Honestly, staying on this software will not serve the community. Look, when we were on PunBB, things were fine. When we got upgraded to PanBB, shit hit the fan, and errors have been creeping in ever since. The whole point of doing this migration was or at least, should have been so that the admins can have access and be able to work on the site.

I don't think we need all the latest bells and whistles, but having a PM system that actually notifies you when someone sends you a PM would be nice, having the forum email working again would also be nice. Being able to type emojis without the site pitching a fit would be nice.

If all that could be accomplished without changing software, fine, but I don't think it can. Let's face it, PanBB was the worst thing that happened to the actual forum, not saying the community, but the actual forum itself. And, as the saying goes, a polished turd is still a turd.

I do like the ease of use, and no modern forum software is going to be quite as accessible in that way. I think it's a sacrifice that's worth it in the end, because it'll open up more possibilities. Besides which, as audio games take a back seat to mainstream games with accessibility features, it's not uncommon to have to navigate forums that are laid out differently than this one is.

One more thing, the current registration system is a band-aid solution. It's not even a good one at that, because we have multiple accounts of people waiting for weeks or longer to be approved. With modern software that is more secure, an external means of
registration wouldn't be needed.

I agree with the others here.
Yes, we might be having one of the most screen reader friendly forum systems around, but is this worth the out of date system, the still patched together registration system that is in place for more than a year now, no notifiers for forum Mails or private messages, random database errors cropping up when posting new topics or using the search feature, no way to enter for example spoiler tags, the mods having almost no control over the general forum and changing or adding new rooms, and whatnot?

Greetings Moritz.

@30 See, I don't know but I'm not the only one who thinks that continuing to run on this forum software is not a vary well thought out plan. Yall did say you don't have plans of switching to newer software which, sparked the idea of starting this discussion in the first place. I had a vary well planned and thought out post that I was gunna write yesterday but all, day, long, database errors were all over the place and I couldn't post anything, like at all! I guess if you want stuff to break, this is how you'd do it, with, no warnings. As I said in my @post 19, if yall do switch, you'd want to setup a staging environment first with everything on it, make sure stuff works and is tested, then once you feel that everything is working, including migration, then switch over to live production. I'm sure the coders on the team know all about that but I'm not sure if you do, which is why I'm, well, trying to help out here. You may or may not know what goes on behind the scenes of all of this stuff, and that's okay, just letting you know, that sloppy is not what we go for here when setting up a new environment. It's why when websites either switch over to a new design, staging is what's needed, that way you can test as much as you want and if shit don't work, you can go back to square one without breaking anything and no one is the wiser. Anyways, keep on doing what you're doing and I'm sure you'll figure out something.

But herein lies the problem. I know there are members of the forum administration that have the coding chops to really dig into the core of the software and fix this... if, they didn't have busy lives to begin with. This isn't like Wordpress where if a plugin doesn't work for you, you just go find another that does. Yes, it is true that the forum software does have extensions, but we're not dealing with that here. So, let the coders do their thing, and then this already old and out of date software diverges from source. I can't think of a single reason why this is the approach to take, except resistance to change.

Choosing a modern solution would be beneficial, because there would be updates that fix any security issues. There would be a channel to reach out to the developers if a bug was found. There would be better moderation tools to help the staff keep the forum running smoothly.

The only thing that takes a hit is accessibility, and, if you visit pretty much any modern forum, it is possible to make it work and find creative solutions. I just don't see being able to heading level 3 your way around the forum as a reason to stand against progress.

So... here's my reading of the situation.

My impression, and mind you it's only an impression, not a hard belief, is that nobody really knows what's going on yet wrt the new forum and the software that runs it. I feel like there are rehashed questions floating around:

1. What forum software possibilities exist? For the sake of example, let's just say we picked Discourse.

2. What are the biggest, weightiest reasons for sticking to the old software? How easy will these be to overcome when switching to Discourse (or whatever other option is being considered)?

