If the forum switches to Discourse, I’ll support that decision.
If we stay with SMF, I’ll support that.
I’m easy to please. 
I think you’re right here. I know what I want and what I’m looking for, but I’m ignorant about a lot of the technicals that go on behind the scenes. For an example, check below…
The integration is not solely to drive up traffic for peercoin.net. That is a side benefit. The primary reason as I detailed above is to create a unified brand, something I believe is very important to the future of Peercoin. Also, as I previously said integration means that the community will be located in the same place as the main website content, wallet downloads, videos, tools, info, etc… Besides new community members being exposed to this content, (since it’s all in the same location) it will create more motivation for our existing community members to keep the website updated and add more resources that can be linked to from the main navigation.[/quote]
You misunderstood me. I think that actually moving domains will be detrimental to the traffic for all peercoin related info and sites and price. We are simply cutting down the search engine results by reducing the number of sites that will be returned. In this instance I would say what is your thoughts to keep the forum on the peercointalk domain but run discourse as the software? I think I am missing what the Peercoin ‘unified brand’ is here in your statement. As you seem to want to put all peercoin info videos tools etc under one domain. Well nothing stopping doing that, why does the community have to move domain to then?
My point I am trying to highlight is do you know the value that peercointalk has in its SEO ranking and how much it would take to replicate that on peercoin.net. Look at what we would be essentially throwing away through a migration to a new domain.
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/peercointalk.org
http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/keyword-position.html[/quote]
I think you’re correct here that I’ve misunderstood you, a result of me knowing nothing about how domain names and SEO work. What I thought you were saying is that if we change forum software, we would kill the SEO. I think what you’re trying to say now is that if we change domain names it will kill off the SEO. For example, changing from PeercoinTalk.org to discuss.peercoin.net. Is this correct?
When I talk about unified branding, I’m mainly talking about the visual identity of Peercoin. This includes things like the color theme, logos (P2P symbol & leaf), simplicity and minimalism of peercoin.net, etc…
Because of this, I have no problem with continuing to use PeercoinTalk.org as the domain name for the forum. The domain name is not really important to me. What IS important is that PeercoinTalk looks and feels identical to peercoin.net, and I still believe that can only be achieved by using discourse. What we’ll need to do is make it appear that PeercoinTalk.org and peercoin.net are the same site. This can be done by including the header logo and navigation buttons and dropdown menus from peercoin.net on the PeercoinTalk.org forum. I have already done this in my concept image here…
http://i.imgur.com/01lb5yQ.png
This way the PeercoinTalk.org domain name remains, but it appears to people that they’re still on peercoin.net, since they can navigate to other peercoin.net pages through the forum dropdown menus in the header. And if they happen to be on the peercoin.net home page, the opposite is true, they’ll be able to reach PeercoinTalk.org by choosing “forum” from the same navigation menu.
Would this solve the SEO and server problems if we kept using PeercoinTalk.org as the domain name, (as opposed to switching to discuss.peercoin.net) but making it appear we’re on peercoin.net by including the same header logos and menus? If so, where would the original smf forum be located if it was no longer at PeercoinTalk.org?
These are all good points, however I meant for this to only be a temporary solution until we got a chatbox with history developed and implemented somewhere on the new forum, most likely at the top of the page in category view, similar to how it is with the current forum. I didn’t mean for this to be a permanent solution.
[quote=“FuzzyBear, post:41, topic:3336”]You said that I should be compensated for any migration work the forum needs and here would be my breakdown of time and costs for me to feel comfortable administering a discourse forum.
