(This is a copy of a post I made in another thread.)
Yes, the username capitalization error quoted above was a major bug. It's fixed. As you're hopefully noticing, bug-fixes and changes are happening regularly, and will continue to. We have five people who are working full-time on bug-crushing and iterating in response to the bug reports and user feedback here. Just some of the recent fixes and updates in the past day include:
- Username capitalization (already covered)
- Website navigation, including adding subscription links in the header
- Matching XenForo terminology with their previous Huddler counterparts for clarity and familiarity. For example...
- "profile posts" are now "public messages"
- "Conversations" are now "private messages"
- Working on "watched threads" = "subscriptions"
- Highlighting links in threads
- Adding the ability to update details to classified listings
- And more
Joe and AxelCloris will be updating you about fixes and changes as they're made.
I wanted to say a quick word about why we made the platform change: We had to. I love the Huddler forum platform, and still feel it's the best forum platform out there. However, we were informed that Huddler would be phased out over the next months, and so the Huddler platform (along with our long partnership with Huddler/Wikia) would be coming to an end. So, for those of you who suggested that we roll this back to Huddler, now you understand why we can't. I believe someone also suggested we license Huddler: That was not an option.
Simply put, we can't go back--none of the Huddler sites can. But we can move forward, together, and would appreciate your help doing just that.
Transitioning 16 years of content to another platform from Huddler is not a simple task. If you want to keep all the content, formatting, URLs, and functionality intact, it is in fact a
monumental undertaking, especially for a small team like ours. Huddler is a proprietary platform (with key components of it customized for Head-Fi), and so there were no pre-configured migration tools like the kind available to get from one open licensable forum platform to another.
We had a transition deadline we had to meet, and we met it, but only with an untold number of man-hours and sleepless nights--and some nights where sleep was had at the office on the cot or on the couch. And we're still not
done done--not even close--which we knew, and as is evidenced by this thread. Again, we have five people who are working full-time on bug-crushing and iterating in response to the bug reports and user feedback here.
Once we're past the headaches of the initial phase of the transition--once we've fixed most of what needs fixing, and improved most of what needs improving through the first part of the transition--then there's a lot of fun and exciting stuff for the site ahead. We now have a lot more latitude to work with to move Head-Fi forward now that we're fully independent. We've grown our team, and we now have full-time engineering and development in-house.
First, we fix the bugs, we make the place more livable, we complete the transition of some of the key functionalities from the Huddler platform that we weren't able to finish to our (and your) satisfaction ahead of the transition date. One thing (among
many) we're working on now is differentiating logged-in and logged-out user experiences, as we did on the Huddler platform. It won't be long, but, as before, logged-in users will have fewer ad units shown.
I'll leave you with this thought for now: Over seven years ago, when we transitioned from vBulletin to Huddler, the response was...
rough (to put it mildly). The first days after the change are always the hardest. Just as we did with Huddler, we'll once again quickly get ourselves situated into this platform, with a lot of work over here, and with the help of your feedback. I promise you'll be seeing continuous adjustments, optimizations, feature restorations, and fixes.
Thank you for your patience and constructive feedback.