3. Would the switch make it impossible to preserve old posts and old database entries? If so, how much work would it take? If not, how much of a blow would it be?{/*]

4. What screen reader accessibility issues exist? Any that will slow down navigation (by not allowing quick navigation between threads and posts for instance)?

5. How prone is the software to introducing weird issues tha tneed to be ironed out?be to ensure the new software works?

6. How hard, overall, would a switch actually be? Any rough timeline? A few hours, a few weeks, a year?[/*}

7. And so on...

I feel like these are important questions that should be asked and answered, and right now I'm seeing a lot of asking, a lot of suggesting, and a fair bit of presuming, but not a lot of hard answers/commitments. It feels, at least, like the people who don't know much about forum software are, understandably, relying on the people who do, but the people who do aren't actually making an appearance. Maybe I got it all wrong, I'm sure there's quiet discussion behind the scenes that none of us would see. But it does legitimately concern me when webmasters and coders have such a low presence on here despite the big changes which are in progress/forthcoming. And it also concerns me when multiple people chime in with suggestions, snarky or otherwise, and rather than argue the technical points raised to get answers, the discussion quickly turns to tone policing (from both parties). Something just feels... Off. And I really hope this is just a feeling and not a truth.

That said, I am a firm believer in giving things a good and proper chance to happen, and I am also a firm believer in giving people the time and space they need to sort things out. I don't like to probe or judge, though I can be quite guilty of just that at times, usually for curiosity/impulsive emotional reasons. Still though, it is not my intent to put blame on any one person or call their credentials into question. Even if that was in fact my end goal, I would have nothing to stand on, as I don't know the first thing about web site and forum management. And that is precisely my point. I would actually feel a little better if I saw more technobabble that I didn't understand, because then at least the nitty gritty details that need to be worked out in order to do a big project like this would be getting sorted. But I'll stand by now, and just wait and see what happens. Old software or new software, I still have my reasons for continuing to come on this forum, and I'm not going to lose sleep whether the big switch happens tomorrow or never.

Wishing the forum and everyone involved with it the best!

Discourse has an official migration script for PunBB. I don't know what information it is not able to keep, but it is able to keep topics, posts, categories etc I believe. It also keeps users apparently, though I don't know if old passwords will work and so I suppose everybody would need to set new passwords if it doesn't, probably via the forgot password system.

If the software changes all I gotta say is that I'll really miss heading level 3ing through the forum. Also yes the blindgamers forum is more accessible than it was at first for sure. Although there were *a lot* of reasons why that thing failed, which I won't get into.

