Epochtalk is ready, theymos wants us to test it. C'mon...

[TheBeardedBaby]

Since his comment is in the New Forum software section, which is not that popular the last days. Here I post part of his post.

~
In short: If you want the software quicker, go run your own forum with it, and work to get any problems or missing features you find resolved via bug reports, etc. This would increase public interest, provide much-needed testing, and I might even hire you to work on bitcointalk.org when we're ready to do the final transition here.

The full update on the development of the new forum software can be found following the quote.

Here all I want to focus on is the testing and popularizing of the Epochtalk.

I think Meta is suitable for this kind of discussion.

Link to their website : http://epochtalk.org/


You can test it here >
Thanks to yogg for the info

A user active in the French local sub-forum did setup Epochtalk.
Here is the link :

www.cryptos-currencies.com

(Registration confirmation email ended up in spams on gmail)

My overview of issues here :https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5115500.msg49966665#msg49966665

List of websites using Epochtalk

www.cryptos-currencies.com Ann > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5115500.0
https://coinbistro.com Ann > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5158825.0


Please post a reply if you know others.

[Vod]

Novel idea Theymos has....  prove you can do something before he hires you to do it!

[jackg]

Meta is definitely suited for this sort of thing. I might take a look at testing it myself, maybe I can host it somewhere and do some runs of it.

It was theymos' vision to make an open source forum software and thus he wants to continue along that stretch I'd have thought. This means that this is on its way to moving it more into the public domain and getting more collaboration on the software. I'm guessing it's still a bit prototypal at the moment though perhaps jet cash would be interested in making his coffee lounge into a forum...

[TheBeardedBaby]

I'll install it on my server tomorrow, and give it a go.
I'm also thinking to write a review on my blog and advertise it a bit here and there.

I'll make a translation to Bulgarian & Norwegian if needed.

[mk4]

Ugh. Thank god. I'm pretty sure everyone's been waiting for the new forum software for a while. I'm definitely looking forward into having a better mobile browsing experience.

By the way, is there any reason why Theymos chose to write his own forum software instead of using existing ones that are being sold? (e.g. Xenforo, InvisionCommunity)

[suchmoon]

Novel idea Theymos has....  prove you can do something before he hires you to do it!

But he wants someone to QA it for free...

Is the requirements doc up to date? Seems quite vague in some parts, e.g. trust.

[vit05]

https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk

I just wish it is not the new Digg v4.

[leonair]

Being a lone wolf is hard especially when maintaining this kind of forum and the transition phase to a new platform will obliviously harder but a much more thrilling.

A move must happen no matter what, we still have this forum for back up purposes. This would be the 3rd time of moving to a new forum, right?

[Jet Cash]

I can provide hosting for my domain CryptoHints.com if somebody wants to work with me to set up a test forum. I've got too many projects on the go at the moment to do it on my own though.

[mocacinno]

I've got the same sollution as Jet Cash, i can provide a free VPS to a GREEN trusted member for the sole purpose of testing out epochtalk (a new allocated ip costs me about $4 IIRC, but i'll carry that cost). I'll only provide one to a green trusted member tough, since i don't want to be abused (a VPS can be used for a lot more than simple epochtalk hosting if it falls into the wrong hands). I don't really have the time to get behind this problem right now, but if somebody has the trust, the qualifications and the time for some tests, i'd be more than willing to provide the resources (most popular linux distro's available, 1 or 2 Gb ram, 2-4 vCPU's, a couple gig's of diskspace... OpenVZ). I can even create a KVM VM if i have no other choice, but i'd prefer openVZ...

[Jet Cash]

I've got a reseller hosting plan, so I could set up an account which can be administered using cpanel and ftp.
It has a lot of other stuff as well like Litespeed, awstats, ruby, clodflare, iminify360, 2FA, Jetbackup etc, most of which I haven't used.

[SECOND THOUGHTS]

I also own BitcoinScammer.com , and that might be a more useful project to start using the new forum software. Is anyone interested in starting that as a joint venture?

[jackg]

I might have a go at setting it up on one of my own servers this week and if I can get it remotely functioning I'll see if you guys are interested in going into a joint venture with it.

(my servers here arent very powerful though and I can't get them a static ip).

I don't really use anything other than ssh to remote into servers also (other than when I had to use something that resembled ftp once).

[Jet Cash]

I've got a spare VPS that I've never used, you can have a go with that if you like. I forget the domain name that is hitched to it, It's got its own dns as well, and I forget that domain name.