Setting up new server $20/month. backup of passwords, requirements of forum for server - 1 hour
Sorting out DNS and pointing domain for the new forum - 1 hour
Actually setting up a base forum - 1 hour
Setting up new user registration email through the desired email host and testing - 2 hours
Researching and Setting new user privileges, and membergroups or looking to see how discourse controls board restrictions - 4 hours
Researching and Setting Spam prevention and testing with new users, plus allowing 3 hours for any cleanup of spam that does get through - 5 hours
Phase 1 apply css styling for peercoin theme forum designed by others- 2 hours
Close SMF for new posts, write explanations of why no new posts, keep chatbox open, disable registrations, enable PM’s still, take manual snapshot of forum server - 4 hours
Migrate SMF to new server as running the backup off the new server will be the most cost effective in long run and test it all works - 7 hours
Migrate all the peercointalk services code and relevant DNS, will have ssl for these by then as well to the new server - 40 hours
shut down current peercointalk server and verify all data is being served by new server - 1 hour
Extra time cost
General research into how to admin a discourse forum so I can run the forum - 30 hours
Need to find and inform websites that use JSON feed from us about the migration and their site will not work or does discourse offer JSON feed and possible setup - 3 hours
+/- 10% - 10 hours
my rates are $80 per hour
~110 hours = $8,800
1 PPC = $0.38
1/0.38 * 8800 = 23,157.89 PPC
It’s a lot of PPC. But this is a realistic cost for me of the migration, its unknown territory in a new software, there are a lot of services running off the peercointalk domain and these would all need to be migrated, installed, tested on the new server. This would be to have a forum without a chatbox as well. I would be working from scratch but throw another 30 hours into the mix and I would have a stab at getting a chatbox up and running on discourse.[/quote]
1. Does keeping PeercoinTalk.org as the domain name change anything you listed in the quote above?
2. What if developing chat functionality takes more or less than 30 hours? I assume this is something we should add to the total right, so another $2,400?
3. Peercoin is volatile, so how do you want to handle this? For example, we may raise half of your intended quote, but then PPC doubles, meaning that half the quoted amount of PPC now equals $8,800. Or the opposite case, we raise the full amount, but then PPC decreases by half.
4. Should we just raise Peercoin until the amount donated and current price equal $8,800 and then send it to you?
I think raising this money is doable, though it might take some time. I guess it depends on the value our community places in this transition and improved branding consistency.
[quote=“TomJoad, post:39, topic:3336”]Peercoin has a unique opportunity to capitalize on all of the development work that Ben, CoinGame, Woolly, and others have done to the Nu forum. While I can certainly understand Fuzzybear’s viewpoint that a forum switch is a large undertaking, there is really no comparison when it comes to functionality between this forum and Discourse. The visual mockups Sentinelrv and others created made me feel like I was looking at a brand that is sleek and modern. You would be surprised how willing users are to learn a new forum when it looks attractive.
We’ve found through our website analytics that forum traffic dominates the bulk of nubits.com activity. I suspect it is the same with Peercoin. PCT is a user’s main gateway to interacting with the Peercoin brand, and it currently doesn’t convey any of the branding elements (sleek, lightweight, energy-efficient) that a green and gold themed Discourse forum would. There are already other communities like Maidsafe using Discourse, and others who are planning on the upgrade (BitShares). It is because Discourse allows a customizable, interactive experience that looks fantastic on mobile (where a surprisingly high amount of website traffic is coming from).[/quote]
Now this is what I’m talking about! 
Besides minimalism, (sleek, lightweight, energy-efficient) are the words I’m looking for to describe what we need in forum software and discourse fits that description and peercoin.net. I also did not know that Bitshares and other crypto communities are looking to make the switch as well. This means they see the value in discourse too. We don’t want to be left behind while our competitors makes the switch.
Essentially yes, there is some clever work you can do to forward on the seo when making a domain change but if we were keeping the old forum up for any amount of time and running the new site I believe this is frowned on by the SEO and i think it has to be a blank slate for it to work properly ie a new domain with no recent history.
