New & Exciting Changes Are Coming!

[MiRai]

Greetings, Dual-Boxing!

Lax, Svpernova, and myself, as well as numerous others, have been discussing the future of this site for quite some time, and today I come bearing some news.

Over the past year or so, some things around the site may have felt somewhat stagnant and boring, feature-wise, or maybe even a little broken in some areas if you happen to look at certain pages. We know, and during this time, we’ve been discussing what we wanted to do with both the site and the community, and in what direction we wanted to go, moving forward.

The technical details are that this site is currently running vBulletin 4—it’s quite outdated at this point and its back-end is in need of some laborious changes if we want to attempt to maintain where we’re currently at. Years ago, we upgraded to vB4 from vB3, and so moving to vB5 might seem like the simplest solution, but unfortunately, it isn’t. Not only is vB5 quite lackluster in its current form, but migrating over to it would also require either a complete re-work of our current theme, assuming we wanted to keep it, or us finding something compatible with vB5 that meets or exceeds our expectations, for this community.

We’ve struggled with this discussion for some time, but a recent acquisition has made us reconsider the direction, all together.

A few months ago, we acquired the multiboxing.com (https://multiboxing.com/) domain, and because of that, we wanted to give the community a proper upgrade that it deserves, and, in some areas, is long overdue. I don't have too many specifics to share, right at the moment, as many things are still being discussed, worked on, or finalized, but we currently have a plan that we've already begun to execute.

We have decided to move away from vBulletin, and will be moving forward with the XenForo forum software. Out of all available options, not only does XenForo look and feel the most modern, but it offers a handful of plug-ins and add-ons that we believe are going to benefit the community, as a whole.

We also want to migrate the full 10+ years of this community’s history to the new forum, leaving nothing behind. We have some custom changes that we've made to our vB back-end, but initial migration tests show that it's likely there won't be any issues with moving everything over.

Once the migration is complete, the dual-boxing.com forum will remain publicly available, but frozen in time in an archived state, and its top-level domain will be pointed at the new multiboxing.com (https://multiboxing.com/) forum.

With all of that said, we have some planned features, changes, and upgrades that we’re hoping to implement—some larger or more impactful than others—as well as looking to expand upon the moderation team, so if you're interested, then let us know. In the coming weeks, as we continue to design, implement, and finalize these new features on our test forum, we'll be ready to share more details.

We're very excited about this announcement, and we wanted to give everyone ample time to see this thread, so that you know what to expect. We don't have an exact date for when this is going live, but if all goes smoothly, we estimate that it should be happening within the next month—ready to start off 2020 with some style.

So, with all of that said, thank you to everyone involved, and thank you to the community for sticking with us and making this a place worth visiting, over all these years!


Update - 2019-12-24 (https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/56762-New-amp-Exciting-Changes-Are-Coming!?p=427448&viewfull=1#post427448)

[Peregrine]

Great news! Thanks a bunch to MiRai, Lax, Supernova and all other responsible for this forum and the incredible software that you did.

I can't wait for new forum page and new features! Thumbs up, guys! Keep it up :) Best wishes for Xmas and New Year!

[Wubsie]

End of an era in a way I suppose.

Looking forward to new site. ^^

[Svpernova09]

End of an era in a way I suppose.

Looking forward to new site. ^^

Not the first, certainly not the last :D

[Ellay]

Looking forward to it. Thank you guys for the hard work. I'll miss this place - but consolidating under one location sounds great.

[luxlunae]

Will the new platform have the blogging feature?

[Fat Tire]

Nice score on the domain name and full migration is great to hear.

[MiRai]

Will the new platform have the blogging feature?
The quick and dirty answer is... I don't know.

The longer answer is... While we're hoping to implement a better frontpage with articles and content, I don't suspect that we'll re-introduce a blog feature the same way that we have over here. Here on d-b, not only was the blog system heavily underutilized, but it was also very susceptible to spam (and still somewhat is), and because of that we had to practically lock it down and hand out permission to post, by hand, to whomever asked for it.

