When I took over responsibility for MacScripter.net I tried to make as few changes as possible. The community was and is thriving and I see no need to meddle. For those that don’t know, Shane and I also operate the Late Night Software support forum which hosts its own AppleScript focused discussions in addition to supporting our products (Script Debugger, SD Notary, Shane’s Libraries, UI Browser and many other things).
We are approaching what I jokingly call the MacScripter apocalypse. MacScripter.net faces some technical issues I have to address before too long:
The software on which MacScripter runs is unmaintainable. It is a highly modified version of FluxBB and there are elements of the software that are failing. These modifications prevent me from adopting updates that may arise from the FluxBB project. For example, certain posts don’t render for reasons we don’t yet understand.
We are nearing a point where outbound emails are going to be rejected because they don’t conform to modern security standards.
Duplication of effort. Shane, Nigel and I are present both on MacScripter.net and in the AppleScript section of the Late Night Software support forum. These two sites cover the same ground.
To address problems 1 & 2, rather that invest money in fixing the FluxBB derived software only to have it fail in some other way in the future, I want to transition to a modern and maintained forum software solution. I’m already familiar with Discourse through the Late Night Software forum, and so feel comfortable adopting that package for MacScripter.net. This will mean a change to how the site operates and looks. I will endeavour to maintain all the existing content and external links into the site. This being said, inevitably, a transition of this magnitude involving MacScripter.net’s 30,000+ members and 100,000+ posts will cause upheaval.
To address problem 3, once we have both MacScripter.net and the Late Night Software forum running on the same software, it becomes possible to merge the two sites. The general AppleScript content present on the Late Night Software forum would be merged into MacScripter’s existing AppleScript sections while the Script Debugger specific discussions would take place in its own separate new MacScripter section. We would also merge UI Browser, Xcode and other discussions taking place on the Late Night Software forum into new sections on MacScripter.net.
There’s a lot of information going back years and years, and, with the nature of AppleScript, some times a post or a thread from 15 years ago has a working answer to my question.
So, I’m asking if it’s possible, before the forums are merged, if the old messages could somehow be preserved in an accessible, searchable fashion?
I’m on both forums, and I think merging them is a great idea.
Thank you all for your feedback. Just a quick update.
I’m going reduce my scope and focus on getting MacScripter converted to Discourse. I’ll get the existing MacScripter content converted and stabilized before considering any other alterations.
With the aid of some very generous donations (Thank you David) I’ve been able to retain some help to get this done properly and quickly.
That is fantastic things are being carried along and updated to a new platform. Both the library of prior content and the help from the range of experts in the community are invaluable to me, and with an old site like this, I’ve always been scared that some day it was just going to be too large of a project to update or maintain, and would fade off into the night.
Thank you so much for updating it to modern foundations and keeping it going,
Hello everyone and welcome to the new MacScripter.net. Thank you all for your patience during the transition - I only received one irritated email
I’m still sorting out a few issues with the site content and structure, but everything is here and usable.
Give yourself some time to get used to the new server. The key difference is the move from BBCode to Markdown for post formatting. The site still recognizes some BBCode but it is best to adopt Markdown in your posts. The new software offers a range of customizations you can apply to your account. Poke around your account settings and preferences to see what you can do. Please refer to the FAQ for more information. Feel free to DM me or post to chat any questions the FAQ does not answer.
Incoming MacScripter.net topic links from Google and other sites should be working. I still have to resolve some issues with incoming post links. You can expect these improvements to roll out over the coming days.
IMPORTANT: if you are coming from the old MacScripter.net site you will have to establish a new password using the Forgot Password facility in order to log into your account.
Please be aware that we are currently only remapping legacy (MacScripter V1) URLs referencing topics. Incoming URLs referencing specific posts within a topic will fail. We are working to resolve this problem, with the goal of serving all MacScripter V1 URLs correctly.
This impacts Google search results, bookmarks or anything else that retains URLs pointing at specific posts within the old MacScripter.net.
first of all Happy New Year and congratulations on the success to migrate the huge database seamlessly to a new UI. And thank you very much for the effort to make it possible.
Of course it will take some time to get used to the new functionality and thread organization but it looks very nice, modern and fresh.
Do you plan to clean out the categories a bit? Some of them have become obsolete – even EOL – for example the categories related to AppleScript Studio and Scripting Additions, and others exist on MacScripter for a long time but have never been used seriously.
Thank you again and I look forward to the glorious future of MacScripter in contrast to the uncertain future of AppleScript itself.
I’m glad to hear you like the change. There will be some adjustment for everyone as people get used to the move from BBcode to Markdown for post formatting and to the ins and outs of Discourse.
