reinventing the wheel?

i have been a member here for some time, in varying capacities, and i have always wondered if the forum software was built in-house by ATS or not, and if so, why they felt the need to reinvent the wheel?

i mean, it works good enough, but why not use something that is tried, true, polished, and established, such as vbulliten or phpbb?

i doubt the pricing of vbulliten wass a determining factor, so wass it because of the custom features (points, etc) you use? if so, does that mean you built the software around the "need" for custom features, rather than pure usability?

[edit on 8/2/2008 by prototism]

Those out of house systems are technically rather limited in scope, building a forum infrastructure from the ground or heavily adapting an existing technology is much smarter in the long run.

For one, the creator has a better idea of the potential of the coding. Instead of being stuck with a bag of constraints.

And, doesn't it look and feel so much nicer this way?

Originally posted by Nerdling
Those out of house systems are technically rather limited in scope, building a forum infrastructure from the ground or heavily adapting an existing technology is much smarter in the long run.

For one, the creator has a better idea of the potential of the coding. Instead of being stuck with a bag of constraints.

And, doesn't it look and feel so much nicer this way?

well, it certainly has improved over the years, but there are of course going to be some features that seem like they are still "in beta".

perhaps my opinions about the forum's software stem from my bias towards vbulliten.

We at IgnoranceDenied, are in the process of migrating our forum, which was based on the same core code brand that ATS is based on.

Yes, we are now running on VB, and the migration was pulled off without a hitch. Fortunatly our original code wasnt near as modified as ATS core code is, and as a result, we really didnt lose very much at all, while gaining an amazing amount of added built in features, and future possabilities.

Of course we are now commissioned with re-creating our newest look and feel, so we can cann that OEM look and feel that VB is packaged with.

[edit on 2-8-2008 by smirkley]

Originally posted by smirkley
We at IgnoranceDenied, are in the process of migrating our forum, which was based on the same core code brand that ATS is based on.

Yes, we are now running on VB, and the migration was pulled off without a hitch. Fortunatly our original code wasnt near as modified as ATS core code is, and as a result, we really didnt lose very much at all, while gaining an amazing amount of added built in features, and future possabilities.

im interested to know the reasons for the change. what does vb have that atsbb doesnt? did some features of atabb seem sort of unnecessary, incomplete, or bloated? because, generally speaking, that is the feeling i get when using atsbb, versus vb.

The reasons are countless in my example.

Primarily the out of the box feature set.

The support and security built-in the software.

The custom-ability either with VB.org add-on's as well as being able to make my own custom features.


But one of the concerning issues I had was the lack of support from the developers and the apparent current instability of the XMB organization.

I can code frontwards and backwards on an XMB code base, and re-learning to find out how VB works will be a challenge, but compared to the former rate of us at ID being able to improve functionality, test and provide security fixes, as well as other reasons, changing VB put us years ahead of schedule given the time we were able to put into the board just in those areas.

As soon as our look and graphics are changed, we will be years ahead of where we were using and modifying our old XMB on our own.

It just looks better and makes the site unique (huge benefit).

reply to post by smirkley


Understatement

A trained monkey could jack around with XMB's code, which was the base of ATS and ID. But XMB at the time (in XMB's case) provided a base necessary to build and explode.

You have to remember, ATS is virtually custom built, the scheme of it was based around XMB, but it no longer is as such, why reinvent the wheel is what you ask, but you have to remember, the wheel at the time wasn't as progressed as it is now.

In my opinion, nothing was done, that shouldn't have been done. Also remember ATS is just ATS, plain and simple...there's no BB attached, it's not for distribution.

Yes.

I spent countless hours 'fixing' XMB issues, and making things they they should have been made, and ended up with something that I liked.

You still see many flavors of XMB on ATS, in several areas of functionality. So yes, the ATS we know today doesnt come close to XMB out-of-the-box, but assuradly, the base elements still exist deep inside it's belly.

reply to post by smirkley


I think some things that people don't quite understand a lot of the time is that, each board needs to be unique in one way or another, that's just all there is to it, why open another board, when someone else can go to the first board and engage with other people, instead of starting anew elsewhere (unless you were a dolt and got banned). It makes little sense.

XMB provided ATS with the base that was highly customizable, and allowed them to expand and grow it in the way they wanted it, unfortunately it required and demanded a lot of work (and in XMB's case now...it doesn't even exist), but the fact remains that every site has a base, one way or another, it may not be as visible and as apparent, but it's always there.

The only reason I would've objected ever to vB and IPB is because they don't take too kindly to people heavy modding, then saying that it isn't vB or IPB anymore, respectively, "I sweat and bleed, and recode it how I want it, and I can't even call it mine?!" That whole lot.

Very true.

At ID, unfortunatly we just dont have the time or monetary resources to expand to the level that ATS code has been brought to. The ATS we know now is something on the lines of amazing at minimum.

The reason we went with VB last week, is just as described above. It was the most reasonable way to get where we want to be given what we have available in resources.

We begin anew, and as described we build our site on a new base, with our future in mind.

I didnt mind licencing ID with VB, and VB doesnt mind me calling it mine, with no requirements otherwise herefor into the future. (I have no plans to redistribute anything short of a modification I developed for our own site)


Back to the OP's discussion, it would likely be near impossible nor reasonable to consider ATS migrating and beginning anew to a new base code. They would stand to lose much more than they have gained currently coded, imho.

[edit on 2-8-2008 by smirkley]