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Instead of updating the thread that has all the statistics in it, I'm just going to give an update here and let people know of the plans.

On January 3, 2011 we will be switching to XenForo. This is perfect timing as it allows me to do some work during the holidays to get stuff ready, it's a Monday (which becomes important in a little bit) and traffic (if it holds historically) will be down on the 1st and 2nd so that there will be as little interruption as possible. We will be losing NO posts or anything like that. We may have about an hour or two during the final import where it will be madness - MADNESS!

Here's the plan. On January 2 at about 9 CST or so I will be backing everything up to the Test database. I will be doing the importing to XenForo from the Test bed so that I won't have to close the board. That means once I get the Test completed it's the fucking Wild West - post any damned thing you want because it won't be saved. At that point I'll be doing the import to XenForo and making sure the site looks the way I want. If/when it does, I'll put the redirects in and we'll be switched to the live site.

The reason I'm doing redirects instead of moving things around is because I want to leave vB there for a little while just in case. But after a short time I'll be moving everything to the root and take out the redirects.

So what changes will there be, you ask? And why is Monday so important? Well, I love Alfie and Bumble has done a great job keeping him going. But by far the biggest complaint has been, "We need MOAR!!!" So we're giving you that moar. Starting January 3, 2011 we will be having a new cartoon every weekday on the front page of Halforums!

Mondays: All on Alfie by Bumble
Tuesdays: Panel Shots by レズビアンの主婦
Wednesdays: House of Hal by me
Thursdays: Psychotic Episodes by Hylian (and friends)
Fridays: A Fistful of Fists by Bumble's brother

Other content on the site are going to be LittleSin's video blog posts and if anyone else has anything they'd like to add they certainly can come to me.

Soon we will be adding a store to the front where you can purchase individual panels from the comics, shirts, whatever. All profits for comic-specific items will go to the owners of the comic. So if we make a shirt that has Alfie on it, Bumble gets that money, not me. I will still keep any advertising revenue to pay for the site but that's it. Advertising on the front page will be sidebar only so that it does not detract from the comics.

Right now the site as well as the new forum layout are under construction, but you are welcome to check them both out and see them coming together right before your eyes.

Home Page: Halforums - Welcome to the House of Hal!
Forum: https://www.halforums.com/index.php

Please note that XenForo released their Beta 3 yesterday and it kinda broke the style a bit. That's being fixed as we speak and is no big deal.

Questions from the past:

Will there be a Shoppe like we have now?

Eventually. DragonByte Tech doesn't have their mods ported over to the new software yet. When it does I'll check it out. But know that because I'll be missing an Ame I'm not going to go as nuts as I did before. I had her as a safety net in case I broke something. Since I won't have that I'm going to be a bit more discerning in my addons.

What about an arcade?

Same as above, even though I think the arcade is very important. If nothing else, I love the daily game addon.

What about the blogs?

XenForo plans on having blogs but won't have them right away. The information will still be in the database though, so when they do come in we'll have the old posts. You won't lose your blog posts.

HalBucks?

As with the Shoppe, not right away.


tl;dr version:

January 3, 2011 we're switching to XenForo.
COMICS EVERY DAY!!!

So thanks for your patience. Trust me when I say that this will be the smoothest transition we've been forced to have. XenForo is everything vBulletin wished it was. We're getting usability, scalability and a lighter DB load.

Get ready, folks! We're going back....TO THE FUTURE!!

House of Hal ?

:aaahhh:

House of Hal example:

I like! :uhhuh:-

cool, i look forward to the changes

I will support these changes whole-heartedly. Also, I look forward to the premise of comic a day.

Dave said:

HalBucks?

As with the Shoppe, not right away.

Click to expand...

NOOOO! I'm so close to being able to change someones user name!

HCGLNS;451781][QUOTE=Dave said:

HalBucks?

As with the Shoppe, not right away.

Click to expand...

NOOOO! I'm so close to being able to change someones user name![/QUOTE]

You know what that means.

You have until January 2nd to post like a deranged monkey with a keyboard.

Yeah, if I'm going to lose all my money anyway, I guess I'm coming up on the day where I change all of your user titles to a different euphemism for "penis".

Sweet.

The money amounts will still be in the database and when we get them back you'll have your balances.

In addition, the new software has "likes". Pos rep will translate to "likes".

Tuesdays are going to be suck-tastic.

Oh. Well I guess you can keep your user titles.

For now.

Fun Size said:

Oh. Well I guess you can keep your user titles.

For now.

Click to expand...

Are they?

That's only funny if you don't know the correct pronunciation.

I'm glad the Halbucks thing won't be around (even if for awhile). I'm sick and tired of the childish bullshit and having to change my title and shit again.

Fun Size said:

Yeah, if I'm going to lose all my money anyway, I guess I'm coming up on the day where I change all of your user titles to a different euphemism for "penis".

Sweet.

Click to expand...

can i request tallywhacker?

Fun size's title makes me laugh... and I dont give a good goddamn what anyone thinks of that.


I am.. surprisingly all for this change. The apocalypse is nigh.

Disconnected;451808][QUOTE=Fun Size said:

Yeah, if I'm going to lose all my money anyway, I guess I'm coming up on the day where I change all of your user titles to a different euphemism for "penis".

Sweet.

Click to expand...

can i request tallywhacker?[/QUOTE]

and it is done.

Wait... where did Ame go??

West of Acapulco, I think.

That can't be, I'm pretty sure there's nothing floating there.

