A note on the future

[roddy]

I just wanted to issue a quick heads-up on some changes that will be happening over the next few (several?) months.

The software the forums run on, Vbulletin, has been in a fairly long, dragged-out process of producing its next major upgrade, Vbulletin 4.0. To cut their long story short, there's been a takeover, major staff changes, and general discontent amongst their users at pricing and licensing policy. However, the product is now approaching something that looks like finished.

Apart from some fairly significant cosmetic changes, this will also bring quite a bit of new and improved functionality. Social groups will, hopefully, become actually usable and not the half-abandoned tacked-on function they are now. The blog module, which I purchased, installed, and promptly uninstalled when I decided it was rubbish, will no longer be rubbish. A CMS will allow posts to be published either as forums topics for discussion, or articles for comment; and will give significantly more control over how the home page looks (I know regular users tend not to use the front page much, but new ones do).

We may also lose, at least temporarily, some functions currently provided by plug-ins which may not be available for VB 4.0. The only major one I can think of is the mobile version. But again, the new design should be more mobile-friendly in its own right.

There are a few changes I've been meaning to make - there seems to be good support for a Classical Chinese forum; as gato has correctly pointed out we should have a 'Studying in China' section; I've mentioned having one designated topic for discussion of any particular school; etc - which I've held off on as I'd rather make the changes as part of the upgrade. Apologies to anyone who's waiting for those.

So when this is all done, some of the changes may be . . .

Users will be able to start their own blog on here, with a url along the lines of Chinese-forums.com/blog/roddy. Blog posts will turn up as part of searches and in new content listings. These would be pitched as study / China journals.

You'll be able to start social groups and have a reasonable chance of them not failing due to being completely invisible. New messages will show up in new content listings and search, and the core functionality should be much better.

The CMS will allow more control over what's on the front page. An excellent post that's buried on Page 12 of an ongoing discussion could be easily copied to the front page, while someone who just posts 'Does anyone know anything about BLCU' might have their post removed from the front page (it could still be seen in the forum). It's also a lot more attractive. There might be different home pages for different sections - ie Chinese-forums.com/living-in-china; Chinese-forums.com/classical-chinese

A site sidebar might be present on all pages, listing recent activity and anything we're currently highlighting.

It's all a bit up in the air at the moment, but I'd say these will be the most notable changes since 2005 when we switched to VB in the first place. For those of you who resent change - the core forums functionality will still be there, and while it'll look different, we'll get used to it.

Any thoughts on how all this should work, any requests for changes (don't hold your breath, but you never know), and screams of both joy and disgust are welcome.

Actual timetable - hard to say at the moment. VB are releasing a beta to customers mid-month. That won't be installed here, but there may be a development install somewhere which I could open to members so they can have a look, get used to it, and comment. That would be a throwaway site though, the content would be unlikely to survive. When VB release the final version I'll likely wait at least a few weeks to ensure they've got the bugs ironed out, and then do the upgrade on here.

See here for some screenshots. Bear in mind this is only beta software, not a finished product.

[muyongshi]

Hmmm it seems like the new format is supposed to be very multi-media friendly. Not sure that I like the idea of inline youtube videos clouding up the rest of the content. But other than that it doesn't seem like a major change in terms of everyday use.

[roddy]

That's probably not something we'd use - one, I'm not keen on it myself, two, overseas video providers are / might be blocked; and Chinese ones are slow to use overseas; and three I'm generally wary of third party content - Youtube videos are going to increasingly become methods for Google to get ads to the readers of the pages they're embedded in. And showing users ads is my job, thanks.

Maybe in some cases - the First Episode Project is the obvious example, or if the video itself is the topic of discussion (ie, 'Can anyone help me figure out what he says at 3:14), but not just for the fun of it.

[muyongshi]

I'm with you on that! However, the hard part will be on you admins as in that sense you couldn't just turn it off across the forums if you want those exceptions allowed. Well maybe can do selective restrictions but it seems like that would be a pain in the keester.

[chrix]

Classical Chinese forum yay

[chrix]

Also, since I already have a blog on learning Chinese (which is now largely written in German, but I'm not averse to posting in other languages either), would this blog thing allow for some kind of mirroring/auto-update mechanism or would it have to be the good ol' cut & paste method?

[roddy]

I'm not 100% sure, it might be possible to import via RSS. But to be honest anyone already running their own blog may want to just stick with that - I'm not sure how much advantage you'd get from duplicating content on to here, and I don't think we'd want to encourage posts along the lines of 'I wrote a blog post about . . go read it.' Then again, posting on here also may increase your overall readership, I don't know.

[chrix]

well, except for the chengyu stuff over on Chinesepod, I'm mostly posting my own notes, and not posting for a large audience, but most bloggers, including me, are always happy about more feedback

[renzhe]

Sounds good.

A CMS will allow posts to be published either as forums topics for discussion, or articles for comment

I've been thinking whether a blog+comments might be a better format for the first episode project and bring more exposure.

It might be something to consider, once this actually becomes an (easy) option.

[roddy]

there may be a development install somewhere which I could open to members so they can have a look, get used to it, and comment.

If anyone wants to take a look at this, they can visit sinorhino.com. For the password pop up is then sinorhino / roar! and once you're past that you can look around and if you want register and post. Please note that a) this is an entirely vanilla install, I haven't imported any data from here onto that site, and B) anything you post may well disappear and c) this is still beta software - you'll no doubt find problems.

Can't imagine too many people will be interested, but it's there anyway, so . . .

Edit: Had to turn that off for licensing reasons anyway.

Edited November 17, 2009 at 12:31 PM by roddy