[quote=“Sentinelrv, post:50, topic:3336”]When I talk about unified branding, I’m mainly talking about the visual identity of Peercoin. This includes things like the color theme, logos (P2P symbol & leaf), simplicity and minimalism of peercoin.net, etc…
Because of this, I have no problem with continuing to use PeercoinTalk.org as the domain name for the forum. The domain name is not really important to me. What IS important is that PeercoinTalk looks and feels identical to peercoin.net, and I still believe that can only be achieved by using discourse. What we’ll need to do is make it appear that PeercoinTalk.org and peercoin.net are the same site. This can be done by including the header logo and navigation buttons and dropdown menus from peercoin.net on the PeercoinTalk.org forum. I have already done this in my concept image here…
http://i.imgur.com/01lb5yQ.png
This way the PeercoinTalk.org domain name remains, but it appears to people that they’re still on peercoin.net, since they can navigate to other peercoin.net pages through the forum dropdown menus in the header. And if they happen to be on the peercoin.net home page, the opposite is true, they’ll be able to reach PeercoinTalk.org by choosing “forum” from the same navigation menu.[/quote]
Ok yes this should be perfectly do-able, I have been playing round with a free theme on here and called it peercoin, was based off something that is not designed for this forum version but a few things have come to light very quickly and that all the peercoin branding of header, links, logo, colour schemes should and can be changed on here and should be. I am happy to start proper work on a theme that can be used for us here as I do not think it will take too long to knock one up for us.
Would this solve the SEO and server problems if we kept using PeercoinTalk.org as the domain name, (as opposed to switching to discuss.peercoin.net) but making it appear we’re on peercoin.net by including the same header logos and menus? If so, where would the original smf forum be located if it was no longer at PeercoinTalk.org?
[quote=“Sentinelrv, post:50, topic:3336”][quote=“FuzzyBear, post:41, topic:3336”]You said that I should be compensated for any migration work the forum needs and here would be my breakdown of time and costs for me to feel comfortable administering a discourse forum.
Setting up new server $20/month. backup of passwords, requirements of forum for server - 1 hour
Sorting out DNS and pointing domain for the new forum - 1 hour
Actually setting up a base forum - 1 hour
Setting up new user registration email through the desired email host and testing - 2 hours
Researching and Setting new user privileges, and membergroups or looking to see how discourse controls board restrictions - 4 hours
Researching and Setting Spam prevention and testing with new users, plus allowing 3 hours for any cleanup of spam that does get through - 5 hours
Phase 1 apply css styling for peercoin theme forum designed by others- 2 hours
Close SMF for new posts, write explanations of why no new posts, keep chatbox open, disable registrations, enable PM’s still, take manual snapshot of forum server - 4 hours
Migrate SMF to new server as running the backup off the new server will be the most cost effective in long run and test it all works - 7 hours
Migrate all the peercointalk services code and relevant DNS, will have ssl for these by then as well to the new server - 40 hours
shut down current peercointalk server and verify all data is being served by new server - 1 hour
Extra time cost
General research into how to admin a discourse forum so I can run the forum - 30 hours
Need to find and inform websites that use JSON feed from us about the migration and their site will not work or does discourse offer JSON feed and possible setup - 3 hours
+/- 10% - 10 hours
my rates are $80 per hour
~110 hours = $8,800
1 PPC = $0.38
1/0.38 * 8800 = 23,157.89 PPC
It’s a lot of PPC. But this is a realistic cost for me of the migration, its unknown territory in a new software, there are a lot of services running off the peercointalk domain and these would all need to be migrated, installed, tested on the new server. This would be to have a forum without a chatbox as well. I would be working from scratch but throw another 30 hours into the mix and I would have a stab at getting a chatbox up and running on discourse.[/quote]
1. Does keeping PeercoinTalk.org as the domain name change anything you listed in the quote above?
2. What if developing chat functionality takes more or less than 30 hours? I assume this is something we should add to the total right, so another $2,400?
3. Peercoin is volatile, so how do you want to handle this? For example, we may raise half of your intended quote, but then PPC doubles, meaning that half the quoted amount of PPC now equals $8,800. Or the opposite case, we raise the full amount, but then PPC decreases by half.
4. Should we just raise Peercoin until the amount donated and current price equal $8,800 and then send it to you?
I think raising this money is doable, though it might take some time. I guess it depends on the value our community places in this transition and improved branding consistency.[/quote]
- you would save the hour initially mentioned for repointing the domain. The issue is that discourse needs a linux server to host the forum, and currently we are on a windows server. So any migration to discourse would require all the steps above to make the migration. There is an advantage to running on a linux server cost and performance and security wise so it can also be seen as a valued migration in that instance.
