I feel I must express my utmost disappointment with the ubb.threads program itself and in this web site as well.
I have ran a ubb.classic board as a hobby of mine (
here for over 2 years. The main function of the board is to create an environment where kids can trade and sell their pokemon cards relatively safe.
I upgraded the ubb.classic site 3 times in two years, each time using ubbdev.com to locate/install/troubleshoot all the hacks I used. By far, the two most popular hacks as I see it are:
1. Avatars (normal members pick from a selection, custom for admins/mods
2. Custom Titles w/ Stars
Currently, the forums have 24,000 members, 58 forums, 250,000+ total posts. Our maximum user's online record hit 511 on the 1st of this month..
Now, I have been told many times that ubb.classic was never meant for more than 20k members and the slowly increasing flow of emails from members experiencing odd errors convinced me that our next upgrade was rapidly approaching.
After (admittedly not too much) research it seemed clear ubb.threads was my answer. It took just a little time to find ubbdev.com which, given my profession (internet design and marketing), is not a good sign, but I am here nonetheless.
After checking out most of this site and ALL of the V6 thread development posts, I was convinced that the additional features would absolutely WOW my members and everyone would be happy
I upgraded from ubb.classic 6.3.1 to ubb.threads 6.0.3 this past Tuesday (3 days ago) and honestly, I am regretting every bit of it.
For the record, I own the server my site is hosted on, its co-located with my ISP and I only have about 35 sites hosted on it. Unix Apache PHP MYsql etc..
The installation of ubb.threads itself went without flaw and I finished in about 10-15 minutes. I spent more time uploading the files than anything else.
The import process however proved MUCH more buggy than anyone indicated. I have imported my site twice now, and the results are the same. This is a short list of what was lost in the import:
- ALL Pm's were lost
- 1 forum was imported its completely empty.
- multiple messages from ALL forums it appears are missing, I dont know how many.
- moderators have their Title set to Moderator, and they are shown as mods when viewing forum x, but have no mod powers.
- @4,200 members are (missing?) ubb.classic said I had 23,700 members, and currently justdave's iip4.3 (that I installed last nite) agrees. The Main Index page says we only have 19,370 however.
In short, It could have went a lot worse. I figured most of these issues were easily fixed. I hoped the new features of UBBT would make it worth the while.
I opened the new UBBT tuesday night at around 8pm EST and the hate mail has yet to crest, much less even slow in pace as I thought it would once the "upgrade shock" wore off.
And that brings me to the 'New Features'.... The number one question in my in-box right now is "What new features?". The Favorite Forum and Favorite thread features in particular appear to have been shoved into the bottom of the page as an afterthought. How can a text link that says "Favorite" in 8pt type even aqequately convey what its there for in the first place?
Unfortunately, I dont think the shock is going to wear off. There appears to be absolutely NO supporting documentation on how to use any of the features a member sees in 'My Home' nor explainations of any of the options in their profile. What I mean by this is there is no explaination of anything for normal members within the FAQ page, nor on the "My Home" page either.
Ubbthreads minus any addons is truly a let down as far as my members are concerned. Most are referring to this as a "downgrade"
Addons! Aside from the forums bursting at the seams, my second biggest reason for all these upgrades was all these cool ass addons!
Especially JustDave's IIP4.3, which just knocked my socks off! It more than makes up for severe shortage of overall addons/hacks that can be found here.
Which brings me finally to my disappointment in this web site. As I mentioned, I am very familar with ubbdev.com and my criticism is derived by comparing you to them. I don't mean this to be insultive, I simply wish to express my direct experiences in all this so that you might see from my point of view.
First off, pick SOME type of organizational structure! When I came to this site for the first time I went immediately to the Finished and Beta Mods forums to identify as quickly as I could what mods were available.
Browsing both of these forums, I found it nearly impossible to figure out what all the addons were. Please remember I am completely unfamilar with ubb.threads. What I found were a lot of posts that gave almost no description of what there modification even is!
This post is a great example of what I am talking about.
I am completely unable to tell What this Calendar does, what features it has, what version ubbt is it compatible with. Admittedly, not ALL the mods lacked this info, however the many messages that lack any pertitent made it very hard.
It wasnt until yesterday that I found the IIP4.3 addon, located not in the Finished or Beta mod forums but instead in the Forum Design Integration forum.. It seems to be the only addon located there...
As it turns out, I cant use IIP anyway. With such a large database of posts and members, IIP is taking as long as 3-4 minutes to generate the Entrance Page. I began removing pals one at a time to try to come up with something that would load and am left with
this-----------------------
Ok I posted all this only to relate my personal experiences with both UBBT and this web site. I do this as constructive criticism only. I greatly repect all the members of ubbdev.com who dedicate their time, money and/or energy on things I am here enjoying for free as well those at Infopop. Please be assured I did not intend to offend anyone with this post. Should I have done so, I apologize.
Michael