Knowing that, your next question might be, "So, who's going to be populating that frontpage with content if there aren't any blogs to promote to it?"

Well, we can still promote standard threads to the frontpage, so we hope to be able to fill it with that, but one thing that has been brought up, internally, is that we may create a sub-forum dedicated to creating blog-like threads, which would also include news threads. This would make it easier for people to see these threads in the standard "What's New?" list when they visit the site, as well as more easily monitor (and moderate) any discussion since it'll just be part of the standard forum.

From my perspective, there are two main reasons that fuel the choice to create a dedicated sub-forum:

First, dare I say that most people don't see the blogs posted on this site, nor do they even know that such an area exists (read: heavily underutilized), but if there was a sub-forum for blog-like posts, in plain sight, then others would definitely be interested in reading that, and might even be motivated to start their own.

Second, in the past, people have wanted to create their own threads to more-or-less track their progress as they play, but as mainly a discussion forum, there's no "on topic" area to put that. Unfortunately, as the blog area is somewhat disconnected from the main forum, I hate to shuffle people away in that direction because I know that whatever they post, over there, probably won't be seen by too many others.

So, that's why I'm leaning in the direction of a dedicated sub-forum—not to mention, everyone should be able to find things by prefix and/or username (author) a whole helluva lot easier on this new forum.

However, I'm open to feedback for anything someone may want to see on the new site. https://www.dual-boxing.com/images/icons/icon14.png

[WOWBOX40]

To avoid spam in a blog:

1. Get verified ingame to make sure you are a multiboxer.. get permission to start a blog thread.
2. In order to post within the spesific blog thread, you need to type another unique password.

Eh.... or.... just make it so that the person who gets allowed to start the blog, is the only one allowed to make posts within it.


Maybe something like this could work.

[Malixk]

Marry christmas and what a present!

[EaTCarbS]

UwU whats this?

[MiRai]

It's been about two weeks since my first post, so I'd like to give a small update as to where we're at with all of this.

I'll start off by repeating what I said in the initial post, in that everything, so far, in terms of tests migrating the forum over have been successful, but what I didn't specify was that that meant users, threads and posts, and I don't think the data from "The Commons" will be moving with us. We have a new, and much more improved media sharing section that we'll be using on the new forum/site, and I doubt that trying to move the current set of data from here to there, is anything short of a monumental task, but I will let Svpernova be the final judge on that.

However, if that data is not moved over, everyone will be encouraged to simply re-post their videos that they want to share on the new site—within reason, of course. I would guess that, as long the video is somewhat relevant to the current era of expansion that that particular game is on, shows off something cool (obviously subjective, but you be the judge), or is a useful setup/tutorial video that others could find beneficial (regardless of era), then it'd be perfectly fine. So, in other words, if you...


Want to share a setup video that was made several years ago, but is still "current" in terms of the steps to set it up - Okay.
Want to share a 3v3 Arena match from Cataclysm - Probably not okay.

You can also think of it this way: If you deleted every video on your YouTube channel, what would viewers miss most and want you to re-upload? Videos that fall into this category are the ones that I would definitely encourage people to re-share on the new site.

---

Now, with that said, we've been continuing to make small tweaks to the theme and overall look of the new forum, and while we're getting there, things have slowed down a little bit.

First, it does happen to be the holiday season, especially if you reside in the northern hemisphere, and so that has, naturally, slowed progress of the current list of tasks yet to be finished. With others spending time with family, I've also decided to take a week off to put together a new computer that I've been sitting on for several months, so most of us working on the new site are currently distracted with other things.

Second, we've undertaken a brand new addition to the site that wasn't originally planned. It has to be built from the ground up, which is going to require some additional development time, and this is going to push the schedule back—hopefully, not by much.