- yes this was an optimistic estimate for the work as I would hope to have something up in a week that people could try but there may be bugs or new features wanted as always. Will probably develop into an ongoing project as the peercoin community seems to like the chatbox and I would want to ensure we have the archive history of it to. So this is why I put it on a separate mention but can be included in the total for my classification of a “no feature loss migration”
- The way I find works well is price is agreed in $, payment made in BTC or PPC, any payment made is deducted from the total at the agreed current exchange rate. This way neither party looses out or has surprises. Full or Part payment usually made upfront to start the work and remainder payment made upon completion of work. Repayment of over credited hours is calculated in % of hours to BTC/PPC and paid back in cryptocurrency as I will be holding it as PPC/BTC not dependent on the $ value. This way the investment has been made in the cryptocurrency, if the price rises or falls in that time there will still be a set amount of initial cryptocurrency invested returned. It was the way I worked with Nubits and all seemed to work well.
- I am happy to start working on rebranding the current SMF we have and any donations to this is greatly appreciated, I feel there is some desire for discourse from the community (most likely because of the nubits forum giving people a flavour of the grass on the other side of the fence) so I do see the benefit of looking to see what it can offer, as well as the point that if other crypto communities are migrating then yes we don’t want to be left behind but same time we don’t want to be keeping up with the Jones’s and just following the herd (dont forget that bitcointalk runs on the old 1.0 SMF version… we are on Version 2 here so they are clearly not so concerned about keeping uptodate with the software… most likely some mod or custom script they wrote for the forum though that making migrating up to 2.0 difficult), but the financial backing would show to me there is a vested interest from the community for us to at least try and see what discourse has to offer the peercoin community and something that we should look to build our own mods on. So yes money talks
Fuzzybear
Fuzzy, as mentioned before, CoinGame is working on an IRC chat mod for Nu on the side. It doesn’t use existing forum account names though, so I’m guessing it’s going to be pretty basic. At the same time, a lot of Peercoin people seem to be hesistant to move to discourse unless it already has chatbox functionality. It seems to me that both Nu and Peercoin communities are in need of a properly developed chatbox.
What if I were to submit a custodial grant proposal to have you develop a chatbox for the Nu forum which integrates with existing user accounts and stores chat history? If the proposal passed, you would get the NuBits to start development on this. Once finished and confirmed to be working, you could then setup discourse for PeercoinTalk (as long as we’ve raised the rest of the funds) and port the chatbox you developed for Nu to the new Peercoin forum. Both communities could gain from this arrangement I think. Basically, Nu shareholders are hiring a Peercoin developer (Fuzzy) to create a chatbox for their forum, which can then be ported back to PeercoinTalk.
At the same time you are developing this chatbox, we could be trying to raise the $8,720 (I subtracted that one hour) to pay you to learn about and setup discourse for PeercoinTalk. Do you think this is something that could work? I think it’s a clever way to lower the overall cost for the Peercoin community. One possible problem though, didn’t you say you needed to know how to develop in Ruby?
$8,720 (I subtracted that one hour) to pay you to learn about and setup discourse for PeercoinTalk.
With all due respect to Fuzzy and all work he invested so far in this forum I must state that number is detached from reality and I will not support it.
If that is really the number Fuzzy finds appropriate we should outsource this work. I am confident this can be done with 20-25% of that sum. I am talking about full design and implementation.
As for server, I am sure it can be find here in community. Somebody has to have a free VPS or something. If not, there could be fundraiser to collect funds to pay server for year in advance and than it will be repeated every year.
[quote=“peerchemist, post:53, topic:3336”]
$8,720 (I subtracted that one hour) to pay you to learn about and setup discourse for PeercoinTalk.
With all due respect to Fuzzy and all work he invested so far in this forum I must state that number is detached from reality and I will not support it.
If that is really the number Fuzzy finds appropriate we should outsource this work. I am confident this can be done with 20-25% of that sum. I am talking about full design and implementation.
