Returning after quite some time away, ionCube Forum!
Change is coming
Some people don’t like change. Change is inevitable. And sometimes, change can be a good thing too. A while back we took our old phpBB2 forum offline (Find out why – here). As expected, that decision prompted a range of reactions and some understandable concerns from members of the community. The reasons behind that choice, including why we knew it would not work for everyone, are set out in the original post and remain unchanged.
Since then, one question has continued to resurface from time to time in internal discussions: do we actually need a forum when we already have a support helpdesk? It’s a reasonable question, particularly when considering the difference between open, community-driven discussion and closed, case-based support. We understand both perspectives.
More recently, and closely linked to another decision we’ll come to shortly, an answer began to take shape: perhaps it is time to try again, but with a new approach. That is no small undertaking. Forum software has changed almost beyond recognition since the previous one was launched, and reviewing the options initially felt quite daunting. Fortunately, one of the team has been running a community forum since 2018 on a platform that genuinely encourages engagement and is a pleasure to use: Discourse.
Let’s have a bit of Discourse
A fair question at this point might be: why now? Especially given that alternatives existed back when the original forum was retired. The answer is, once again, change. More specifically, changes to back-end systems and infrastructure.
At the time, the forum existed alongside the blog, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say the blog was attached to the forum. After all, the forum came first. Implementing Discourse back then would have placed significant demands on infrastructure that simply wasn’t designed for it, so the search for a suitable solution continued.
Since then, things have moved on. As with any infrastructure, there is a natural end of life, and the systems hosting the blog eventually reached that point. This provided an ideal opportunity to step back and reconsider both platforms together, rather than treating them as separate concerns.
Content a go-go
Before anyone gets too excited, there are still a couple of steps to complete before anything goes live.
First, Discourse represents a noticeable change in user experience, not just for visitors, but also for moderators. Behind the scenes, it has many moving parts and a more complex setup than the previous forum, which means staff will need time to become comfortable with it. While there is existing experience within the team, it’s likely that our most experienced Discourse administrator will need to take a more active role than was required before. Experience counts, especially during the early stages.
The second, and crucial, consideration is what to do with the content from the old forum. Discourse does provide migration tools from phpBB, but after careful thought we decided to start fresh. The old forum has been offline for a long time, and much of its content is now outdated or no longer relevant. Starting anew gives us the opportunity to shape things in a way that better reflects how forums are used today, rather than how they worked many years ago.
The new ionCube forum is available now – sign up here!