Thank you for the great suggestions.  I'll reply to each.

1. The $50 file name change was added with the launch of this new site as a suggestion by the team.  We have debated it many times in the past and never officially added it as an option.  Our thought this time was that YaBB.pl as the filename is a promotional tool because YaBB then comes up directly in search engine results and it puts the YaBB name out there very publicly as a free and non-annoying (such as banner ads) advertising method for our free project.  The site runs completely at my expense and has cost me a lot of money over the years, so my hope was that if anyone every purchased it, it would be $50 to help cover costs.  Thoughts?

2.  I agree on the link colors.  This is actually an issue with the site CSS clashing with the forum CSS.  I have fixed some things with it here or there since the new site launch, but there are still several CSS issues I have to solve that have been a pain.

3.  I thought the same thing as you which is why I added the text "community forum" on the orange logo on the top left of all the pages.  It's one large graphic that links to the forum, along with the news articles on the main page linking to specific topics.  I also added a floating div to the top right of all the sub pages that links to the forum if you haven't notice it.  It actually shows your username if you are logged into the forum.  If you have a suggestion on where else to add a link, please let me know.

4.  The user ability to upload profile avatar pictures was enabled here, but I have to figure out a few things on the server setup to get it working again now that we are hosted by SourceForge.  The setup is a bit tricky, and that is one I haven't fully fixed yet.  As far as adding pictures to your profile as a photo album, this feature does not currently exist as a feature in YaBB by default.  This would be up to the devs if they think it is a commonly useful feature to add.

5.  YaBB is one of the best systems at having "on/off" features controlled by the admin and in some cases the user.  The biggest complaint we see in other systems is how bloated they are.  YaBB chooses wisely on what features to add to avoid this and provide ways to turn them off in most cases for people that want a clean and simple communication tool.  I believe YaBB has been a leader in this area.

Zoro wrote on Aug 25^th, 2010 at 6:50am:

If you don't mind me saying, I do totally agree with Zoro on this - I have been meaning to mention it myself for some time now.

I know it probably seems quite trivial, but I do think something as simple as the URL can put some users off. Just by renaming YaBB.pl to index.pl would make the URL look a lot cleaner. Users could then even delete index.html from the yabb2 directory and access the forum with 'http://yoursite.com/forum/' without the need of using a redirect.

I would really like to see proper search engine friendly URL's in YaBB though, even if it was just an option for people on a *nix machine, and friendly URL's would ultimately mean having to hide YaBB.pl anyway...

Just my two penneth.

I recently noticed that this permalink feature is not as powerful as it could be. It does NOT replace any links, it just adds an additional link to the message index for every topic  

I agree the Permalink feature needs improvement, but at least it's a start.

What does everyone else think about the recently added license for changing YaBB.pl?

Corey Chapman wrote on Sep 3^rd, 2010 at 4:20pm:

Having recently been 'caught out' by using forums.net for one of my sites, which morphed into Community Server, then slowly became mostly, then entirely commercial (yet I'm stuck with it due to other systems that link in to it), I am getting more and more nervous about the licencing restrictions, even though they do not currently affect my YaBB site.


And before you try to reassure me that won't happen, Telligent initially said there would always bee a free version for not-for-profit sites - this was true up until Community Server 2 (although the free versions were already severely limited by then), but then they completely went back on their word.


If that is the way YaBB is heading, then I need to get my biggest YaBB site -  http://www.omegaowners.com - migrated to something else before it grows too big to successfully migrate. YaBB does suffer poor migration support, both into YaBB (YaBB's problem) or out of YaBB (other software's problem).

Corey Chapman wrote on Sep 8^th, 2010 at 2:44pm:

Thankyou for the reassurance, but I heard the reassurance from Rob Howard before Telligent was formed.

I don't doubt your word, though, and its good to hear that it appears there are no current plans afoot to limit YaBB via licencing restrictions - but hearing of licencing restrictions creeping in, such as the script rename restriction, does set the alarm bells ringing. I'm sure I am not alone, and if I was looking for forum software now for a new site, this alone would make me look elsewhere  .  In fact, its made me look more seriously at the converters to other software a bit more closely  



I don't think I have reached YaBB's limits yet, not by a long shot, despite the modest resources I throw at it (its a VM running on a very busy ESX server, and has only been allocated 1G RAM). Fair play to the work by Deti and co when they implemented the big speed improvements around 2.3 (or was it 2.2?)  

Quote:

I was talking about the new licencing restrictions on URL name. I was NOT talking about the copyright notice, that I believe should be there.


Its a new licencing restriction, whose only function is to raise money. Its not about creditting the developers with their work.  Whether or not a single individual should (or has the right) to make some money (or recoup some costs) on a larger open source project is another, unrelated debate.


The alarm bells are ringing, because I've been here before. The next step, in order to recoup costs/make money is the licence only allows 10 Boards on a forum, or it can only be for not-for-profit sites. Then the next stage is its entirely commercial.



As said earlier, the restrictions do not affect me - the URL is easily got around at a server level should I wish to (be a grey area on licence, as the script is still called YaBB.pl), not that I have any plans not to use YaBB.pl.  And I don't mind the YaBB (c) notice - in fact I am delighted and proud to be able to display it at the bottom of my site.