While I'm quite excited for this new addition, it's niche, and because it is in the initial build stage, we may find that, at some point later in development, something just isn't possible/feasible to do at this current time. If that happens, we won't further delay the release of the new site, but we'll need to either go back to the drawing board and plan for a later release, of this new addition, or just scrap it altogether. So, because of that, I don't want to give any additional details out at this time, but I did feel that I should briefly mention it since it is one of the reasons why this is taking a little longer than first expected. I do apologize if this all sounds like a giant tease, but I will further solidify that feeling by saying that I've talked to a few members of the community who would use this new addition, and feedback has been very positive, so I'm hoping we can actually make this happen.

---

Finally, to bring this update to a close, while there's still plenty left for us to finish up on the new forum—on both the front-end and back-end—we're making progress and have been discussing much throughout this time. As always, if anyone has any general feedback, suggestions, or concerns, please feel free to share them in this thread, so that they may be read and considered, by everyone.

Hopefully, the next update will be us ready to reveal some cool stuff, but until then, thanks for reading. https://www.dual-boxing.com/images/icons/icon14.png

[luxlunae]

Hey Mirai, does that mean you didn't migrate any of my old content in any form? How long will I have to get it off of here before it goes away?

I actually got more use of my referral codes in 2019 than any other year (by a really large margin) so people are probably still reading my old posts. The wow ones anyway, I don't think anyone ever read the rift ones to begin with.

edit: does the backend have a way to download that content for me so I can archive it including pics?

[Lax]

Hey Mirai, does that mean you didn't migrate any of my old content in any form? How long will I have to get it off of here before it goes away?

I actually got more use of my referral codes in 2019 than any other year (by a really large margin) so people are probably still reading my old posts. The wow ones anyway, I don't think anyone ever read the rift ones to begin with.

edit: does the backend have a way to download that content for me so I can archive it including pics?

The plan is for all of the existing content to be available, you will just not be able to post new content in the archived site.

[Ualaa]

The occasional lurker pokes a head within the door...

Interesting changes.
Looking forward to the new site, when it goes live.

Haven't had the multiboxing itch in a while, but it's still there occasionally.

[Svpernova09]

Hi all, another update since this has obviously blown past (internal) deadlines. Turns out working in a pandemic is hard (Assuming you weren't impacted by all this before).

Ultimately we have grandiose plans that I wasn't able to deliver on in a reasonable timetable so we're shifting gears and we're prioritizing the forum changes to happen sooner than later. Lax has given the go ahead and invested a chunk of change into the process.

As things stand today, MiRai & I are in the process of reviewing all of our forum addons configuration & settings to ensure they're working properly. In the coming days I'm going to be working on the migration process of this content into the new forum and automating as much of that as we possibly can. Lax did the migration we're currently testing on so I'm hoping to get the process mastered so we can transition with as little downtime as possible.

Some action items members here should do:

Review your account here & ensure the email in your profile is active and you're able to receive mail there. When the forums are moved you *will* have to do a password reset on your account on the new domain.

[MiRai]

I'd like to give another update to the status of the new forum, but I'm first going to apologize and say that I shouldn't have created this thread as early as I did. I feel a bit foolish to have given such a small time window for how soon the changes were expected to be in place, and I wasn't aware of all the work required in order to make this happen. It can be quite difficult to balance a plate that, at times, feels like it's overloaded with so much stuff that you just have no idea what to work on, and in the end, little-to-nothing gets done that day (or week, or month) because it all feels so overwhelming.

With that said, here's what's been happening...

General Status Update
Starting with what Svpernova previously mentioned, I would say that we're pretty much done with the review, installation, and configuration process of what we'd like to launch the forum with, but that's not to say that there won't be further tweaks that we'll need to make between now and launch (or even thereafter). Most of these add-ons will probably go unnoticed since they're just simple quality of life additions that take place "under the hood," but never-the-less they need to be installed, configured, and tested.


