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Okay, before you go into a big tizzy I'm not going anywhere and neither is HF. So this is not an "OMFG WE'RE DYING!!!" post. In fact, we're doing pretty well. But this is going to be a pretty long post so if you want to go directly to the tl;dr portion feel free.

I started this thread because it has been noted that it SEEMS that we are lowing down. I noticed it, too. But when I go over the numbers it shows quite the opposite. So since a lot of us are numbers geeks I'm going to post some stats here to show what's been going on, then talk about the future of the site as I've got some pretty important announcements.

First the statistics. I went to Google Analytics to see how traffic fared. Here's the traffic for the month of September of 2010 as compared to 2009. This shows the number of visits.



As you can see, other than a brief time around the 15th (what the hell was THAT about?!?) we have been consistently higher than we were.

But so what, right? If Dave goes here 5 times that's 5 visits. What about unique visitors? Still up by a lot. Please note that this next graphic is UNIQUE VISITORS. So if Dave visits 5 times it counts as 1 visitor.



We're hitting over 1000 unique visitors every day. LURKER POWER ACTIVATE!!

To get a little more into the nuts and bolts of it...



The ONLY metric we are down on is time on site. People are spending only 9 minutes 19 seconds on average now whereas before they were spending 11 minutes 29 seconds. Part of this is my fault and I'll be addressing this in the future portion.

But Dave, you say, it only feels like we've been slowing down RECENTLY! Okay, let's look at September 2010 against a more current time like...April 2010.



As you can see, we're still up. Maybe it's not as much but we are still growing. Expanded stats agree with this.





So there you have it. We're still good. I'm still here, still doing my best to keep things moving and not planning on stopping any time soon.

And speaking of the future, here's where things get a tad murky.

As you all are aware, Ame has put a metric fuckton of work into making this place work. But vBulletin is just fucking terrible to work with. The backend of vBulletin is a fucking mess and a half and if it weren't for Ame this place would look like a cobbled together sack of rancid dogcrap. But as you are also aware, Ame is going through some changes in her own life that require her undivided attention. For her own mental well-being Ame will be no longer an Admin of Halforums. She's agreed to stay on to help get some things in the site unmessed and then she'll be taking her leave. She needs to do this and we all should support her, wish her well and hope everything works out. Her leaving has NOTHING to do with Halforums...except maybe the amount of time she spent coding when she should have been sleeping and taking care of herself. I can't tell you how much we'll all miss her!

But her leaving brings up a particularly nasty issue - I can't do what she does. At all. And since vBulletin is pulling some of their shit again we have some decisions.

We've talked about this at length in the Mod only forum, but vBulletin is talking about releasing version v4.1 (we're currently at v4.06). This new version has "massive changes to the code" which means everything will break - again. Do we have to change? No. But Ame right now can NOT work on the css of the site because vBulletin's back-end is so jacked up. So we have a choice to make. Stay as we are with no chance of any changes or migrate to v4.1 and hope they fixed what was severely broken in v4.0x. And after THAT gets released we put up with v4.1x every month for security reasons and then v5 is coming out and that would require us to buy a whole new license AGAIN.

Add in the fact that vBulletin just got bought out by a venture capital group that says they want to streamline and, well, a lot of people are unsure about the future of vBulletin.

And then we found something called XenForo.

A little while ago the two guys who had created vBulletin (and were then bought out and forced out the door) got together and created a new forum software called XenForo. They went at this from a USER perspective instead of from an ADMIN perspective.

Here's a few videos about XenForo and how some stuff works.

Thread Views


Jumping to quoted posts


Quick Navigation Menu


Adding Pictures to Post


Reporting a Post - Note that after the initial report it deals more with Admin/Mod stuff


Surfing Visible/Invisible and a brief look at profiles


Multi-Quote built in


There are others. XenForo goes on sale tomorrow. I'm going to buy a license and Ame is going to play with it and see what she can do. Biggest thing is XenForo is simple to use and friendly to everyone. Even I can use it, which is a big thing.


tl:dr version:

Stats look good.
Ame is leaving us for personal reasons.
vBulletin sucks.
May very well be moving to XenForo forum software.

---------- Post added at 11:01 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:00 AM ----------

Member Card (I forgot this one)

When they make the Halforums movie I hope an older and more experienced Jack Black plays Dave.

Let me get this straight, here. Despite the fact that the forum as it is right now works, the coding is still horrible if we ever wanted to do something else with the site and we might be moving over to something which has less terrible coding but which would still turn the site end over end (again)? If this is the case, I don't see a problem, really. I'd say keep the site as is. If not, please correct me.

Also, throwing in good wishes for Ame when she leaves. We'll miss you and thanks for working so hard on the site! Hope things work out for you.

Wahad said:

Let me get this straight, here. Despite the fact that the forum as it is right now works, the coding is still horrible if we ever wanted to do something else with the site and we might be moving over to something which has less terrible coding but which would still turn the site end over end (again)? If this is the case, I don't see a problem, really. I'd say keep the site as is. If not, please correct me.

Click to expand...

vBulletin keeps putting out new versions and then stops supporting the old ones. So if a security hole is found (which several have) and you aren't on the latest and greatest...too bad. The big issue is in each of these version updates, Ame has put in a LOT of time behind the scenes to make it work. I can't do that. Not from a time perspective as much as an ability one. One of these days I'll paste a thread that she's done to work on this stuff so you guys can see what she goes through.

---------- Post added at 11:56 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:55 AM ----------

Trust me - I do NOT want to move again. Every move we've made was because we were forced to.

With the new forum software they might have potential IP issues. The new owners of vBulletin may not be happy that the former are releasing a competing product. So, there could be a lawsuit and the potential to have XenForo shut down. Just something to think about before you spend too much on it. Hopefully it won't be an issue.

