Post by Oliveriver on Mar 5, 2018 22:00:09 GMT
Hi everyone. We're considering moving to a new forum as there are several issues with the existing one, and the longer we leave it the worse they'll become.
You can view and register on the new forum here: community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/
The main reasons for the proposed change are control and stability. This forum host (Proboards) is incredibly restrictive in what admins can do behind the scenes, and while that may not impact the average user too much, it's beginning to annoy us to the point where we're actively pushing for this change rather than merely suggesting it. Add to that the invasive ads (including in some cases popups), bot invasions and general instabilities and we feel we can do a lot better. Hosting a forum ourselves via Discourse, as we do for the dev forum, is a tempting idea.
Why Discourse? First off, it's a hell of a lot more flexible. The way I see it, if you can think of an issue with this forum, it's probable the forum host doesn't allow it to be fixed. If you can think of an issue on the new forum, all the code is available to us at the backend, so with a bit of elbow grease we could fix it. It'll take some working out but we could probably have most if not all the features from this forum you know and love, plus more you never knew you wanted.
Sadly we cannot carry over any user or post data. If you try to capture the data from this forum, Proboards will ban you before you complete it. We feel this is an unethical approach as it traps unsuspecting users (like ourselves apparently) in a difficult situation. Discourse gives full access to post data so we would never have that issue while using it.
The only other real issue is general aesthetic. We've spruced up the new forum quite a bit and we can add new and optional themes easily if what we have doesn't take your fancy, but it's true that people may be turned off by the less traditional forum style. Having used Discourse on the dev forums for a while now, I think all us devs agree it's perfectly fine and usable, in many ways moreso than this. You're free to decide for yourself but we ask you keep an open mind.
If we go forward with the change, we'll leave this forum here for archive purposes but disallow new posts, ending with a big important post directing newcomers to the new forums.
So, if you don't want to move, speak now or forever hold your peace. If there's significant backlash we'll reconsider, but from our perspective the choice is clear.
You can view and register on the new forum here: community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/
The main reasons for the proposed change are control and stability. This forum host (Proboards) is incredibly restrictive in what admins can do behind the scenes, and while that may not impact the average user too much, it's beginning to annoy us to the point where we're actively pushing for this change rather than merely suggesting it. Add to that the invasive ads (including in some cases popups), bot invasions and general instabilities and we feel we can do a lot better. Hosting a forum ourselves via Discourse, as we do for the dev forum, is a tempting idea.
Why Discourse? First off, it's a hell of a lot more flexible. The way I see it, if you can think of an issue with this forum, it's probable the forum host doesn't allow it to be fixed. If you can think of an issue on the new forum, all the code is available to us at the backend, so with a bit of elbow grease we could fix it. It'll take some working out but we could probably have most if not all the features from this forum you know and love, plus more you never knew you wanted.
Sadly we cannot carry over any user or post data. If you try to capture the data from this forum, Proboards will ban you before you complete it. We feel this is an unethical approach as it traps unsuspecting users (like ourselves apparently) in a difficult situation. Discourse gives full access to post data so we would never have that issue while using it.
The only other real issue is general aesthetic. We've spruced up the new forum quite a bit and we can add new and optional themes easily if what we have doesn't take your fancy, but it's true that people may be turned off by the less traditional forum style. Having used Discourse on the dev forums for a while now, I think all us devs agree it's perfectly fine and usable, in many ways moreso than this. You're free to decide for yourself but we ask you keep an open mind.
If we go forward with the change, we'll leave this forum here for archive purposes but disallow new posts, ending with a big important post directing newcomers to the new forums.
So, if you don't want to move, speak now or forever hold your peace. If there's significant backlash we'll reconsider, but from our perspective the choice is clear.
