Tapatalk

[lostcity]

Any chance we will see the Flite Test forums on the Tapatalk app?

Thanks
Still Lost

 

[brizrobbo]

Yes please. Yes please. Yes please. Yes please. Yes please. Yes please. Yes please. Yes please.

Hey Alex, maybe for forum.flitetest.com 2.0??

Cheers.

 

[RoyBro]

With the new interface it wouldn't be a bad idea. The new drop down menu bar cuts down the screen real estate on tablets, especially when the on screen keyboard is showing. More than once I tried to tap off the message area to post the message, and inadvertently hit the button to go to the home screen.

 

[Kurt0326]

I asked Craftydan about this and he responded:

I wanted to ask directly.

Going to the flite test forum page on mobile devices takes a lot of data. Is there a mobile app you use for this forum? If not, can we get one started?

Thanks,
Kurt
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kurt,

Dunno, but ATM I don't think so. I know there's been some lobying for tapatalk which has mostly made no progress -- no idea why/why not.

High production quality is valued in FT, and while the vBulitin system has worked very reliably, with respect to mobile devices it's support and function has been occationally spotty. Bandwidth is a good concern that I don't think has been brought up.

Pain is the catilyst of change . . . I'll look into putting a bug in someone's ear, but I woudn't expect any movement on this until after FTFF -- there's just too many balls in play ATM.

 

[Craftydan]

Keep in mind, asking me is not asking FT directly . . . you've got a better chance I'll see it in a day or so, but I ain't official

 

[jhitesma]

As a user I love tapatalk, I don't keep up with the FT forum as well as I do some others because it doesn't work with tapatalk. RCGroups, MultiWii and OpenRC I scan very regularly since I have tapatalk on them....but FT I have to wait until I'm at an actual computer because it's just way too small to read on my phone.

But...as an admin (on other sites not this one) I can totally understand the resistance to supporting it. Every forum I've administered that added tapatalk saw a sudden increase in spam and spam accounts even with a laundry list of anti-spammer measures in place. And tapatalk requires very frequent updates that may conflict with other features on a board so keeping it up to date can be a pain (but you have to keep it up to date or you risk leaving security holes.)

So I can see both sides of this. If I was in charge of the forum I'd be very hesitant to add it even if users want it. But as a user I'd love to have it. Or at least a mobile optimized version of the forum.

 

[srfnmnk]

TapaTalk PLZ

Yes, please add it to tapatalk. Thank you!

 

[MT Alex]

The main crux of this problem lies in the fact that vbulitin is fairly limited and becoming obsolete. XenForo is the new standard for forums that are keeping pace with new ideas and tech.

 

[Fygar]

We just ran into the same thing when we redid the www.ankenyikes.org site. I am on the board of directors and one of my friends, who had a lot of experience designing websites in a past career, offered to design a new site for us. We bought a vBulletin license and he quickly found out that the new version was buggy and the development community he remembered were gone. He did some checking and the guys that originally developed vBulletin had sold it and started XenForo and the community mostly followed them. Tapatalk was developed by XenForo and vBulletin developed a competing App called ForumRunner. The issue is that there are a ton of bugs in both vBulletin and ForumRunner and not much going on to fix them.

After a while the Ankeny Ikes gave up on vBulletin and went to XenForo. I still have a ForumRunner license. I checked and Flite Test forum isn't on it. If Flite Test stays with vBulletin then ForumRunner would be the mobile option. I don't have any idea what has to happen to make it show up in the App.

 

[MT Alex]

Very informative post, Fygar. Most of the other forums I peruse have made the jump to XenForo after the schism at vBulletin. I definitely prefer it. Even when not using Tapatalk the default version is still very mobile friendly.

 

[jhitesma]

Doesn't matter what forum software you run it on. Adding tapatalk will put an increased load on your admins. Every forum I've installed it on immediately saw a jump in spam accounts that were able to get through the filters which never came back down. On the other hand it does expose your forum to new users as well.

I love it as a user but hated it as an admin so I can understand why they haven't added it. I won't touch the holy war of various bbs packages - thankfully I haven't had a client crazy enough to want one for awhile and haven't had time to volunteer like I used to so I haven't had to deal with day to had admin of a BBS recently enough to have a valid opinion on the current offerings

 

[shadowjig]

I use Tapatalk for all other forms. I don't follow the FT forums because it's not available in Tapatalk. I think if you add support for it, you'll see a boost in user activity. Please count me as a vote for Tapatalk.