This Weekend’s AnandTech Forums Upgrade
Update 08/06 16:30 ET: And we're done, the new forums are live.
Taking a break from our usual technology news, we have a bit of site news to discuss this evening.
For the past couple of months we have been preparing a much-needed forums upgrade behind the scenes, one that will upgrade our circa 2009 vBulletin based forums with a newer platform based on XenForo. Among other improvements, this allows us to offer full HTTPS encryption for all connections (and better backend security), better spam control, and like the main AnandTech site itself, a single responsive design that adjusts to both desktops and mobile devices (but fear not, we’re also continuing Taptalk support).
With the bulk of the behind the scenes work having wrapped up, we’re finally ready to complete the upgrade and transfer everything over to the new forums. To do this we’ll be taking the AnandTech forums offline this Friday at 6pm ET (22:00 UTC). This will allow us to minimize the disruption and allow the bulk of the transfer to take place overnight, with the new forums set to come online on Saturday.
The full announcement from Purch’s community team is posted below. Further information can be found in the respective threads linked below, and, of course, our comment system will not be impacted by this change.
Greetings AnandTech members!
In the interest of substantially improving the user experience and security for all members in our community, we’re migrating the forum software from vBulletin to XenForo. We’re undertaking this important move for a number of reasons:
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Security is improved greatly in the new platform, and we’re also rolling out SSL as an additional security measure
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Development in XenForo is more active and is based on a modern framework
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The learning curve for our users is tiny, as XenForo was built by the previous developers of vBulletin
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Extra built-in features like spam prevention that are stricter and more effective
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Easier and more intuitive platform for both new and veteran users
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The add-on ecosystem for new features and functionality is larger
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Significant increase in site speed and load times
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Responsive design that scales with resolution and mobile-friendly interface
We’ll be taking the forum offline for a number of hours over this coming weekend to complete the migration. Upon return from the downtime, all of your content and profile information will be present, and you’ll be able to login as normal.
Our goal with this transition is to provide a stable base platform, so we’ve endeavored to keep any major, customized changes apart from the platform to a minimum. The theme itself is simpler and cleaner to allow members to acclimate. We’re holding off on any massive thematic or extraneous feature changes (keeping them to a small number), and going as vanilla as possible to make the move a smooth one, as switching to a new platform is a major undertaking and we’re resolved to keep your content safe above all else.
We know that jumping platforms can be disruptive to your routine; familiarity and comfort of habits are as important in online communities as they are in real life. We are making this change to safeguard the continued growth of AnandTech, with both eyes towards a very bright future for the community. During the transition, please bear with us patiently as we work diligently to bring the forum over to the new platform.
To read over some of the big changes and how they might affect you, check out our handy guide to transitioning from vBulletin to XenForo here:
Guide to the New AnandTech Community
If you encounter a bug with the new platform, please let us know in this thread:
AnandTech XenForo Feedback
Thank you for your attention, and we’ll see you on the forums!
Warm Regards,
Joe Pishgar
Director of Community, AnandTech