[Nebulous]

Hi peeps! Long time no see, how's it going?

[Darth-Apple]

Going good on my end. Driving a pretty nice 2004 corolla now, pretty excited about that.

[Nebulous]

Going good on my end. Driving a pretty nice 2004 corolla now, pretty excited about that.

Congrats! 

[Nebulous]

Hi all! *waves*

I hope you're all having a good weekend.

How's it going?

[Guardian]

Hey guys! Anyone still checking in around here?

[Darth-Apple]

I still make it every now and then. It's been... slow. Not a whole lot goes on here these days but I keep it up anyway, and plan to keep paying the bill on it. I still have plans someday but it's gonna need a bit of a reboot.

The real problem is that nobody has enough invested interest to keep it going. With the original concept I had in mind, I think it had a lot of potential, and even though it technically was (as much as I hate to admit it) a "general discussion" forum, making it centered around the creative arts aspect of it I feel made us unique, and our atmosphere was certainly a little more permissive, laid back, tight knit, and focused. I found some other forums in the creative arts niche and most of them never really made it anywhere near as far (and if they did, they were anything but laid-back in their atmosphere), but at the end of the day, once it was all set and done, we ended up becoming just like every other general discussion forum more than anything else. No, we never had IPB and the amazing features that come with it, but the average everyday writer doesn't really care. Likewise, the average photographer or graphics designer or programmer or whatever is fine with MyBB and its simplicity. And the design isn't ugly, but people would find reasons to criticize it anyway. On one hand I'd have people paying me for the theme and on the other I'd have people say nothing other than that the site was trash because of the theme that I spent countless hours designing. Our loyal members cared about nothing other than the community, but you know, people looking at advertisement threads elsewhere don't really see the essence of what we were on our front page for their first visit to the site.

At the end of the day, it just became a little disheartening. Communities aren't about the software, or the statistics, or the design. I ran a little simcity community that has kinda changed courses way back in the day, before the days of Makestation, and honestly, that community ran and got significantly bigger than MS running off of phpBB2. Needless to say the community is no longer in my hands, nor is it still on phpBB2, but it just goes to prove a point. I think people care more about the community than they do about how nice it looks. And when it becomes the other way around, that's when your userbase will jump ship for ridiculous reasons such as a better theme elsewhere. And that's what I'm afraid forums have kinda become. Nothing unique about them anymore in many, many cases.

With that said, MS at its core is still a concept that is close to me at a personal level, and honestly, probably more so than ever. I would love to be able to reboot it, given the opportunity, but opportunities to make new communities out of nothing have become fewer and farther between as forums have, well, I guess, become a little more mainstream and a little less unique over the years. It's just not the same playing field that it once was years ago.

[Guardian]

April Fools Day today. Haven't been able to read anything online today.... without questioning EVERYTHING!

[brian51]

I want to see if I can also get some of the other guys back posting again here..

Meanwhile Guardian, i really appreciate your efforts to join me in keeping the site going and active..

[Guardian]

I want to see if I can also get some of the other guys back posting again here..

Meanwhile Guardian, i really appreciate your efforts to join me in keeping the site going and active..

Same! I appreciate the effort from you as well. I just hope we can stick with it until the rest of the crowd comes back. 

[brian51]

Thanks, I will see if i can get a few of the old guys to come back and post a bit

[Guardian]

Thanks, I will see if i can get a few of the old guys to come back and post a bit

That would be nice.

[SpookyZalost]

so, anyone else come back besides me? lol 

[Guardian]

so, anyone else come back besides me? lol 

Haven't seen anyone else pop in. If they do, they'll see the activity and hopefully jump right in. 

I need to find a way to spread the word about the place. 

[brian51]

yes we have 4 back posting regularly so far..
We of course plan to get this to continue to grow

[Darth-Apple]

Anyone savvy with servers around here? Emails send just fine but in Gmail they always end up in the spam folder, no idea why. I run this place on an old VPS and I suppose getting emails set up right was never quite my thing.

Somebody suggested it was DNS issue.

Once I get that sorted out I'll send out an email.

[Darth-Apple]

On a side note, I apparently wrote a CMS plugin for MyBB that was most of the way complete a few years back. I literally had completely forgotten about it! Logged onto the MyBB support forums and apparently there are some people asking me to address a few things with BAM announcements manager. Probably should address those concerns first, but if I get a few weeks free I might take up my love for coding again a bit...

Kinda wanna test out this CMS. I wrote a d*** good admin panel for it...

Oh the things we forget.

[Guardian]

Anyone savvy with servers around here? Emails send just fine but in Gmail they always end up in the spam folder, no idea why. I run this place on an old VPS and I suppose getting emails set up right was never quite my thing.

Somebody suggested it was DNS issue.

Once I get that sorted out I'll send out an email.

IB emails do this too. I don't understand why. I mark them 'Not SPAM' every time I get them hoping it helps. Nothing yet.

On a side note, I apparently wrote a CMS plugin for MyBB that was most of the way complete a few years back. I literally had completely forgotten about it! Logged onto the MyBB support forums and apparently there are some people asking me to address a few things with BAM announcements manager. Probably should address those concerns first, but if I get a few weeks free I might take up my love for coding again a bit...

Kinda wanna test out this CMS. I wrote a d*** good admin panel for it...

Oh the things we forget.

Makestation plugins... could drive some people this way too.

[Darth-Apple]

Ah, that's interesting. I do think it's something server related rather than to the software. I do want to figure that out at some point. It's no problem when people are expecting an email for a password reset or a user registration confirmation, but to send out a newsletter, it's useless if 90% of users are gonna find the email in their spam folder.

As for plugins I would just have to find the time. I had a few back in the day that are fairly popular. BAM has been downloaded 7,000 times and people still bug me to add a feature to dismiss announcements. It'd be an easy add on for someone who isn't rusty on JS, but it's been years since I've written a single line of code.

I've been busy. Working two jobs right now and getting ready to move and to go back to college to finish my degree, so I've had some pretty heavy RL priorities.

On the bright side, this place has been pretty easy to keep online. I've been paying the server bill and MyBB is easy to use. Long term I think IPB is the best investment. It has all the features I've been coding in all along and without having to spend weeks on end coding plugins. The downside is that I actually like the MyBB community a bit. It's highly customizable and very easy to use, and it's very clean. Users don't care about the software. They care if it's easy to use. SMF forums seem to have have a little more trouble for that very reason.