I posted about this back in March, and said it would be a few months. We're finally about there. I'll leave out the story of why it took so much longer. (I didn't want to resurrect the old thread.)
For the most part, YOU, the forum members need have little concern. You don't have to do anything different, or learn anything new. One day in the next week or two, we will have some down time with the site being offline when most people in the USA are sleeping. That's all you really need to know.
From the original post in March:
Short non-technical version: Currently, any logged in forum member is also logged in to the WordPress (articles / posts) side of the site, and can easily comment on article posts, like tobacco reviews, or the radio show posts for example.
For current members, that will not change.
At some point, new members (after the changeover) will have to make a separate account, or fill in their name and email to comment on blog posts - (anything outside the forums).
Longer more technical version:
In Sept. 2019, we relaunched the site with a much needed update for the forums platform, and a long awaited mobile friendly site as well.
We switched from a really crappy BBPress forum platform to a robust Xenforo platform.
The other parts of the site where we have articles (blog posts) for posting tobacco reviews, Greg Pease's column, Fred Brown's column, news, and The Pipes Magazine Radio Show have always used what I consider the best, and most popular content management system (CMS), which is WordPress.
The typical hierarchy has WordPress at the top, and the forums being subservient. However, Xenforo requires it to be the other way around, and to bridge WP and X, there is a specific platform we are forced to use.
Had I known then what I know now, I would have never done this.
There have been tons of issues which have been mostly invisible to you guys. There are numerous bugs that have taken a lot of my time, and cost me extra money to pay my developer to fix, and they never seem to stop. Having the bridge between Xenforo and WordPress has been a nightmare.
The plan is to de-couple the two platforms. The pain is not worth the convenience of automatically creating a PipesMagazine.com WordPress account when someone signs up to the forums.
On my other site that does not have Xenforo, updating WordPress plugins (they require updates constantly) takes a few minutes. With Xenforo, it can take hours.
The other part of the plan is to update to a more modern, and simple blog theme (forums stay the same) instead of the current layout.
For the most part, YOU, the forum members need have little concern. You don't have to do anything different, or learn anything new. One day in the next week or two, we will have some down time with the site being offline when most people in the USA are sleeping. That's all you really need to know.
From the original post in March:
Short non-technical version: Currently, any logged in forum member is also logged in to the WordPress (articles / posts) side of the site, and can easily comment on article posts, like tobacco reviews, or the radio show posts for example.
For current members, that will not change.
At some point, new members (after the changeover) will have to make a separate account, or fill in their name and email to comment on blog posts - (anything outside the forums).
Longer more technical version:
In Sept. 2019, we relaunched the site with a much needed update for the forums platform, and a long awaited mobile friendly site as well.
We switched from a really crappy BBPress forum platform to a robust Xenforo platform.
The other parts of the site where we have articles (blog posts) for posting tobacco reviews, Greg Pease's column, Fred Brown's column, news, and The Pipes Magazine Radio Show have always used what I consider the best, and most popular content management system (CMS), which is WordPress.
The typical hierarchy has WordPress at the top, and the forums being subservient. However, Xenforo requires it to be the other way around, and to bridge WP and X, there is a specific platform we are forced to use.
Had I known then what I know now, I would have never done this.
There have been tons of issues which have been mostly invisible to you guys. There are numerous bugs that have taken a lot of my time, and cost me extra money to pay my developer to fix, and they never seem to stop. Having the bridge between Xenforo and WordPress has been a nightmare.
The plan is to de-couple the two platforms. The pain is not worth the convenience of automatically creating a PipesMagazine.com WordPress account when someone signs up to the forums.
On my other site that does not have Xenforo, updating WordPress plugins (they require updates constantly) takes a few minutes. With Xenforo, it can take hours.
The other part of the plan is to update to a more modern, and simple blog theme (forums stay the same) instead of the current layout.