[…][/quote]
With all due respect to Fuzzy one should honor the work he has invested in this forum.
The whole forum upgrade and switching to discourse is close to getting out of control.
A part of this community is starting to act like Peercoin were a business.
It isn’t!
Branding is nice.
But if achieving a seamless branding requires to ride roughshod over veterans like Fuzzy, who created this forum, administered it from the beginning, listened to people’s desires (honestly, who doesn’t like the chatbox history?), I give a shit on that branding!
Seriously, this topic contains posts with a tone I’ve rarely seen here.
I though it might be appropriate to adjust my tone as well.
Let’s start to focus on what of the idea of adjusting the forum with peercoin.net is good, what is important and what can be achieved at what effort.
And try to remember Sunny King’s recommendation: have fun!
I personaly think that branding should not be the main reason for replacing our forum software.
I really don’t think that we’ll get more peercoin fans just by having our forum look like peercoin.net.
Let’s change it only if there are major technical and/or functional reasons to do so.
Just my 2 cents.
[quote=“peerchemist, post:53, topic:3336”]
$8,720 (I subtracted that one hour) to pay you to learn about and setup discourse for PeercoinTalk.
With all due respect to Fuzzy and all work he invested so far in this forum I must state that number is detached from reality and I will not support it.
If that is really the number Fuzzy finds appropriate we should outsource this work. I am confident this can be done with 20-25% of that sum. I am talking about full design and implementation.
As for server, I am sure it can be find here in community. Somebody has to have a free VPS or something. If not, there could be fundraiser to collect funds to pay server for year in advance and than it will be repeated every year.[/quote]
The cost is high for the two main issues are
- I do not know discourse and if I was to be the admin like here then I would want some time to learn the new technology
- The migration of the forum to a new server and setting up with our current theme yes I would not expect this to actually take that long at all. The problem is I am running about 10 subdomains on the same server for various services. These would all need to be ported to the new server, verified they working as before, bringing them in line with the peercoin brand and fixing any issues found when migrating. This is where I expect the second large area of work to be needed.
So yes you could outsource the setting up of the new forum for much cheaper cost… hey even joozie showing he enjoying playing round with discourse and happy to help with admin, but if you want me to remain the admin for peercointalk I am saying I would only feel comfortable taking this position having had some training / time to research and play with the software. I would do this for free but I can not afford to do this at the moment and it requires too much of an investment in my time to just start.
I appreciate that I am charging the coding price that I usually ask when I am applying for a job so maybe this should be seen more as systems administrator work which would be more in the region of $30-$40 per hour for the migration work?
Regarding the building of the Chatbox through a Nubits Proposal, Yes this sounds like an interesting path to investigate but I do fear that I would be entering into an agreement with a lot of unknowns on the coding side and it would take me time to get up to speed on discourse before I would even begin to consider making an addon for the forum. I appreciate there would be help there from other developers so I am open to hear your suggestions and put me forward for a proposal if you feel the community wants it and would be willing to back it.
[quote=“masterOfDisaster, post:54, topic:3336”]With all due respect to Fuzzy one should honor the work he has invested in this forum.
…
Let’s start to focus on what of the idea of adjusting the forum with peercoin.net is good, what is important and what can be achieved at what effort.
And try to remember Sunny King’s recommendation: have fun![/quote]
Thanks for your support I have invested a lot of time, money and effort in the forum, and only want to provide what the users want. The forum for me is a great community that I am proud to be part of and the domain is an excellent portfolio for my own career but there is a point where if the time demands of the forum is too great and not providing any financial income for me then I will have to step down. Keeping as SMF I can just about maintain the required work needed and work on other projects for income, however the migration to a new platform would require more time. If you want me to be the admin for a discourse forum I have outlined the costs of what I would need invest my time in and hence NOT working or being paid elsewhere, and in this post I have made the most concessions I believe I can to that costing of my time.
The reason why I gave a breakdown of costs is that it puts a price on the desire for a migration and too see if that is what the community really wants? I have said from the start though that I do not want to be a blocker on this issue. So if you really want discourse but do not want to pay for migration there is nothing stopping someone else setting up their own peercoin forum and running it themselves, if this turns out to be the best solution and everyone migrates to that forum then so be it I will shut down peercointalk or repoint or hand over the domain ownership.
