phpBB?

OzarkQ

I was just wondering - as a suggestion, is there any interest / possibility of using a different software for the forum here, such as phpBB? I know WMK is working hard on many of the technical glitches of sporadic font sizes, pictures not showing up in posts etc - but would it be easier to use a program that's in wider use? I think there are even free versions out there.

For example:
[ul]http://www.home-barista.com/forums/[/ul]

I really don't know much about how the design works for the BB - but thought it might be worth a test shot if possible.

WMK

OzarkQ,

This suggestion has been made before. We chose the current forum software because stand-alone forums like phpBB, or VBulitin, did not integrate well with the rest of the site -- we began this effort several years ago.

Also, though many of our newer members have not seen the "old" forum, we added the "classic" view to provide our long time members with the same, or at least very similar, look and feel to what they were used to.

And, actually, the font sizes, and many of the other current issues have very little to do with the forum software. They are instead related to the template we built way back then when we weren't as familiar with style sheets and such.

We will, in time, investigate the current state of phpBB and other popular forum software; and, either switch to one of them (but that would require quite a bit of work if we wish to keep what we have -- i.e. classic view, all the current messages, etc.). Or, we may instead of switching, take good ideas from them and implement them in our forum.

OzarkQ

Great - thanks for the background... I'm pretty new here, but looking at the number of posts of certain memebers... it seems that a few people LIVE here :laugh:

Thanks for the site and all the work it takes to keep it going!
Geoff