Why is a tech forum using some of the worst software available?

[torpid]

Anyone who thinks PHP is even remotely in the same league as .net knows nothing about programming. PHP is a great scripting language, but that's about it. Redoing fuestalk in PHP would do nothing but harm.

Fusetalk isn't amazing or anything, but it's much better than phpbb and vBulletin. MUCH better.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Quasmo

Originally posted by: Zenmervolt

Originally posted by: angminas

Originally posted by: montypythizzle
The search function is there....
next to the profile and help button...

Search button, yes. Search function, no.

I wonder sometimes if it's crappy and useless on purpose, so people will be less able to dredge up troll bait. There are a lot of people here who do a lot of that anyway. Imagine if search actually worked. The whole forum would be nothing but a bunch of it said, it said.

Everyone b*tches about the search, I've never had a problem with it. Never.

ZV

So you've never used it?

:thumbsup::laugh:

Just because you're ignorant of a problem, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Repeating "never" for emphasis just drives that ignorance home. It's not like people just picked the search feature at random. Hell, I'll even give you an example.

Go to Off Topic and put DNA (search phrase picked at random) in the search box and click search. 5 threads returned. Two have DNA in the topic title.

Go to Advanced Search, enter DNA under "All of these words." Select Off Topic only. Click search. No threads!

 

[torpid]

phpbb's search is the only decent one, and even then it's kind of stretching the word decent. vBulletin has this "advanced search" which is the only search ever worth doing because the normal search doesn't restrict to the current forum by default. Then you go to advanced search and it has all the forums selected by default. And when you finally do search, it doesn't group the results into threads, it just shows them in somewhat random order post by post.

 

[randomlinh]

other than the beaten to death search... I second or third the bbcode. The way fusetalk does it is backwards thinking, at least bbcode is more like actual html in the sense it goes link:text as opposed to text:link

 

[Special K]

Why do threads get auto-archived? Every other board I've ever been to allows you to post in a thread regardless of its age. Sure some people will say "quit bumping dead threads", but if you post another thread on the same topic, someone else will say "quit posting new threads on the same topic, use one of the other threads to post in". It's a catch-22 I guess.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Special K
Why do threads get auto-archived? Every other board I've ever been to allows you to post in a thread regardless of its age. Sure some people will say "quit bumping dead threads", but if you post another thread on the same topic, someone else will say "quit posting new threads on the same topic, use one of the other threads to post in". It's a catch-22 I guess.

I assume it's for technical (DB) reasons. There are over 500,000 active threads right now.

 

[Platypus]

lol coldfusion

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: Special K
Why do threads get auto-archived? Every other board I've ever been to allows you to post in a thread regardless of its age. Sure some people will say "quit bumping dead threads", but if you post another thread on the same topic, someone else will say "quit posting new threads on the same topic, use one of the other threads to post in". It's a catch-22 I guess.

Many forums I visit do this. Not all that uncommon at all, IMO.

 

[Safeway]

Originally posted by: torpid
phpbb's search is the only decent one, and even then it's kind of stretching the word decent. vBulletin has this "advanced search" which is the only search ever worth doing because the normal search doesn't restrict to the current forum by default. Then you go to advanced search and it has all the forums selected by default. And when you finally do search, it doesn't group the results into threads, it just shows them in somewhat random order post by post.

vBulletin has the best search feature out of any forum software I have used. It searches both thread title and body.

 

[zeruty]

OP, maybe you should PM Zuni and ask him that question??

 

[Adul]

a lot of features that fusetalk offers are simply not enabled on this site. So what you see is not necessarily what the software is capable off. Also the search function not working properly I think has something to do or rather what not has been done with with the MSSQL server in a good long while.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: Safeway

Originally posted by: torpid
phpbb's search is the only decent one, and even then it's kind of stretching the word decent. vBulletin has this "advanced search" which is the only search ever worth doing because the normal search doesn't restrict to the current forum by default. Then you go to advanced search and it has all the forums selected by default. And when you finally do search, it doesn't group the results into threads, it just shows them in somewhat random order post by post.

vBulletin has the best search feature out of any forum software I have used. It searches both thread title and body.

The actual act of searching is fine. It's the UI that you have to use to search and the way it presents results that are a big problem. I almost never use search on vBulletin for that very reason.

 

[Adul]

Originally posted by: SagaLore
If you really want to know why we're using fusetalk, it really has most to do with the fact that one of the developers for anandtech also works or worked for fusetalk. So they got a really good deal on the license.

This latest version is quite stable. I remember the horrific JRUN errors of the past...

Actually Jason Clark created fusetalk back in the day to address the needs of Anandtech. It also became its own product. Fusetalk runs on Cold fusion or .net.

The.net version is soooo much better then the cold fusion version. The biggest issue with the CF version was the CF server bugs.