Fuzzybear
have fun!
I just wanted to post real quick before I go to work that it’s of paramount importance that Fuzzy remain the forum administrator. This can be done cheap, but I wouldn’t trust the job, or the new person setting it up. In order to ensure trust in the PeercoinTalk forum and its various services, Fuzzy would need to be the one that does the migration work. I see this as a win win situation. It’s a win for us because we get our new forum with better branding and a win for Fuzzy because he gets back in the Peercoin game with the large PPC payment for his work and renewed motivation to continue to stick with us and develop for Peercoin. For all we know, there is a whale out there that will see the value in this and donate the full amount rather quickly (or not). We won’t know until we try.
If you’re going to adjust the pricing for part of your work, could you please post an edited breakdown of the costs?
If you’re going to adjust the pricing for part of your work, could you please post an edited breakdown of the costs?[/quote]
would be the same hours breakdown as before but rate would be different so:
Setting up new server $20/month. backup of passwords, requirements of forum for server - 1 hour
Actually setting up a base forum - 1 hour
Setting up new user registration email through the desired email host and testing - 2 hours
Researching and Setting new user privileges, and membergroups or looking to see how discourse controls board restrictions - 4 hours
Researching and Setting Spam prevention and testing with new users, plus allowing 3 hours for any cleanup of spam that does get through - 5 hours
Phase 1 apply css styling for peercoin theme forum designed by others- 2 hours
Close SMF for new posts, write explanations of why no new posts, keep chatbox open, disable registrations, enable PM’s still, take manual snapshot of forum server - 4 hours
Migrate SMF to new server as running the backup off the new server will be the most cost effective in long run and test it all works - 7 hours
Migrate all the peercointalk services code and relevant DNS, will have ssl for these by then as well to the new server - 40 hours
shut down current peercointalk server and verify all data is being served by new server - 1 hour
Extra time cost
General research into how to admin a discourse forum so I can run the forum - 30 hours
Need to find and inform websites that use JSON feed from us about the migration and their site will not work or does discourse offer JSON feed and possible setup - 3 hours
+/- 10% - 10 hours
rates at $35 per hour
~109 hours = $3,815
1 PPC = $0.38
1/0.38 * 8800 = 10,039.47 PPC
Fuzzybear
[quote=“FuzzyBear, post:58, topic:3336”]+/- 10% - 10 hours
rates at $35 per hour
~109 hours = $3,815
1 PPC = $0.38
1/0.38 * 8800 = 10,039.47 PPC[/quote]
These costs are much more manageable, thank you. Do you think we should just make it an even $3,800 or do you think we should increase the amount a little in case it takes longer than your estimates? As you said, you’d end up refunding for the time not used. What do you think here?
I’m trying to figure out what we should do here. You say that before considering making the addon, you’d need to get up to speed with discourse. When you say this, are you talking about the 30 hours of general research in your estimate or something else? If it’s the 30 hours, then that would require us to raise the funds for the migration first so you could be paid for this research, before submitting a custodian proposal for the chat addon. But then if we raise these funds first, it’s always possible that Nu shareholders may not be interested or there could be a problem, for example creating the addon would cause problems with installing any new discourse software updates. (You used this argument for why BitcoinTalk hasn’t been updated. If the custodian proposal failed, then we would need to do a second round of fundraising, since we can’t setup the new forum without a discourse chatbox, as has been made clear by the community.
I don’t completely understand this. Are you just using latest view, where every thread on the forum is grouped together? If you want a sense of geography, use the category view, which simulates board categories similar to PeercoinTalk.[/quote]
Nope. Tried both views. I severely loath visiting discuss.nubits.com.
If peercointalk changes, I’ll probably start posting on bitcointalk instead and abandon the discussions if they are on Discourse. That could be a good thing for those that don’t like my views.
I find it too colorful, navigationally poor, and it hurts my eyes to focus on conversations there.
