Welcome to the 'New Site.'

I've tried to compile the reasons for the new 'not606' below. This explanation is by the site owner Maltese Mick. Please also bear in mind that this statement was made in October, therefore some points may now be irrelevant. I'm currently at work so I'm a bit pushed for time to go through it and edit out those parts.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --

''Over the last weeks and months as I've went about looking to stabilise the current software installation and it has become more and more apparent vBulletin is currently not up to job. At this point, in consultation with others, I'm very seriously considering moving us platform. I'd just like to tell everyone how we got here and why we are moving.

Background
This site was built using the most advanced forum software in the World (vBulletin). It had the biggest market share by far and was the obvious choice in 2009/2010 when I created this incarnation of the site. I have been very careful not to upgrade to newer versions until their stability was well proven.

vBulletin owes its success to its founder lead designers but, when Jelsoft (the original owners of vBulletin software) was taken over by American new media company Internet Brands in 2007, disagreements occurred between the lead developers and the new management over matters involving the next major release of vBulletin, version 4.0. As a result most of the development team including the lead developers left and formed Xenforo. After a failed attempt by Internet Brands to sue Xenfro for theft of intellectual rights, Xenfro have gone from strength to strength and have now emerged as a serious threat to vBulletin, building an increasing market share at the expense of vBulletin and Internet Brands, the only other realistic competitor.

I had given some thought to moving to the latest version of vBulletin (marketed as Connect 5) and actually purchased a licence. However, having evaluated this version and taken account of reviews I decided that was a precarious route to take at this stage and put that idea on the back burner.

I mentioned recently that I would be moving servers (to improve stability) and possibly upgrading to the final version 4 of vBulletin (to improve performance). The move to a more stable server has been accomplished but, without carrying out a considerable amount of work, a vBulletin upgrade would involve losing some of the functionality that we are all used to. In view of that and other considerations (see below) I decided to hold off on the vBulletin upgrade.

Considerations
Because of the amount of work involved in retaining all the current functionality I have been giving some serious thought as to the future direction of Not606 and, as part of this process have been looking at the emerging competitor to vBulletin, namely Xenforo.

Reviews from users of Xenfro, including those who have moved from vBulletin, are very encouraging. Conversely, reviews of vBulletin's newest software are very discouraging. All this has led me to shelve any updates on the vBulletin platform and take an even closer look at Xenfro.

There's been quite a few big defections to Xenforo over the last year, one of the biggest being AVForums - you can see their reasoning in this very interesting article here.. https://www.avforums.com/threads/vb...net-brands-have-killed-off-vbulletin.1855705/

Provisional Conclusion

From all research so far, it would appear that the Xenfro platform is more advanced, more stable and offers greater flexibility than the vBulletin platform. It is evident however that Xenfro lacks some of the functionality we are used to. On balance I have decided that, subject to a continued close watch on developments, assessing the work involved to build the additional functionality and the consequential impact of these on future upgrades, I will be looking to trial Xenfro with a view to a future migration.

I've put a lot of effort over the last few weeks working on the new software, trying to replicate the look, feel and functionality we have here as best I could within the new platform, with its new functionality. There are still quite a few bugs I'll be working through over the next week or so (such as the header doesn't look right when logged in on mobile, etc). Also note the order of forums will not be kept - I think we'll be going with a tabbed forum list, similar to what we have here on our homepage. Password protected forums will be password protected again as well at some point.

I'm inviting everyone else to log in and test and leave comments - if you leave bugs or requests I'll make a note of them in the next post and update everyone on their status. There is some obvious missing functionality (blogs, articles) and I'm aware of the need to be able to post things to Newsnow etc, I'll be dealing with these obvious things in the next post. I just want everyone to point out little problems that are maybe now obvious (for instance can everyone log in properly, has anyone's username been corrupted etc). Bear in mind this is based off a backup from 8/10/2019 so any changes to your password / username etc from then will not have been carried over.

The beta is not top secret, you can let others know - although I'd maybe hold off posting big sticky threads on it until we're further along (I've still a lot of work to do and it will be going up/down quite a lot). It's a test site, I made a backup as of about 1 hour ago - I'll be periodically restoring backups so any posts etc you make on there will be deleted, eventually.

Also please try it out on various devices (ipads, phones, etc) - the big benefit of the new design I've been working on is that it's very responsive, automatically altering it's design to fit whatever device you are using - so there will be no need for separate mobile apps in the future.

 

Bugs and Fixes for new system:Green = resolved/nothing more to do.Red = Work ongoing. Big Problems (need fixed for launching)

• Anyone with an apostrophe (') in their name will have their username changed to remove that - they can sign in with their email address if they can't log in with their username, we'll need to stress this during the changeover.
• Retirement of Not606 mobile apps - the Android and iPhone apps will stop working. There are other solutions I will integrate (such as using the likes of Forum Runner - but these will be third party paid apps) - but the new site itself will be mobile compatible, so using a simple mobile web browser should work fine.
• Groups and Blog retired - these functions are under used on here, and I don't believe it's worth trying to replicate them on the new site.
• Logged in mobile view header is broken - will get fixed this week.
• No article section for news now - looking for solutions. (will find solution for this after we go live - current CMS not working anyway, so no point holding back)
• Moderators don't have proper rights over their own boards - I will need to assign every moderator rights after I move (as forums are written over during the move), so I'll need to compile a list of moderators from each board and power through it once we move.
• Team background headers need fixed.
• brb's admin persmissions
• I need 30x30px images for each board (their icon before clicking in). Should be easy enough for most Football clubs but might struggle for other sports. (got most of this done - but suspending the functionality until we go live)

Medium Problems (may/may not be fixed for launch)

• No more Rep - Xenforo doesn't use Rep, but all Rep will be converted into 'Likes' (and our old Likes will not be carried forward). If you've been overly 'repping' one person it will now show as publicly viewable likes (which might be embarrassing). I can't see any other issues with that.
• Permissions issues uploading photos - some users report attachments/photos not being uploaded properly, please can others test.
• Username change - users by default can not edit their own username on Xenforo - there's a mod on Xenforo which allows this. I'll probably implement before switch over.

Small Problems (probably will not be fixed for launch)

• Various 'small' design preferences. We need to move the forum software quick because of insecurity in vBulletin. If you have small design preferences ("move this to the left. Don't like that drop down") they are unlikely to get fixed in time for the move (and some are highly subjective).
• Old 'deleted' Private Messages are resurrected - it (bizarrely) seems that PMs aren't actually deleted, they are still stored, and they will come back. Not sure how easy this is to fix, or if it's worth spending a lot of time on.
• Messages on user profiles are lost - not sure if we can fix this. (fixed it)
• No folders for Private Messages - others have requested this but currently not available - see work request on Xenforo here (https://xenforo.com/community/threads/conversations-functionality-to-organize-the-inbox.10698/)
• No Tags (found a solution)