Important! The 'New Fire Panel Forums' are here!

FORUM UPGRADES COMPLETE!
Hi everyone! If you missed the original announcement and were possibly wondering why on earth the forums were offline for the past 24 hours… Also why they look and function so differently, it is because we migrated from phpBB to Discourse. There are many reaons for this outlined in the original post below. Thank you for your patience, and PLEASE know that we are STILL going to be making some changes. Play around with Discourse a bit, and feel free to comment should you have any questions. We are working on the “Forum Tips & Tricks” section to provide insight on Discourse, we are also working to hopefully eventually get to a more customized theme, though this is less of a priority.

original post below

Hi everyone! Stick through this post because there’s important information that you need to be aware of! Important dates are at the bottom of this post.

History
If you’ve been around the Fire Panel Forums for a while, you’ve seen it evolve over the years, but for quite a long time now we’ve been using the phpBB software which has not evolved in correlation with the rest of the world. phpBB is a PHP based program with a MySQL based back end. It works, sure, but it certainly could be better. As years progress, the forum software https://www.discourse.org/ has been taking over the forum world, and offers many more features that phpBB simply cannot with out major modifications that are too difficult to maintain.

New Features!

  • Many of the following have been requested in the “Suggestion Box” over the years…
  • Editing and Deleting posts… Always (Okay technically we could’ve done this here but it’s been a rule since before my time)
  • Dark Mode (and other theme selection)
  • Liking Posts
  • Reply directly to a post (rather than just quote a user)
  • Sign in with Google or Discord
  • Increased mobile-friendliness
  • Push Notifications to Browser (optional, can always be turned off!)
  • 2-Factor Authentication increases security significantly! (Optional)
  • More profile customization, including banners and similar.
  • Works like a Mobile App when saved to your iOS or Android home screen!

What are the caveats?
With all good things come some troubles, here’s what we can expect:

  • While there is an option to transfer user passwords, the transition program does not appear to work as it should. Users will be need to reset their passwords. Don’t worry, as long as you have a valid email linked to your account, this is an easy, fast process!
  • Things are going to look and work a little differently than we’re used to… This is a learning curve for you and me both. Please be patient with us, but feel free to give feedback on the new forums!
  • YouTube embeds do not copy over properly on the new forums. Original posters can edit the post to fix it, but a YouTube video ID can be seen by all users, making it easy to copy and paste to view the video. (Mods can edit it too, but we are very limited on time…)
  • Some images and links load goofy, unfortunately this is out of our control as well.
  • Users that no longer exist show up as ‘system’ but their original posts remain visible

Final Thoughts
As you can see, there’s a lot of good but minimal trouble this will cause. Rest assured, we’ll be writing the “Forum Tips & Tricks” section from scratch to help everyone transition to the new site with hopefully minimal hiccups. I’m very excited for this, and I hope you are too! I promise to work hard to keep these forums alive and well. I’ve learned a lot from the members here, and I want everyone to be able to enjoy them for many years to come. This transition has been a plan of mine for quite some time, so I’m excited to finally bring it to light. With that being said, this transition process is set to begin early next week! My current plan is Monday, February 15th, though that is subject to change. The forums will be offline during the transition process, as migration of data is a critical, yet time consuming piece of this.

1 Like

Happy 4251-13 sounds

Those previews look amazing! Can’t wait!

Yeah I’m really excited for it! Especially as someone who hates trying to use the forums on my phone because they don’t quite work right… :upside_down_face:

Well, while I admit it’ll be nice to have most of these changes, to be honest I don’t really like the new layout design, I guess 'cause I’m so familiar with & used to the existing one. Not really sure what else to say other than that.

Here’s the good news, we’ll be able to format it more as time goes on. This is admittedly a very “vanilla” setup if you will, in that it’s very much the default style of Discourse. With that being said, however, it supports multiple themes that are fully customizable, and we can always add new ones!

Like I said, it’s a learning curve for us all, but I do think long term it will be a good one!

Can’t wait!

[quote=randomperson post_id=88180 time=1613077751 user_id=3878]

Did you mean February 15?

[/quote]

Oop… Yeah I have no idea where that came from… I was pretty tired while writing this last night… :sweat_smile:

i think the forums as they are now look better then that new software and with other concerns, will we need to make new accounts?

[quote=VRRyan post_id=88182 time=1613093635 user_id=6276]

i think the forums as they are now look better then that new software and with other concerns, will we need to make new accounts?

[/quote]

Looks like all the data was transferred over, so no.

[quote=VRRyan post_id=88182 time=1613093635 user_id=6276]

will we need to make new accounts?

[/quote]

You will NOT need to make new accounts, you’ll only need to reset your password which is done with a simple email.

I understand the concerns of the forums looking different, it will be a change but there are too many things wrong with phpBB to justify sticking with it. Like I said, we can make custom themes over time! :blush:

[quote=TheAlmightyZach post_id=88184 time=1613097023 user_id=3249] [quote=VRRyan post_id=88182 time=1613093635 user_id=6276]

will we need to make new accounts?

[/quote]

You will NOT need to make new accounts, you’ll only need to reset your password which is done with a simple email.

I understand the concerns of the forums looking different, it will be a change but there are too many things wrong with phpBB to justify sticking with it. Like I said, we can make custom themes over time! :blush:

[/quote]

ok

I am excited about this update!

Goodnight, TFP. See you on the other side!

Good morning TFP,
It looks like only the attachments are broken.
But everything else works fine.

Yeah, that is a known issue… YouTube embeds are all messed up too (that was a custom BBCode we made, which is why) I’ll do my best to fix what I can, but I knew that during the transfer nothing was going to be perfect.

1 Like

Yes. Not everything is prefect all the time…
At least posters can be able to edit the message containing the picture.

Hi Zach, I’m here in the new Fire Panel Forums and it does look really good and the new features are awesome. Keep up the great work with the site!

2 Likes

Thank you! I’m still actively working on it as we speak. Site is moving a little slower than I’d like it to, so I’m working on some speed enhancements!

1 Like