Announcement new platform for 8er.org

Dear 8er friends,

we have been working on a new forum software for months due to the nevertheless clearly noticeable inadequacies since the last update of vBulletin 5.x in Q4 2021. We would now like to inform you about this work and changes.

Due to the very large database of 8er.org, we are dependent on a professional forum software. Briefly summarized we have the following characteristics on our platform

• 15 BMW Clubs, partly accredited by BMW
• 4 languages, German, English, French and Spanish
• 16'200 topics in 154'000 posts since 1999
• 45'000 attachments in the contributions
• 85'000 documents, pictures, movies in fileshare and linked in posts
• Data volume 12 GByte for attachments, 1 TByte for documents in fileshare, 2,66 million downloads
• 6'200 members of which 120 are active weekly

In order to migrate this data to a new platform, only the following forum software can be considered:

• XenForo
• Woltlab Suite

Due to the fact that XenForo is based on vBulletin 4.x and also various programmers have changed from vb4 to vb5 to XenForo, we do not use this forum software. The range of functions and complex administration we already know from the current forum software and no longer convinces anyone of us.

It has to be simple and understandable and not have thousands of functions and no one, not even us administrators find their way around it. We are since the last forum migration burned children and also cautious with the announcements become.

But now it's time to give some first information about the state of our work. It is not ideal, if you are informed only shortly before a big change. We are currently testing how we can transfer this data into the new system.

So please be patient, if everything works out we will do the migration in one week.

Many geetings

Now how do we want to implement this in 8er.org. That the advertising often promises more than this can be implemented later, we have experienced ourselves with vb5.

We now have the following two variants that we can implement:

• Migration from vBulletin version 4 with data status from September 2021.

  
  

  • we will then be missing about 900 posts compared to today
  • almost all data can be transferred

  
  

• Migration from vBulletin version 5 with current data status

  
  

  • messages, calendar, subscriptions and likes can not be migrated

We want to migrate with vb5 and lose all news and subscriptions. We will then add the calendar manually.

Since the passwords are stored encrypted in the existing forum software as a hash value, we can not easily transfer them to the new forum system. In the existing forum system we used Argon2 and a proprietary encryption from vBulletin. I can integrate the Argon2 encryption in the new forum software, but I can't integrate the vBulletin encryption method because of the unknown encryption.

So you can try to log in to the new system, if it doesn't work twice you have to use the "forgot password" function to generate a new password.

So it is important that you check your email address in your profile. It will be used for the "forgot password" function.

We would like to revise and simplify the forum structure as follows:

• all forum areas for non club members will be shared for all non members. In vb4 you could join or leave the french or english speaking clubs by yourself, in vb5 this function was missing.
• new you can use the following replacement function:
  
  • Choice of the forum areas on the basis of the language of the contributions
  • deselection of forums or forum areas directly in the forum area
  • automatic joining or leaving is also possible but more complicated to implement

  
  

• all forum areas for club members with request to join and manual approval or as subscriptions with automatic payment function
• all forum areas with downloads and videos will be structured into the new areas Gallery and Filebase and stored by categories

The filebase will be extended with the already existing archive of 8er.org, which contains almost all available documents of the 8er.

To keep up with the new trend of social media, 8er.org will also integrate them. We can connect the following social media with 8er.org:

This means that with these connectors you can also post articles from 8er.org on social media and follow links on 8er.org from social media even without logging in to 8er.org. So, for example, if you are logged in on WhatsApp and reading posts, you can click on a link on 8er.org and you will be redirected directly to the post from 8er.org without further login.

In this context, we would like to promote an official Facebook page as well as a social media page each with the platform 8er.org. So if you are interested in such a cooperation and want to run or operate such a page, please feel free to contact Martin or me. If we do not find an adequate platform, we are considering to operate one ourselves. This way we also offer an alternative to the forums for our younger generation of 8er drivers.

8er.org can also be operated directly via cell phones and tablets. 8er.org automatically detects the small devices and adapts the interface according to the lower resolution. In addition, we have planned to make an app available for Apple and Android devices.

In the area of the CMS and article system, we would like to describe the DACH organization and the individual clubs.

In terms of advertising, we rely on the 8er drivers or 8er stores, which want to offer their own products.

So 8er.org should be the platform which is exclusively about 8er topics and has a complete archive about 8er topics and documents.

On Thursday 10 March 2022 we started the comprehensive upgrade of the forum from vbulletin5 to Woltlab Suite.

First we copied the complete forum with the files to another domain and configured it to run there again. The access is done via another url. We still need the old forum to check posts and attachments. Afterwards we backed up the complete forum to our NAS.

Since you usually don't store the images in the database but externally in the filebase, we had to move them into the database for the import into Woltlab. This process takes quite a long time and there are also many errors (attachment not available). This is due to the botched database architecture of vbulletin. Well, we have to go through that now.

In the next step we installed Woltlab with the different modules. Then the language packages were added. Now we had to create the basic configuration. In the evening after 8 hours of work we sent the new database with the necessary accesses to Woltlab. Woltlab provided a special system for us to import from vbulletin5. Without this system import would not be possible.

We have not configured everything yet, that will come in the coming days. Also the links and / or attachment are not yet complete. Therefore, do not make your own corrections or new links to the existing posts.

Just try it out how it works. Most things are much easier like uploading pictures.

At the moment we are working on the forum and the calendar. The other areas like the gallery and filebase will come later.

The search works great again and even with 3 letters (magnifying glass on the top right).

Please note that you can always select where to search before the search string. If you are in the forum and click on the magnifying glass only the forum will be searched. If you are in the calendar then only the calendar will be searched. He gives it strangely suddenly no result then checks what you have set there.

All new stuff will be displayed right behind the corresponding tab (Dashboard, Articles, Members, Forum ...) in the red box. In the calendar we still add old dates. So you don't have to click on them (read) you can easily mark them as read. To do this, click directly on the tab "Calendar" (not on unread events ff). Then you will see a black good sign above the calendar on the right side. With this you mark all new events as read.