[jackg]

If you find the name out then I could give it a go straight off that as it looks like it's quite a huge install.

I can probably image it from there too so it can be used much more readily by others.

[seoincorporation]

https://github.com/epochtalk/epochtalk

I just wish it is not the new Digg v4.

Thanks for share the link, they even have an easy step-by-step installation guide.

(my servers here arent very powerful though and I can't get them a static ip).

If you have dynamic ip you could add a domain with no-ip. Give it a try, for me was a nice solution to my dynamic ip.

I've got the same sollution as Jet Cash, i can provide a free VPS to a GREEN trusted member for the sole purpose of testing out epochtalk (a new allocated ip costs me about $4 IIRC, but i'll carry that cost). I'll only provide one to a green trusted member tough, since i don't want to be abused (a VPS can be used for a lot more than simple epochtalk hosting if it falls into the wrong hands). I don't really have the time to get behind this problem right now, but if somebody has the trust, the qualifications and the time for some tests, i'd be more than willing to provide the resources (most popular linux distro's available, 1 or 2 Gb ram, 2-4 vCPU's, a couple gig's of diskspace... OpenVZ). I can even create a KVM VM if i have no other choice, but i'd prefer openVZ...

Thanks mocacinno, but there are more than 1 user who wants to test this software. Maybe we can make a group and if we give $5 each one for sure we can pay a VPS for this testing propouses.

[DdmrDdmr]

Wouldn’t it be better if Bitcointalk provided a common test environment that was open for anybody to use, without people having to download the software and setting up their own environments? Depending on how the software has been developed, it could be on "debug mode" and trap software errors into a log in it’s own. Functional errors would logically need to be reported by the people who test the software.

Testing the software has multiple perspectives (installation, functional usage under different profiles such as admin, mod, regular user, db admin, etc.). Surely here the main target would be that of regular users (functionality and stress tests), being the other profiles more delicate and subject to perhaps a delimited cherry-picked set of volunteers. But a common forum created test platform would seem the way to go.

[vit05]

Wouldn’t it be better if Bitcointalk provided a common test environment that was open for anybody to use, without people having to download the software and setting up their own environments? Depending on how the software has been developed, it could be on "debug mode" and trap software errors into a log in it’s own. Functional errors would logically need to be reported by the people who test the software.

Testing the software has multiple perspectives (installation, functional usage under different profiles such as admin, mod, regular user, db admin, etc.). Surely here the main target would be that of regular users (functionality and stress tests), being the other profiles more delicate and subject to perhaps a delimited cherry-picked set of volunteers. But a common forum created test platform would seem the way to go.

There was a test forum that was disabled
http://beta.bitcointalk.org/

I think that theymos proposal is not just that we test, is that people try to build another forum using the same software. And try to correct and modify what each one finds interesting. It seems a more practical idea than centralizing the modifications and tests in a single version. He does not have so much time to test everything that was proposed. So he could just modify what was already working well and the transition would be faster.

[Jet Cash]

If you find the name out then I could give it a go straight off that as it looks like it's quite a huge install.

The domain is dnsend.com and the name servers are ns1.xohc.com and ns2.xohc.com

It's a a domain name project that I was going to start, but didn't ever get around to doing much more than looking at the server.

There is SSH access, and I went in using a terminal on my Ubuntu machine. We could probably use another name for the forum, but I would have to delete the server and start again if we wanted to use something other than dnsend as the main domain. Do you want me to send you the access info?

[++]

It looks pretty messed up at the moment. The URL http://xohc.dnsend.com/ is resolving, but I don't think it should be structured like that. I'm not sure I will have chance to explore the setup to see what I did wrong.

[jackg]

Sure send me the login details and I'll take a look at it.

I might just ssh into it from my phone and then I can keep going at it. Is it running something debian based (debian or Ubuntu)?

I don't think domain matters too much at the moment and if it does we can take a snapshot and change it later.

[theymos]

I'm glad that people are interested!

Wouldn’t it be better if Bitcointalk provided a common test environment that was open for anybody to use, without people having to download the software and setting up their own environments?

beta.bitcointalk.org was run for a couple of years, but virtually nobody used it. It was too boring. I'd ideally like people to actually try using Epochtalk for various things that they find fun/interesting. Maybe try a more restrictive moderation style, maybe make it more niche-focused, maybe try adding some crazy features, etc. If people actually try to use it for real things, then the real deficiencies will be found.

Is the requirements doc up to date? Seems quite vague in some parts, e.g. trust.

No, that's very old.