December 11th, 2013 at 2:58 AM
It's official, Makestation has now been around for roughly eight months as 2013 comes to a close. In a short time span, we've had one major forum software conversion and not one, but four full theme overhauls, but have grown nicely as a community, thanks to our ever dedicated members here. 
As the community has grown, it has become clear that neither SMF nor MyBB have really been able to fully meet our needs (although most will agree that MyBB has been great and has been quite customizable as well, making it a huge step above the old SMF days). In light of some of the feature requests as well as the growing community, I am now considering paid software for the community that would be much more powerful and bring back some coveted features such as user blogs, a new knowledgebase, better CMS-integration, and more.
Most likely, we'd be upgrading to Invision Power Board. It is significantly more expensive than Xenforo, but it has more of the features we would need, so I think it would be worth the additional expenses. Xenforo, however, isn't completely out of consideration. It's a good forum software option as well, although overall Invision Power Board seems more suited to the needs of the community and is more similar to what users are already used to. In either case, as with the last conversion, all users, posts, etc... will be converted seamlessly, so there won't be too many headaches with any conversion.
Anyway, what are your thoughts on the idea? Anyone have any feedback, questions, or suggestions? Be sure to vote in the poll!
P.S. we'll probably be bringing on some new moderators, or potentially even administrators for the next major site upgrade. I may throw in some competitions as well. Stay tuned!
As the community has grown, it has become clear that neither SMF nor MyBB have really been able to fully meet our needs (although most will agree that MyBB has been great and has been quite customizable as well, making it a huge step above the old SMF days). In light of some of the feature requests as well as the growing community, I am now considering paid software for the community that would be much more powerful and bring back some coveted features such as user blogs, a new knowledgebase, better CMS-integration, and more.
Most likely, we'd be upgrading to Invision Power Board. It is significantly more expensive than Xenforo, but it has more of the features we would need, so I think it would be worth the additional expenses. Xenforo, however, isn't completely out of consideration. It's a good forum software option as well, although overall Invision Power Board seems more suited to the needs of the community and is more similar to what users are already used to. In either case, as with the last conversion, all users, posts, etc... will be converted seamlessly, so there won't be too many headaches with any conversion.
Anyway, what are your thoughts on the idea? Anyone have any feedback, questions, or suggestions? Be sure to vote in the poll!
P.S. we'll probably be bringing on some new moderators, or potentially even administrators for the next major site upgrade. I may throw in some competitions as well. Stay tuned!
![[Image: mrnc7tt5xg8n7y494418.jpg]](http://imagehost.pitestinet.ro/images/mrnc7tt5xg8n7y494418.jpg)
) I was also intending to do a better job integrating a content management system/blog with the community, but so far, my custom MyBB CMS addon has been a bit behind on development due to my busy schedule, and is a bit of a mess at the moment. Overall, IP.Board already has a lot of great addons to expand the functionality of the makestation forum, so it would not only save me a lot of time on development for more custom plugins, but would also allow the community to expand significantly as well. 