Restructuring the Forum
So, this is something that we've wanted to do for quite some time, but have never really had a grasp on how to do it properly. However, with the move to XenForo, we've been able to implement a much better "filing system," so to speak, and we'll be able to better categorize the threads in each of the forums, which should make it easier for everyone to find the material that they're interested in. This is something that we've discussed, at length, about what changes we'd want to make, and why, and so I'd like to share some of that discussion here.

To begin, we're going to be merging a handful of forums because, from a categorical perspective, we think it'll not only lessen any confusion for new multiboxers, but the message board itself, overall, should be easier to navigate.

One example of this is that we'll be merging "New Multiboxers & Support" with "Software Tools" because they've evolved to serve almost the exact same purpose, over time. When a new multiboxer joins the community and they're looking to ask a question about the software they're using, do they post in "New Multiboxers & Support" because they're new and looking for support, or do they post in "Software Tools" because they're using software to multibox with? In addition, if all questions about software are only to be asked in "Software Tools," then what exactly gets posted in "New Multiboxers & Support?" Again, at this point, the lines are heavily blurred, and so we'll be merging the two forums into "General Support," so that decisions like the above won't even have to be considered.

At this time, we expect to merge five forums and reduce them down to three, in total, but again, with thread prefixes (the new "filing system"), everyone will be able to better refine the threads that they're looking at, in any particular forum.

With that, we're also going to be removing three forums: Aion, Rated Arena (Level 80), and German.

Aion

While Aion was multiboxed by a few players back in the day, the game, in recent years, has adopted the XIGNCODE3 anti-cheat software, and no longer seems to be multibox-able because of that. So, rather than keep the forum open and potentially attract private server players, we're just simply going to leave it behind in the archive.


Rated Arena (Level 80)
Most people don't know this sub-forum exists, but it does (https://i.imgur.com/mjMrOLW.png). It was an area of the message board that was used during the Wrath era for multiboxers who were 1K+ rated in arena looking to keep their tactics secret from the outside world, and so it was restricted to only those who could prove that they were worthy of access. Eventually, it was abandoned because there wasn't as much participation as was originally hoped for, and so it was locked and frozen in time. While I could've left this out of the list since almost no one would know it wasn't brought over (seeing as the sub-forum is invisible to most), those who have red-colored names, indicating that they once participated in this sub-forum, may notice that they've lost them after we make the move, and it will be connected to this sub-forum no longer existing.

German
Similar to the other two forums in this list, the participation in the German language forum has since died down in the last several years, and on the first page alone, you can find threads that haven't seen activity since 2015. In addition, those who speak German and participate on the message board elsewhere, tend to speak better English than some who speak English natively, and so leaving the forum behind does not seem like it will impact the German-speaking multiboxing community that is present on this board.


The other reason to mention the removal of these three forums is because for those who've posted in any of them, you will see a reduction in your overall post count, since the posts in these removed forums will cease to exist.


Expected Downtime
Finally, I'm just going to quickly mention that whenever we're ready to make the transition, we do expect to take the message board down for, at least, 24 hours. We've been looking at ways to automate the process of restructuring the forum after the import, but it doesn't look like it's going to be feasible, and so we'll have to do several hours of manual work to put everything into place.

As mentioned above by Svpernova, we are entering into a period where we're going to be doing endless test runs to see how well we can burn the migration process into our brains while we document the steps and tasks required by each of us, so that we're not bumbling around when it's actually time to make the move.

Other than that, this is where we're at. Again, apologies that I let the cat out of the bag as soon as I did, but thanks to everyone for your patience during this time, and we're still working on things slowly, but surely.

[Ellay]

Awesome update though. Totally understand all of those changes and appreciate everything ya’ll are doing.

[Uhnknown]

Sweeeeeet, hopefully this draws more active members back to the forum, i've definitely missed the old days when this site used to be a lot more active. Though to be fair, different times and Discord probably keeps away a lot of members from thinking to visit here regularly(along with Isboxer's forums, etc).

[Fat Tire]

Appreciate the work.

[Tsumi]

Thanks for the updates and hard work. Looking forward to it.