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The End Of An Era

Posted: 10 Jul 2018, 16:03
by hictooth
Note to all members: Please go to the PM centre and download your PMs for safekeeping

A bit of bad news I'm afraid.

First it's important to know that this forum is hosted for free by a company called ZetaBoards.

Last year, ZetaBoards were bought by TapaTalk, another popular online forum provided. Having seen lots of company buy-outs before, I was slightly concerned, but the owner of ZetaBoards assured everyone that nothing would happen to the ZetaBoards service and all our forums.

Unfortunately, around two months ago it was announced that ZetaBoards was being discontinued, and all forums that are part of ZetaBoards (including this one) would be migrated over to the TapaTalk forum system. We weren't told a timeframe, or much else, actually.

Even worse, TapaTalk is lacking in many of the features that we have come to expect from ZetaBoards, including (but not limited to):
  • Any sort of custom theme
  • Custom emoji
  • User ranks (Dragon Egg, Gronckle, etc)
Furthermore, certain features that we use are only available to paying users, including custom domains, custom favicons and a few more.

Therefore we have to come to a decision. Do we want to stick with Tapatalk, and lose the wonderful grapevine theme, along with emoji, ranks, and probably the custom domain, favicons and more and stay with TapaTalk, or do we want to move the forum to another provider? If you want to see what the forum will look like if we stay with TapaTalk, you can have a look at the preview they sent us. It's pretty bad.

If we don't want to stay with TapaTalk, then I can download a lot of the data and import it to another provider, but we would lose user passwords and maybe PMs (users would have to use the password reset). So it's a bit of a balance. Without IcelandicEel's input, we'd also lose the custom domain, and I've not had any luck in contacting him about this (he's replied, but doesn't seem interested in the forums any more).

When's this migration to TT going to happen? I don't know, but it's likely to happen within a day or so. I've sat on this topic for a while now, hoping Eel and I could come to a resolution, but nothing's happened and migrations started (unexpectedly early) today.

I'd appreciate any comments, feedback, suggestions on what we should do as a forum, and community. (You can now reply to topics in this section, so feel free to reply here).

The End Of An Era

Posted: 10 Jul 2018, 16:07
by ToothlessNightFury
I kind of think I like the idea of moving to a new provider. I mean, I don't want to lose my PM's and stuff... but I don't know how I like the new one...

The End Of An Era

Posted: 10 Jul 2018, 16:09
by Dragonrider's Fury
I personally feel like we should move to a different provider. I'm guessing that that would entail quite a bit of difficulty, but that preview of what the Grapevine would look like hosted by TappaTalk looked simply horrible. That's my opinion.

The End Of An Era

Posted: 10 Jul 2018, 16:18
by httyd500
I would prefer to move to a different provider. It would be better, in my opinion, but whatever needs to be done, I will be fine with.

The End Of An Era

Posted: 10 Jul 2018, 16:50
by Night Flury
I would prefer to switch. TappaTalk doesn't sound too good.

The End Of An Era

Posted: 10 Jul 2018, 17:31
by hictooth
Also, for anyone wondering what the user scraper is, that's by new bot downloading the forum.

The End Of An Era

Posted: 10 Jul 2018, 17:32
by Dragonrider's Fury
Ah, okay. That's what I thought.

The End Of An Era

Posted: 10 Jul 2018, 17:33
by Ocean Rose
I'm agreeing with the others. TappaTalk doesn't look like a good move.

The End Of An Era

Posted: 10 Jul 2018, 17:35
by hictooth
Hopefully I don't wake up tomorrow to find this has already been converted. I have a backup from last month, but it would be annoying to lose a month's worth of data.

The End Of An Era

Posted: 10 Jul 2018, 17:45
by DeWhite
Wow, yeah, I’d agree with everyone saying we should try to find a different company. I’d suggest, guys, if you want to keep your PMs, take screenshots of them today!! That’s what I’ll be doing.

Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Hictooth. Must be hard to have the responsibility fall on your shoulders now that Eel’s busy!! You’re doing good and we all appreciate it. ;)