What the hell happened September 13, 2009?

Covar said:

What the hell happened September 13, 2009?

Click to expand...

Very little, evidently.

Covar said:

What the hell happened September 13, 2009?

Click to expand...

That's the 15th with the spike and I have no idea.

I don't come here for the technology, I come here for the people.

Ergo, upgrading for new features won't make me stay or come more (Well, aside from an expanded NSFW section I suppose)

If there are concerns about security and support, I can understand that being an issue. I wouldn't want to be jumping into XenFro because it's so new and long term will likely have more security issues than a fairly locked down implementation of vBulletin. You're still going to need someone looking after the technical back end regardless of the software being used - at least vBulletin has a rather large community to rely on.

Dave;442122][QUOTE=Covar said:

What the hell happened September 13, 2009?

Click to expand...

That's the 15th with the spike and I have no idea.[/QUOTE]

Kanye meme incident?

Could be, Shakey.

And I totally see your point, Adammon. That's why I'm buying a license and we're going to play a bit.

I hope it isn't too expensive, Dave. Although what does 25k unique visitors generate from Ads by Google?

Also, how easy will it be to port the database over?

This thread is very interesting. And yes, vBulletin sucks hard.

It's a LOT less expensive than vBulletin. It's against the TOS to say how much you get from Google ads but suffice it to say that ads pay for about 1/2 a year of the site.

As to porting stuff across, everything will transfer with the sole exception of passwords. Threads, posts...everything. But everyone will have a generic password and have to change it - which is a HUGE pain in my ass as people come back after a month and then can't get on.

If you want to see what XenForo looks like, you can check them out at XenForo™.

Note that this site is very bare bones and we'll have different color schemes. In fact, XenForo can allow us to have as many styles as we want and they all update the same! Horror of horrors! USABILITY!!!

Look, you got my blessing on the change. This is a favor you're making for all of us. I hated vBulletin for years now and since the 4.X upgrade it got even WORSE.

If it means it's an easier site to manage with half the cost and as long as everyone has plenty of heads up before the change is made, everyone is happy.

Does it have tapatalk support, or some sort of mobile theme?

eace:

*doesn't even read the thread and assumes Halforums is closing down*

Well, FINE! Just...give up, why dontcha? You guys are all stupid, anyway!

*throws down his Halforums membership card and walks off into the sunset...which is amazing accomplishment, when it's only 1 PM, as of this writing*

Uniques up 324% over last year? 11.5 pageviews/visit? 2.3% bounce rate?! :jaw:

That's...really, really good! Well done, Dave and Ame!

If you don't mind my asking, what's the unique visitor progression year over year Jan-Sept?

I just wanted to thank you Dave (as well as everyone else who has helped) for all the hard work and money/time that has been poured into the site. I for one think I would have snapped a long time ago if not for being able to vent/be myself here.

Do you have numbers on posts per day for this year and last?

Shakey;442124][QUOTE=Dave;442122][QUOTE=Covar said:

What the hell happened September 13, 2009?

Click to expand...

That's the 15th with the spike and I have no idea.[/QUOTE]

Kanye meme incident?[/QUOTE]

Was that the day someone posted those "artistic nudes" of me? Probably was.

Espy;442437][QUOTE=Shakey;442124][QUOTE=Dave;442122][QUOTE=Covar said:

What the hell happened September 13, 2009?

Click to expand...

That's the 15th with the spike and I have no idea.[/QUOTE]

Kanye meme incident?[/QUOTE]

Was that the day someone posted those "artistic nudes" of me? Probably was.[/QUOTE]

That was Sept 25th, 2009.

Clearly.

Cosplay thread IMO

I think Shakey had it right, especially looking at the timelines. It was the Kanye West meme going viral and our participation in it that caused a jump in visitors.

This thread is the forum version of a hand job. >.>

If we change over do we lose all our stuff like gifts and halbucks?

Ame's leaving? That's like...Woz leaving Apple, or something.
Happy trails, good wishes, bon voyage, and all that.
I don't admin any forums or anything, so I know nothing about VBulletin, but if you guys say it sucks hard, then it must suck hard. I trust y'all to know what sucks.

--Patrick

So how did the test go last night?

Making me go do something else at 12:30 at night.

I have the knowledge to take over for Ame, but not the time. If someone teamed up with me, maybe.

Covar said:

So how did the test go last night?

Making me go do something else at 12:30 at night.

Click to expand...

Yeah. And the sandwich Dave told me to get wasn't nearly as fun as visiting halforum.

First Lady Puffinstuff;442711][QUOTE=Covar said:

So how did the test go last night?

Making me go do something else at 12:30 at night.

Click to expand...

Yeah. And the sandwich Dave told me to get wasn't nearly as fun as visiting halforum.[/QUOTE]


My body refused to make me a sandwich. I even tried telling myself "sudo make me a sandwich" and still my body refused

The test went very well. IN fact, the porting over of the threads/posts is what took so long. But it went without a hitch.

fade said:

I have the knowledge to take over for Ame, but not the time. If someone teamed up with me, maybe.

Click to expand...

I have the talent* and desire, but not the time nor experience, dangit.

--Patrick
*Already proven I can code in just about anything, just never worked with this so no exp.

I say switch to XenForo unless we have someone to do the work Ame was doing (and even then I'm not so sure). We would lose said work (but we'd lose it anyway if we upgraded, right?) and the mods (forumon was very promising) but I guess it will be for the best. And we can always switch back to vBulletin 4.whatever it is at the moment or even 5.0 if we have problems with XF...

Also, thank you Ame, I hope you will be well. (And, as always, thank you Dave).

Whatever's best, do it, and I'll adapt. Thank you, AmE, for all your hard work. You too, Chief.