On the serious, tho, Ame is taking a bit of a hiatus while she handles some meatspace issues. She's still around, just not really able to invest the time necessary to un-jack the site when we break it. *wry grin*

Divining Rod works for me. That or Heat-Seeking Missile.

Quick update. XenForo has the ability to easily update and run multiple skins. In fact, right now I am not sure there's a limit. The only issue is that because the software is still in Beta 3 not all addons or styles work 100% well together. They will, but not yet. Still, if you want to take a look at some possible skins, GO HERE and let me know if there's one you want me to get. Right now we have:

Default - which I renamed XenBlue
XenForce - Great skin but does not work well with a number of addons due to massive code changes.
XFStop - Easy on the eyes and very slick looking.
XFStopFluid - This one will resize to your screen. The normal XFStop is a fixed-width skin. This one is our default skin.

But if there are some you like let me know.

I look forward to my Lupus theme.

Calleja said:

That can't be, I'm pretty sure there's nothing floating there.

Click to expand...

Wh...what happened to the Fernando freakout? :'(

It's floating west of Acapulco

Cajungal;452903][QUOTE=Calleja said:

That can't be, I'm pretty sure there's nothing floating there.

Click to expand...

Wh...what happened to the Fernando freakout? :'([/QUOTE]
Our latino heat has cooled to a mild salsa.

Cajungal;452903][QUOTE=Calleja said:

That can't be, I'm pretty sure there's nothing floating there.

Click to expand...

Wh...what happened to the Fernando freakout? :'([/QUOTE]

what's spanish for "meh"?

Calleja;453479][QUOTE=Cajungal;452903][QUOTE=Calleja said:

That can't be, I'm pretty sure there's nothing floating there.

Click to expand...

Wh...what happened to the Fernando freakout? :'([/QUOTE]

what's spanish for "meh"?[/QUOTE]

el meh.

Calleja said:

what's spanish for "meh"?

Click to expand...

Cilantro

Vagabond;453483][QUOTE=Calleja said:

what's spanish for "meh"?

Click to expand...

Cilantro[/QUOTE]

I adore you.

Some interesting information. This post on the XenForo forums from a guy named Anthony Parsons. Now, for those of you not in the "know", Parsons is one of the biggest proponents of vBulletin on the planet. He used to write white papers for them as well as tutorials and addons. Then vBulletin got sold - twice - and each time they put out more and more crap and their customer service went South. So when Xenforo was released, Parsons bought a copy and did some testing. Here's the results.

I changed out today from my last VB site to XF, using Joomla as the CMS. You can clearly see when VB4 was running, the few hours of upgrade spikes, then for the last hour nearly of the snapshots you can see the load take back up.

When I took these snaps I had around 300 back online again, average is around 400 online. Even that 100 extra isn't going to make much of a difference, as the load barely moved from when users began coming online to the end of 30 minutes of it being open with 300 already back on.

What I knew before I changed? That my server costs would be much, much lower. If I kept going with VB4 I had to upgrade again to a dedicated vs. a hybrid solution. I changed over to a more resources recently, and VB4 pretty much sucked up everything immediately, as it was extremely slow on the ServInt Ultimate VPS... so instead of upgrading further, I knew the change would seriously reduce the load... and my expectations weren't wrong.

Proof is in the pudding! An XF endorsement for savings if I could ever give one... Server costs!

The mysql change just blew me away... again, I expected it, and XF didn't let me down.

Click to expand...

Dave said:

COMICS EVERY DAY!!!

Click to expand...

yay!

Comics will be had, and Silver Princesses everywhere will rejoice. So sayeth the Dave.

The Dave is wise.

The Dave makes police officers giggle like school girls, flush with the heady vapors of a spring day...

*ahem*

North_Ranger said:

I will support these changes whole-heartedly. Also, I look forward to the premise of comic a day.

Click to expand...

AYE

The site is coming along nicely and I'll update here when I do anything particularly cool.

Newly added to XF:

Double click to edit posts. You want to edit your post? Easy! Just double click it and it'll come up.
Smilie dropdown box. This is really cool and will allow me to add as many smilies as I want without it being in the way.
User Online. This shows in the User's avatar if they are currently online. Yes, you can still surf invisibly.

Dave said:

Yes, you can still surf invisibly.

Click to expand...

It's exactly like that.

New update. XF is now in Beta 5 and close to RC1 so things are changing at a slower pace. What's really amazing is that unlike vBulletin, each change did not break 6 other things. Fixing vB is like trying to repair an inflatable life raft in the middle of the ocean using no other tool than a patch and a staple gun. XF has shown itself to be very, very stable and a number of sites have gone to them from vB and across the board it's reported to be a good experience. It is still missing a few things I think we really need but they will come in time.

I took out the dark XenForce style as it was so heavily modified code that it was difficult to make any changes to it. I replaced it with 2 new Styles: DXF (a cool blue style that is very sleek and easy on the eyes) and the one I think a lot of you will like called Game On. GO is a dark style that utilizes a different tab look. It's made for bigger monitors, though, as it doesn't wrap very well. Also, the damned thing has no fewer than 4 links to different sites in the footer - which is HUGE! I've contacted the author to see about maybe paying him a few bucks and getting branding free which would remove all of this. Fucking annoying.

The NSFW area will have to go away for a time so I can figure out how to make it work with age verification. Not that big a loss if you ask me. It really wasn't utilized all that heavily. I'll be moving the Flame Wars to the Topic Area so you can still snipe at each other.

I have a few other ideas but will wait a bit to roll them bad boys out. T-minus three weeks and counting!

I want to change over NOW!!