THE MOVE - Coming March 21st to a JC near you

We've done some styling testing on our Xenforo test board. Hopefully once we're all moved we'll have time to convert more banners.

 

So maybe I missed an announcement about the decision to use XenForo vs. vBulletin. Having said that, though (and having used vBulletin forums), I think XenForo looks fine... not "horrible". It just looks simple and clean (and modern, which the current JC forums don't really look). Also don't see the need to make it as close to an exact copy as possible, especially since it can apparently be customized to still feel somewhat similar to the JC that we're all used to. Change is not necessarily bad.

 

There's no conversion process for converting IGN's database format to VBulletin. The more Grimby and I (and Philip Wise's people) looked at it the more intricate it got. IGN said they would export our data in Xenforo format so that pretty much decided things. Grimby did look into costs involved with converting between Xenforo and VB and what he found was pretty expensive for the amount of data involved.

 

Makes sense. Thanks for all of your guys' work on this.

 

How exciting.

 

Although I can definitely believe it... I also still can't quite believe that these boards, boards whose appearance have been a part of my life for nearly nine years and for others much longer - will soon be no more.

 

I tried to a while ago change my e-mail address on my account. I still want to be on there. I have allot of fan fiction on the fan fiction boards.

 

So, what I want to know is if we can delete old accounts on the new board? Here I am, wearing one of my old socks that I don't need anymore and it is taking up an e-mail address -- which is why I want to delete it. I guess I'd rather not just leave it hanging.

How long are we supposed to be on temporary boards?

 

And here I am in another old sock that is taking up an e-mail address that I can probably do without. Any hope of getting rid of old accounts once we move?

 

Ooooooh, merging accounts. I like the sound that.

Geee, you'd think I'd found the lost sock dimension.

 

Some might think it looks old, but I still feel like the JC is the best looking board I visit on the internet. It just looks so clean.

One of the best thing about it is the small icon sizes though. I hope we'll stick with that.

 

I must say I agree with that. I've been keeping an eye on the IGN boards during their conversion and I really don't like the large icons, especially the animated ones. They make it look too cluttered.

 

The Ign icons are pretty big. I do hope you end up letting us pick our own icons eventually. It's one small thing you can do to make this place a bit more fun. We aren't exactly cruising on the top spot of big boards anymore, I think the training wheels can finally come off. I also hope that we can increase the size a little, not Ign size but an extra 20 pixel each way wouldn't kill ya. Exciting stuff here finally. Looking forward to some change.

 

Your going to set me off in a minute.

Very true. The Boards still stand up to scrutiny after all these years.

I have no way of proving this, but I'm sure the main reason the JC took off and became one of the biggest forums on the internet while many other SW forums never really took off, is the look and feel of the forums was so darn good.

 

Thanks very muchly.

Eh, I doubt it. Back in ye olde days practically everything (including TFN) used UBB.

Indeed, I still remember the gnashing of teeth when we first moved to Snowboards in '01 - our usernames, post stars etc were all shoved up alongside the header above the the post (and paraphernalia such as personal icons didn't exist back then). It took a little while before we got our current look (which pretty much mirrors our old UBB layout).

 

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/halibut/frymove.jpg">

 

Well I joined a lot of Star Wars forums between 01 and 05 and none of them stood out like the JC. I remember the forums at Star Wars . com as being particularly horrible.

 

A fair chunk of SW boards had died out by that time however. I still remember the fandom that was around circa. 98-00 - forum sites were everywhere. Even humble little obscure Geocities webpages seemed to have a forum attached to them. Many of these had vanished by the time Episode 2 rolled around though.

Ultimately I guess it's a case of YMMV. I like TFN's look (both under UBB and the current Snowboards look) but I've never really considered it superior to many other forums I've posted on over the years.






Anyways, back on the track - the move. I'll pack my bags.

 

Regarding the look and feel of the forums... just to add to what I said, I think the current JC looks good but I think it could still do with a refresher of sorts. It has a lot of links on some pages, and a lot of colored backgrounds and lines as well... just some elements that make it look a little busy or dated, but not bad. I think that some customization of a simple, clean look like XenForo has could make the future JC forums look even better. And of course, features like e-mail that work again.

I agree with those above who said that the current icons are a good size. I also don't like the look of large or animated icons/avatars.

 

I don't mind large avatars. I think 150x150 is perfect. But I hate animated avatars. Really my big pet peeve is big signatures.

 

[image=http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/3736/tumblrlai4k4a9wg1qe0ecl.gif]

 

Do we have to wear pants?

 

Dress code will be formal for the opening.

 

Or the lost password dimension...