I've never really been a fan of the new Xenforo. Honestly, the old one was better. It was almost perfect, albeit missing a few things... but it was something new and unique, had just enough ajax to be worthwhile, and was clean and had some really unique and interesting features. 

Now, the new one looks like this: https://xenforo.com/community/

I'm like... uh. That's not what it was supposed to be. Granted, nobody really ever uses the default theme, but unlike MyBB, Xenforo forums pretty much always look like Xenforo. MyBB forums tend to be made to look like whatever people want them to look like. But with Xenforo, you can just... tell. It's Xenforo every time. 

I mean, it honestly seems like good software, but all of the animations and extra visual effects and clutter in the design is just a bit much for me. I think they really tried to simplify it with Xenforo 2, but they made it look a little worse in my opinion. 

What are your thoughts? Have any of you guys ever used Xenforo to have more experience on this one?

We all have hobbies that came from deep within our childhoods. 

Personally, playing guitar and programming random things (and some electronics) were mine. I still do pretty much all of it, even to this day. Gosh, I was what, in 6th grade when I picked a lot of it up. I didn't have much of a normal childhood because we were moving so much, over and over and over again. So that was my escape from the world. 

What are your early hobbies that you carried with you to this day?

We've been working hard on the forum over this past week. A few quick updates that I wanted to share! 

• Users can now log in with Google, for the very first time. Still working out the details of this, but it's much easier than the standard form of registration and authentication. No existing users will be affected, and the standard form of registration will still work as always! More social networks to come in the future. (If you're a member already, you may optionally link your account in the user CP if you wish!)
  
  
• We have a brand new PM conversation system that uses text-message style PMs. Check out any existing PMs to see the new system. It groups all PMs with any given user into a single thread and shows you the full history. 
  
  
• You can now put a youtube link to your favorite song into your profile (Go to user CP -> Edit Profile). Special profile photos are also now added and available as well.
  
  
• You can now drag/drop attachments and images directly into posts. You can even drag/drop images directly inline to your post imgur-style. Give it a try next time you need to post an image with your post!
  • We still recommend using our image host if you have large image files or a large number of them. Attachment limits are capped at this time, whereas our image host has no limits.  

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/world...dates.html

People at work have already started doing this. We are always getting in and out of people's vehicles, delivering vehicles to sick people's homes, and so forth. We sanitize cars thoroughly with hospital-grade solution every time we get in and out, but there's only so much we can do. People have started making their own face masks because, of course, they are in very short supply. A number of mechanics had a supply of gloves and masks for automotive work from home, and have since donated them to hospitals (very kind of them). 

Would you consider wearing one of these if it were recommended in your area? I'm starting to consider it myself.

So yeah, decided to join Makestation. I've been having a few discussions with Darth-Apple, and thought I would join just for somewhere else to show off my skills as a web monkey.

This is, by far, my biggest struggle as a creator, programmer, designer, or whatever else. I try my best to see things through, but it gets discouraging. Failure, especially. And boy, I've failed. 

I've failed running forums. I've failed designing things. I've failed writing songs. I've failed in Cities Skylines. I've failed in friendships and relationships, you name it. 

Life is about bouncing back. Life is saying "I'll roll with the punches. Yes, I failed. That's okay. So what, I can do it over..." And yet it's still hard to try for the 5th or the 6th time and to still be where you started. 

How do you approach failure? How do you bounce back afterwards and avoid becoming discouraged?

Hello all, 

This is a Makestation Press Announcement dated April 1. 

After much time, thought, and consideration, we've made a big change for the community in 2020. It's coming up on our seventh year anniversary. As such, we're going to make a number of changes for the community. 

Switching to vBulletin:

We will be using vBulletin 5 Connect as our upcoming software. We've created a new theme that that resembles the one that we use today. vBulletin 5 connect offers: 

•  
  
• The exact same features we have today
  
• Lots of expensive plugins, which means that they must be good. 
  
• A CMS feature that isn't as good as Wordpress. 
  
• Leadership in the forum software industry. 
  
• Bugs that will generate activity for the community. People will report bugs, which will generate more posts on the forum. 
  

• We're changing our name to SaturnMoon
  
• Our new slogan will be creativity, leashed, LLC.
  
• We're hosting on 000webhost. This will allow us to afford vBulletin. 
  
• We're putting anit-adblock codes on our website. This will allow us to generate revenue, which will allow us to afford vBulletin. 
  
• We're changing our theme to orange, pink, brown, and neon green. More colors means a better forum. 
  
• We're merging all content into two boards. The first one will be the forum games board. The other one will contain ALL content from every other board of the site.
  

Hello bosses :-) do you actually have a user gallery or avatar gallery in the forum? Or don't you want something like that?

Someone is suing purell because their 99.99% germ killing claims are apparently not "substantiated" enough. Doesn't matter that it's a pandemic. Someone with green eyes saw an opportunity for money. Like, come on people... do we seriously have nothing better to do? 

https://www.industryweek.com/leadership/...ectiveness

Welcome to the 21st century, where we love lawsuits.

So, we already have a thread on whether creativity is learned or now, and ofc I side with the fact that creativity isn't learned, but the actual skills to bring creativity into the tangible world is something that's learned. And, since I now have way more time to do whatever at home, I figured I shouldn't be blowing the majority of it on playing vidya. Getting a job right now is gonna be pretty hard (although I do know a couple places that will hire anyone who walks in the door, even in the midst of crisis), so I should probably do something that I can somehow benefit from.

Reading would have been my first option, but I can't really show much for it without turning what I've read into some sort of writing of my own, so I figured I'll bust out the trusty Wacom and pick up drawing again instead.

Thing is, I suck at drawing. Like, I'm not terrible, but since I don't practice that often anymore, I really can't do much without heavily basing my work off of other references, or downright copying work others have done. Drawing people or characters is the worst, since I have no idea about how to draw anatomy and proportions just don't seem to work in my head, whether it be the proportions of a face or the proportions of a body.

So I invested about 100$ (USD) into a program on CubeBrush called ART School. It's usually 600$, cut down to 360$ at the moment for the whole thing, but you can also buy terms separately, so I went for Terms 1-4. Each term covers some kind of fundamentals about drawing or painting, and maybe a bit on 3D modelling as well. The reviews are pretty good, but I know that reviews can easily be faked. The course offers forums, though. so I poked around there.

And wow, you can really see people progressing and getting better at drawing over time (although most people tend to fall off after Term 3). At the very least, they get a handle on anatomy, shading, perspectives and proportions, which is fantastic.

So I bit the bullet and bought the first four terms which mostly cover fundamentals. I'll probably update with whatever I can draw and be relatively proud of.