benJamin wrote:
I haven't been able to find anything useful in vBulletin yet, but Drupal has some useful API stuff for the possibility of having the die-hard non-CSS browser users to build their own front-end and let the core team get on with the job of servicing the rest.
The reason behind my decision was actually a logic progression.
- vB allows us to save the forum and user information which is by far the most important.
- vB has an image gallery that we could use to save the images from the old site, albeit we will need to do it manually.
- vB can be expanded indefinitely via a "blank page mod" meaning if we want a news module, I can write one.
- vB has great and useful features such as social groups (which for example, I can set up a "Amiga.org steering committee" and others like SACC could easily set up an "Amiwest 2009 planning" group.
- vB has blogs, which not everyone will find useful, some will.
- vB can be expanded with project management tools which would allow programmers to set up "projects" on the site and manage bugs, suggestions, to do lists, etc. Just for myself -- again, another example -- it will be nice to use to track bugs, lists, and feature requests for the site itself.
I fully admit that Drupal will more than likely be able to do all those things and more, but again as others have pointed out, Drupal is not a CMS (ready to go out of the box like xoops or other CMS engine) but a framework around which you have to completely build up a site from scratch.
Besides, even with expansion, since Drupal is not focused on being a forum software, the forums and forum management for Drupal seem to completely suck, no matter how hard they try.
Since the PHP4 server switch will happen before 5/31, I frankly don't have the time to go to Drupal and make it usable for this community, and history has taught me how absolutely impatient this community can be. Especially with change.
Besides, since the forum and user data is already salvageable by vB, there is NOTHING stopping us from embracing it, then developing a Drupal system up around vB and tying the two together.
The big step, and reason for my choice was to be able to save the forum and user data, which will then have it in a modern format that can later be transferred into any other program we decide to embrace.
Wayne