Not trying to comment on the relative merits of the two forums, and I see there is a lot of cross membership ... But I travel a lot and can only hang out on one shave forum due to simple time constraints. I give B&B about three more days of their "down for maintenance" and I'm gone. I know it's tough to run a forum, especially of that size, but geez! Good for this place, though! Has traffic and new registrations been picking up? Both are full of good people and information, I'm not making any value judgement here. But I am about to drop B&B from my bookmarks and just hang out here. Like I said, there is only room in my life for one shave forum.
We're smaller but way more friendly, and now more user friendly too!:happy102They definately have some kinks to work out.
Oh, in fairness, I think both places are just as friendly. I just think the new software they went to (or servers) were not a good idea. The old stuff was way more stable. I like both, but about two more days and the other place drops off my rotation. And then I'll never know if they got it fixed or not. Because I'll be hanging out here.
Yes. Traffic has increased because when I get home there are more unread posts than a few weeks before. It is that apparent.
Hope the software upgrade here is beta tested before going live! Seems like upgrades are an essential part of running software. But there are tried & true methods of performing upgrades that don't cause huge problems or outages. If the team here needs some help with alpha or beta testing I hope they put out the request before beginning the upgrade process.
From what I've heard, the current problems are with the server company and not B&B: "The hosting company has completely mismanaged the backup and migration to the new server. The team is doing damage control now." From Jim, who's working on things from the B&B side. At any rate, both forums have their merits!
Well, I'll be patient with their upgrade, and if the upgrade here runs into problems, I'll be patient with it. Can't always have everything right away.
That's true, you can't have everything right away, but it's going on several weeks now. Boy, if their server provider bollixed up the migration ... well I've seen them go well and I've seen them go ... well, the way B&B's is going. Too bad, they can be awfully messy. The up/down/up/down/up/down is getting too frustrating for me, anyway. I think I'll just hang out here for a while and see if they get a permanent fix to their issues. I'm not going to keep dropping in until they get it under control again. I wish them luck!
I know if we had that amount of trouble/downtime upgrading software and servers at the Hosp group I use to work for a lot of folks would be gone. All the way up the food chain.
The reason I found this forumn is because B&B was down all the time. I just googled shaving brush reviews and this site came up.. I'm glad it did. I had thought previously that this site was an online store. I like it here, find it a bit easier to use. I'd think that there has been a big increase in membership here since B&B had their problems.. Although, they most likely have something to do with one another anyway's.. It is/was very frustrating on B&B lately, never know if it's working or not. Especially since I had bought a Razor from another member there, and was not able to see any PM's, and had deleted the message they sent to my email (my fauly, not theirs).. Both sites have there merit's though, I hope it get's figured out. I cannot imagine B&B is happy with whoever is working on their system..
I'm here due to the B&B upgrade issues too (obvious considering my join date). And while I hope they do get the issues worked out I've found myself enjoying the experience here more and more. Best of luck to them and i'm sure i'll be going back there from time to time but i think i found my home.:love008
I've always known of this site, and came over regular to see what there was to see.. As far as one being more friendly than the other? We'll see. But this seems to be ok. No reason not to have 2 homes. I see there are some good guys from SRP here also.
This kind of thing happens from time to time; either a site has an upgrade or server problem that lasts longer than anticipated, and members look around for an alternative site to flock to, often it's intended to be temporary, but it will usually pique their interest to stick around awhile - it's something new, a few familiar faces, new perspectives, and whatnot. This is a good thing usually, and benefits everyone, even the site having issues. Another issue that happens a lot is a disagreement/argument/fallout at a site, where a member, or even a large group of folks leave the site they were at and go to another. This one is less positive usually, as it often brings bitterness, trash-talking, and poor attitudes to the new site; however, even these situations can turn out good. In either case, it's always best to avoid negative talk about another site or situation. Not that that's happened in this thread, but there's always the possibility of it. Just laying out a friendly reminder There has been a substantial increase in traffic and new members here, due to technical issues beyond the B&B admins' control, but I sincerely hope many of the new folks stick around longer than just until B&B's issues are fixed, as has been noticed, many of us enjoy dual- (or multi-)citizenship, though we tend to favor one site or the other more. It's also true that TSD will soon be having an major upgrade. Whereas B&B's was an update to a newer version of the same forum software, we'll be migrating to a different product - albeit a product created by the same original creators of the previous product before it was sold. Bottom line, we're all here (or there) to enjoy ourselves, and let's keep the focus that, regardless of which hall it happens in!
Here's a link to the Wikipedia page on the new board software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XenForo I'm not sure how it compares to vBulletin.
first release in Oct 2010? WOW! we wouldn't put on IBM or Window fixes that were that young. let alone move to a whole new product that was that fresh. I wish you good luck.
Anyone here wondering about a "weather" site to monitor the weather at Badger and Blade? Is it sunny, cloudy, all lights out? Is that totally inappropriate for the members of this forum? Since there seems to be some amount of brotherly love, it might be helpful and useful to offer some sort of monitoring of the ups & downs of their site. Or not.
