Moving the forums to discourse

[radu81]

I forgot to say that the default elkarte template cames with 2 versions:
- Light version (you can see it in action on elkarte.net, and with some colour changes on hydrogenaud.io or b4print.com)
- BeSocial version (the version I use on my forums with some color changes). Only a custom.css is used on my forums. You can see some custom.css examples here, here and here.
On the themes.elkarte.net you can find more complex templates, I prefered a simple solution by using the default style.

They also have "News" sections which might come in useful for Scribus (maybe some kind of "showcase" for the most relevant uploaded stuff perhaps?).

That's part of the portal addon called Simple Portal, available for SMF and elkarte. On elkarte is grabbing the first attachment of the topic and display it as "blog" layout.

One of the main issues that people have with the current SMF forum is the way that users can be timed-out while drafting a post.

That's strange, I never had similar problems with SMF.

use on mobile. ElkArte seems to have this covered too.

For me this part is important since more than 50% of my visits are from mobile/tablets.

There's no mention, that I could see, of "related topic" posts - where people can go off on a tangent without confusing the main issue - but that may be covered too.

I'm not sure what exactly do you mean, from a topic it is possible to create a related topic, but it's not something used often on my forums.

People may - or may not - lose some of their stuff, but maybe some of the old uploads should be discarded anyway.

Once migrated everything you have on smf forum will be available on elkarte forum, nothing should be lost. The admin can delete old attachments from ACP panel just like they used to do on smf.

[GarryP]

I think the theme that's used by the ElkArte forum looks nice and fresh and clean. If it's the default then I'd be happy with that. Less admin for the admin too. (Just about anything has to be better than what we've got now in terms of looks.)

The time-out problem has been on the Scribus forum ever since I joined. After the first time I had the problem I've always created my posts in a text editor and then pasted the text in when it's ready. Not the best solution but it works (except I have to re-edit to add bold/underline/etc.) It's probably just a default setting or something.

There is also an issue that you can't post within a certain time after your last post. Probably to stop spam-bots but it can be annoying sometimes.

Any new site has to be mobile-ready these days. It's just one of those things. Any move to software that doesn't take mobile into account would be a waste of time.

Discourse allows you to create related- or sub-topics that let people take part of an argument as a "side bar" to the main conversation. I'm not quite sure how it works but it could be useful here as many threads can become crowded with some people talking about something specific that doesn't really matter to the main issue. I do this frequently. Maybe I shouldn't.

My concern about migration is that if the storage of attachments moves to a by-person level, rather than the current by-topic level, (and I'm not saying that it will) then the total size of attachments may blow the limit for some people. For example, say there is a 10MB limit for the attachments that a person can upload. If the someone has previously attached six 2MB files (one in each of six posts) then, if the attachments are moved to the person - rather than the post -  then that 12MB would break the limit and something would have to be dropped. It might not be an issue, I just thought I'd bring it up.

[radu81]

I think the theme that's used by the ElkArte forum looks nice and fresh and clean. If it's the default then I'd be happy with that. Less admin for the admin too.

Glad you like it, I also prefer keep things simple to administrate.

There is also an issue that you can't post within a certain time after your last post. Probably to stop spam-bots but it can be annoying sometimes.

You cannot post in the same topic after a certain time, or you cannot post in every topic after certain time? Anyway it's a something set by the admin, from default SMF does not work in this way.

Discourse allows you to create related- or sub-topics that let people take part of an argument as a "side bar" to the main conversation. I'm not quite sure how it works but it could be useful here as many threads can become crowded with some people talking about something specific that doesn't really matter to the main issue. I do this frequently. Maybe I shouldn't.

As far as I know there isn't something similar for elkarte, but could be requested, and if there is much interest could be created as separate addon.

My concern about migration is that if the storage of attachments moves to a by-person level, rather than the current by-topic level, (and I'm not saying that it will) then the total size of attachments may blow the limit for some people. For example, say there is a 10MB limit for the attachments that a person can upload. If the someone has previously attached six 2MB files (one in each of six posts) then, if the attachments are moved to the person - rather than the post -  then that 12MB would break the limit and something would have to be dropped. It might not be an issue, I just thought I'd bring it up.

The attachments in elk are working in the same way they work on SMF. The attachments limits are not set by users or membergroups but by number of attachments per post or by some global settings set by admin.
It has been done a lot of improvements for attachments in elkarte, there are addons to auto-resize the images to a certain resolution, an addon to use smush.it loseless compression, and the limits are only those set by your host.

When I upload attachments I see:
- on my forum Restrictions: 20 per post, maximum total size 1,048,576 KB, maximum individual size 524,288 KB
- on this forum Restrictions: 5 per post, maximum total size 4096KB, maximum individual size 2048KB

In this way I can upload photos from my smartphone and we know that nowadays every smartphone make big photos in terms of size, at least 2-3 MB. Nobody will resize photos in external applications, especially if we are talking about a forum with people with a certain age.
ex: I can upload 5 photos for a total of 20 MB or more, but on forum host will be saved 4 images for about 170-200 Kb per photo. I set to resize images at 1200px width and 85% quality.
On my forum I have 11.106 attachments for a total size of 1.650 GB, not bad I'd say, so space should be no problem, especially nowadays when hosting is very cheap.

[GarryP]

If you make a post then you cannot make another post, at all, until 60 seconds has elapsed. There is no on-screen timer so you just have to go away for a while until you think that time has passed. It's not usually an issue but it can be annoying when you just want to post something quickly.

As for the sub-topics issue, it's not a big thing. It would be nice to have but I don't know how it works in Discourse so it might also be confusing. Either way, it's not a show-stopper.

If the site moves to software that works the same way as SMF then there probably won't be a problem with upload limits unless someone sets those limits lower than they currently are.

The limits on this site are quite small compared to other sites but I guess that's either because they are the SMF defaults - most of the site seems to be off-the-shelf without much tweaking - or there are hosting size issues. I can't imagine that the Scribus project has unlimited hosting, especially if it's being hosted for free. (I'm assuming that the project isn't paying for hosting. I might be wrong about that.)

I can't see posting images from smartphones being an issue on this site. You would have to print something and then take a picture of it which seems an odd thing to do but Scribus does produce some large files which can be difficult to attach. There's always the option of using a link to a cloud storage provider but it's nicer to have stuff stored centrally if possible. Again, that's probably a hosting issue.

All said and done, if the admins don't join the conversation then I can't see anything getting done. It's interesting to discuss these things but if the people who would actually do the work don't get involved then nothing will happen.