Those of you who love Discourse, hats off to you.
I hate it.
I hate it to the point, that every moment I’m there, I feel uncomfortable and want to leave. I’ve tried to adjust to it, and I just can’t. It’s that much of a difference.
Understand that I’ve been on the internet a long time, and I’ve followed technology improvements as they happen. 95% of the time I learn the new system, adjust, and keep current. With Discourse, I just can’t. It’s not in my DNA to go there.
If the community goes down this path, at the very minimum let it be a competing forum and see which one wins. I’m quite happy with peercointalk, it’s served us very well over the last almost 3 years, and my recommendation is don’t play with what already works.
FuzzyBear knows exactly what he is talking about when he refers to SEO.
Google not only indexes peercointalk, but it “ages” the authority of the postings here, and the links that are talked about and shared inbound from other sites to specific posts with certain URL’s.
Secretly they also pick up ranking information from gmail.com references too.
Peercointalk is doing very well with google and frequently shows up. This is not something to toy around with.
Even if you compensate Fuzzy for his time to convert to Discourse, it doesn’t mean Google will continue to serve the traffic it has had in the past.
The effect of endless scrolling = Bad for Google / SEO
The effect of endless scrolling = Bad for Google / SEO
Don’t know if that is an issue, but you’d have to create manual 301 redirects to the new domain for every indexed post and thread on the old domain. Add that to your costs.
Your new domain wouldn’t have the same PageRank or similar Alexa Rankings for a long time.
In search engine’s eyes, you are basically no longer that site, and have become someone “new”. Your search engine visibility will decrease. To earn it back could take an equal amount of time.
Your content could also be referenced differently, ranked differently, and each individual post and page could be categorized in Google’s results differently. What a gamble.
You’d be confusing people who have learned SMF, are adjusted to it (like myself), and adjusting to it.
If you weigh the financial costs, the frustrations, and annoyance, I don’t see enough of a reason to do it.
If you can use Bitcointalk (which is our current demographic we’re after at the moment), then you can use Peercointalk.
I have other things that I’d like to say, but I think I’ll stop here at the moment with one last statement.
Peercoin’s price and adoption is not due to forum software. Let’s use our energy somewhere more important.
Please, I beg you all not to go ahead with both integrating the forum with peercoin.net and switching to Discourse!
It will need to be voted on in the end. I don’t have the final say, nor does Fuzzy. The community does. Just so you know though, it was discussed and the domain name would remain peercointalk.org, so it wouldn’t be a true integration, just in physical appearance. For example, the domain would read peercointalk.org, but the header and menus would be the same as peercoin.net. Again though, this would need to be voted on by the community, so everyone will have their say.
I don’t think it is either. This is only one piece of the puzzle in my opinion, but it does matter to a certain degree.
However…I think I’ve seen enough resistance in this thread to hold off on this and see what a rethemed forum could look like. It’s not what I ultimately wanted, but if Fuzzy can make it as close as possible to the visuals I was expecting, then maybe this compromise will do. One thing that needs to be mandatory in a retheme though, as I’ve said before the header needs to replicate what we see on peercoin.net. It’s very important to tie in peercoin.net’s content with the forum as I’ve said in previous posts. The actual forum below the header will need to be worked on until we get the right look, similar to what we did when redesigning Peerunity’s visuals.
I don’t think it is either. This is only one piece of the puzzle in my opinion, but it does matter to a certain degree.
However…I think I’ve seen enough resistance in this thread to hold off on this and see what a rethemed forum could look like. It’s not what I ultimately wanted, but if Fuzzy can make it as close as possible to the visuals I was expecting, then maybe this compromise will do. One thing that needs to be mandatory in a retheme though, as I’ve said before the header needs to replicate what we see on peercoin.net. It’s very important to tie in peercoin.net’s content with the forum as I’ve said in previous posts. The actual forum below the header will need to be worked on until we get the right look, similar to what we did when redesigning Peerunity’s visuals.[/quote]
New theme is coming along nicely have a look for yourself and let me know your thoughts Cryptoblog - notícias sobre bitcoin e criptomoedas!