@37 is indeed correct. discourse does have an official script for pun. Now, weather if this database schema has been modded in a way in which discourse won't work properly with it, or perhaps this forums software is so old that it may or may not even work at all, things may have to be modded within the script, but let's hope not. If the database schema, is the same as is, then this should indeed work with no issues. This forum software is using pan, which, in theory, should be the same, I haven't compared the database schema , with pun and I don't know that to be sure right off the bat, but this, should have no issues. Damn, now I kind of wanna test this now hehehehehe. @40 yep indeed, sounds like they are making this a lot harder than it looks at least in my eyes. Hypothetically, if I was apart of staff, which now I wish I was honestly, I would have this be done, no questions asked. Yall staff, or at least some of you, made it sound like you were going to switch, but now have decided not on doing so? I'd love to know what's going on why you resist to this! If it's your heading level three navigation, Sorry staff, not gunna by that at all because that's a shitty reason not to have a more secure software that's already ready and has a lot going with shit that's already packed with features that we want and not a whole lot has to be done other than installing other things on top, Also, modding a few things here and there but not much has to be done. With this and the plans that yall have, you'd literally have to dig through the core of the software, figure out stuff that you wanna code in, oh let's give an example. notifications for PMs? Yeah, dig through the software, oh yeah and there are a lot of scripts to dig through, let's not forget that, figure out which go where, how you wanna code it, put it together like a puzzle peace and hope nothing breaks, and if it does, we're screwed! I mean, you could indeed make extensions  also but well, honestly, to me, at this point, your excuse for, oh we have coders on the team who are skilled, this don't justify as a practical solution either. Unless, you have a lot of fucking time on your hands, which to be honest, who would wanna go through core software with hundreds of scripts and figure shit out? I sure as hell wouldn't. Look, We're trying to make this shit easy, not harder and if yall staff thing so, justify why you think this way is a hell of a lot better, fixing this old forum software up. Trust me in saying I wouldn't be saying this if I didn't know what goes on in the core software because while I took a look at part of the code way back, Scripts link to other scripts which does a shit load of stuff. Like, I keep... Telling yall, fixing this old software up is like putting a dand aid over it and you don't want that. I don't care how many times you don't think so but some of you need education on all of this stuff and take a good look at what you're doing to the community. And that's a fact. One more thing is @40 said, staging is also good because while I haven't said it, and have thought of it, you could have the community give feedback on the new software while things are being developed and give their own opinions on stuff before it goes into production while keeping this old software in tact before doing so. That's another great wonderful thing regarding staging. Get the community involved without changing shit here. See, there are ways of handling this! It's not that hard to create a sub domain with apache or nginx or whatever web server software you're using and making an letsencrypt SSL cert. Not that hard at all! Edit:
@40 yep could have sworn they talked about a software change and are now going back on their word on it! If staff or, at least some of you wanted to be open about all of this and why, as so you well put it, a software switch is so hard to do, please let's make this transparency happen and tell us what you know about the ins and outs of this forum software and why you think it's so hard to switch over. As I said, discourse makes it quite easy to do this type of thing and it's gotten a lot better. Fact, it's a lot better out of the box accessibility wise when  installed and running. True, their may be a few other software and dependencies that you'd have to install, but once you do that, you're good and then you can install the thing and make sure everything works before doing migration. Staging, staging... Staging! The reason why we're discussing discourse is it's the most accessible out there. I'm actually suggesting  yall not to go to phpBB, well, you could and that's still a good forum software, I just find, for this community, discourse would be better off.

I mean, I still code in it from time to time. I do believe that many things still uses php. FB, Don't quote me on that, but some parts are I think. WP, you name it, they still use it. Some what. hehehehehehehe. Ruby on rails! Oh wait. Now I'm being sarcastic! Sorry... Lol. Would love to experiment with flask one of these days. It's just sitting down and doing it.

@Jonnyboy1991 and @others. I can understand why yall have this idea on things but you kinda have to understand that just as important as it is to have new and up to date software, it's just as important to have an understandable as well as accessible layout for us as possible. Put it this way. If we go to some new software, we have to make it look like home, or as cloce to home so that it works for everyone. @mods what you could do is maybe see if you could port stuff over to here https://punbb.informer.com/ I think that's the site for punbb, and it's still being updated, last update was from 2 years ago and it still looks like home! I don't know what software this one uses but you could give it a look. https://chipmusic.org/forums/ this one kinda looks like home, but could use some work a little.
Punbb is being used by this forum http://randomflux.info/1bit/
phpbb is kinda good but it doesn't look like home and on mobile those forums are kinda a pain to look through.
@Jonnyboy1991 I've taken a look at the example forums of yours, but to me they don't look like home and they're not the best to look at on mobile. With a little fixing up though they could be.

@GrannyCheeseWheel see that's the thing. There's so much forum software out there, even those with sight don't just pick software, they also use software that works for them and has things like features that change the looks and feel of the layout entirely. We could find forum software, maybe software where it's possible to change so that it looks like home so nothing actually changes. I for one think that yes we do need security and new features, but we also need something that looks like home and regardless if it's lost or not for the new stuff, the layout is like that for a reason, and we must keep that in mind. But yes, if we could change it to look more like home, that will be good.

@Rich_Beardsley things can change, but the layout doesn't have to. In a sence, we can have the cake and eat it too! Or at the very least we can have something that looks like this layout does.