality issues behind the scenes. There are only about 2 or 3 issues, but they're taking a lot of time and energy to resolve. Our primary focus has been on fixing user issues, so members are not affected by the other issues. But it's still taking 90% of our time to do the things behind the scenes. And we regret that we may seem as though we're very much absent. Truth is, we're just trying to fight two wars at the same time.

So in the interests of full transparency, here is how we are breaking this all down.

There are a hundred things that keep popping up, but we are categorizing them in order of priority. We are breaking it down into these categories -

1. Issues that primarily affect users, and...

2. Issues that primarily affect moderation and/or administration of the site.

Within those two primary categories, we divide it into...

A. Issues that relate to functionality and/or security, and...

B. Issues that relate to cosmetics/convenience

Of those 2 secondary categories, we further divide secondary category "A" into these sub-categories...

I. Issues of critical functionality/security, and...

II. Issues of secondary functionality

Of Category A, "issues that relate to functionality and/or security", all issues relating to security take precedence over functionality issues.

So, of those 2 primary categories, 2 secondary categories, and 2 sub-categories within the "I" and "II" hierarchies, the prioritization is as follows:

1. Category/sub-category "1/2 A-I', issues of security,
2. Category 1/2, issues of functionality not relating to security.
3. Any issues relating to cosmetics or convenience.

From that, we see that our top priority is always security - security first, at all times.

I think we worked through all of the security issues right from the beginning, so that almost all of our Day One issues were primarily about functionality. However, everything we did the first 24 hours was still always backchecked against security concerns.

What has slowed things down is that we have had a couple of functionality issues that have been very difficult to resolve. we were able to keep the forum running reasonably smoothly every step of the way, so the member experience has been mostly optimal, but... we've been very busy in the other room trying to tweak some things that we did not expect.

That focus on functionality has unfortunately delayed us from attending to cosmetic/convenience issues. i apologize that there's been a delay, but the most important thing is that we take it one step at a time. In the scheme of things, it means that the transition will take a day or 2 (maybe 3) longer that we had planned, but that's within parameters. My personal philosophy has always been that unless your vehicle is on fire or your cat is strangling on a chicken bone, there is always time to take whatever time you need to get. Things. Absolutely. Right.

I think that enough of those functionality issues will be resolved by mid-morning that we can pivot to the cosmetic/convenience issues. At that point, what i will do is go back through this thread and the threads in the Feedback forum to compile all of the complaints, comments, and questions. I will then reiterate those issues here, and explain how we intend to go about resolving them. If necessary, I will ask further questions. At the same time, we are following a similar process in the private Staff forum, collecting information and developing an action plan for who is going to handle which issue.

I want to thank you all for your help thus far and your patience. I'm sorry it's taking a few days, but we're just slightly outnumbered. The important thing is to get it right, and I think that when all is said and done, we will have done that.

Meanwhile, the skin and color scheme has at least been made more tolerable. There are a few things we can still tweak there, and we will be soliciting member input on that, but for now it at least does not make people screech and claw their eyeballs out with a salad fork.

Search function has been greatly improved, but still needs some finetuning. I suspect that at least some of the complaints people have about it have a lot to do with the fact that it just works differently than the vBulletin search. It fetches and presents results differently than what we are used to, and that may take a while to get used to.

But having said that, I know we can improve it, and we will. This is very common with Xenforo transitions - it takes some work to get "Search" dialed in. And considering that we have over 7 million posts to account for, it takes a while to organize everything.

PMs are still wonky, but that seems to be a permissions problem that we feel should resolve as we work through some of those behind-the-scenes functionality issues.

People are concerned about getting their albums back, their blogs, etc... don't worry. We can get that back; it's just that to facilitate it, we need to install add-ons that we are not yet ready to integrate until we are certain that the fundamental installation issues are resolved. I am very sorry that you do not have them back yet, but for now I want to reassure you that they are not lost.

The member who expressed concern about his smilies... hm. I spoke to the owner about that, and I have to be honest with you - at this point, I genuinely do not know if we have lost them. I believe we are fine, but she is cautious, and does not want me to overpromise. I'll just say that I think we can get them back when we have a little breathing room, but it will not be this week. I can assure you that as far as I'm concerned, it is a priority, but that it can not be an immediate priority. I hope you understand, and I give you my word that this is not something i will blow off or lose sight of. If it matters to you, then it matters very much to me. I understand.

So with that, I am getting back into the database.