Fuzzybear
[quote=“FuzzyBear, post:64, topic:3336”]New theme is coming along nicely have a look for yourself and let me know your thoughts http://www.peercointalk.org/index.php?topic=3942.new#new
Fuzzybear[/quote]
OOohh I do like the new theme. I see it now (says only 2 other people are using it).
The only thing I notice is the big green leaf in the main forum view is a bit too large and when it repeats, it’s too noticeable. I wonder if we went with a smaller, semi-transparent leaf, if that could tone that down a bit.
Other than that, the rest of this looks really good. I’m going to stay on PeercoinNew for now.
[quote=“ppcman, post:65, topic:3336”][quote=“FuzzyBear, post:64, topic:3336”]New theme is coming along nicely have a look for yourself and let me know your thoughts http://www.peercointalk.org/index.php?topic=3942.new#new
Fuzzybear[/quote]
OOohh I do like the new theme. I see it now (says only 2 other people are using it).
The only thing I notice is the big green leaf in the main forum view is a bit too large and when it repeats, it’s too noticeable. I wonder if we went with a smaller, semi-transparent leaf, if that could tone that down a bit.
Other than that, the rest of this looks really good. I’m going to stay on PeercoinNew for now.[/quote]
Hey ppcman many thanks for the feedback very much appreciated
Made leaf on main page smaller and slightly lighter how that look?
Fuzzybear
Just catching up on this one. This looks like it is tearing the community apart! Hope we can all go forward as one though.
I agree that changing forum software is not the answer to sweep Peercoin up to new heights. Discourse is nice, but given the costs (or transfer of administrator), I’m not very keen to go this way.
As I’ve mentioned before Discourse doesn’t support older phones and tablets (3yr+) which are no longer updated by the manufacturers. I’ve found a way around to just have email updates when people post in my favorite threads as Discourse doesn’t work properly. I did notice that they did try to improve that recently. At least I can now open and read threads, but many functions like posting do not work properly and soem functions are not visible or accessible. It is certainly something to take into account for people in developing countries who are at least 1 or more generations behind us as it is not affordable for them to update every 1 or 2 years.
SMF is still being developed and many things can be added as @fuzzybear already did with the mentions. I’m sure there is more. I rather have an enthusiastic administrator who can read and write with the current software (SMF) and has a solid track record then someone ’ cheap’ running Discourse.
I think it is worth ‘theming’ SMF a bit and explore what could be improved and maybe add some of the tricks Discourse has in the next month before we make a decision to move forum software.
Just my 0.02 PPC
This is a repost of mine from this thread: http://www.peercointalk.org/index.php?topic=3942.0
Fuzzy, I think the work you’ve been doing to alter the original theme is great, but here is what I have in mind. We should have several themes to choose from and one default…
1. (Default Theme) dzinerstudion theme with the alterations that I’ve made.
2. (Optional Theme 1) The original theme altered with Peercoin colors. (what you’ve been working on the past couple days.)
3. (Optional Theme 2) The original blue theme for those who don’t want anything to change at all.
The dzinerstudio theme you saw me working on over the past several posts was just an unfinished concept I was working on while I was at work. When I got home, I spent around 4-5 hours altering this design to create a widescreen version. It also now includes the light gray background pieces behind the posts and board titles that were missing. The only thing that seems to be missing now is the Peercointalk.org logo, which I’m waiting on my designer for.
In light of some of the resistance that I’ve received and some convincing arguments, I’ve decided not to pursue discourse any longer. However, I want this new design I’ve been working on to be the default theme for the forum. The current theme should be one of the optional ones. This would require purchasing of the theme and some of the alterations I’ve made from the original design. You also said it would take more work to install the plugins on the new theme.
Please tell me how much you’d charge to buy this theme, set it up, make the required alterations and reinstall the plugins. Once I have a price for the work required, I’ll see what I can do. This should most likely be the final design, with the exception of the unfinished text logo in the upper left corner. Please zoom in if you must in order to get the full detail…
Full-Size: http://i.imgur.com/NO7XsdD.png
