89 réponses à ce sujet

[Fexelea]

Hi everyone

I am making this thread so people can collaborate and express their expertise and we can get a proper project management going to set up an alternative

Setting up a new forum

There are some alternative sites already out there, that have been linked extensively. Moving to those sites is somewhat easier than starting from zero. As wonderful as many of these sites are, I have been burned before by abrupt changes in terms of service or advertising policies, administrator interest, and even bankrupcy... So I'm a DIY person when it comes to content.

What I'd like to offer is the technology and expertise from my current site so it can be used to salvage this community, for those who do not want to go to social media or Reddit.

 

Placeholder categories have been set up here: http://fextralife.com/forums/f95/
You can register and post if you wish - I am working on a full import of Bioware site threads to rescue content.

• Fextralife is a small rpg community, born out of love for dark souls. I play many other games, however, so I have expanded the site to include many other RPGs including dragon age and mass effect.
• We provide a single sign on experience that gives users access to wikis, blog and forums under one account, and the ability to create content in all those venues.
• Our moderators and admins consist of active community members who are dedicated and passionate about the games.
• We have a very strong server that can handle tens of thousands of simultaneous users
• We scan for malware daily and our advertisements are sage
• We have a track record, we have kept this site active, moderated and growing for many years. I'm not going to get bored of this and shut it down or pass it on to someone else in two years time.
• Funding: these things can be money sinks, I can ensure it stays online

 

 

What this thread needs

• Ideas: how do we organise this? Do we want a new domain? Or a forum category?
• Volunteers: can you code? Can you moderate? Can you help contact people?
• Project collaborators: we can try to scrape and create an archive from these forums, I'll need help to get this done within the timeframe.

 

Other suggestions

 

If you have your own forum to suggest, or software, please bring it up. I'm not trying to hog this just want it to work well!

[Reznore57]

I won't be very helpful , mostly because I'm like most people around here right now :running around like an headless chicken.

But anyway I know some people are interested in having a BSN archive.

People in the Solas thread wants to save their thread...etc..etc..

Now I don't know if it's possible to do that, and of course i can't help because I have zero knowledge .

[Whole Particle]

I made some suggestions in a few other threads and offered to set something similar up as well. My recommendations would be:

I think keeping the board structure and design / theme as close as you can to the current site would be best. It's nice to have both spoiler and non-spoiler forums, in addition to forums dedicated solely to multiplayer, story, etc. Lumping everything in one place / sub-board does make things more difficult to navigate and I think would turn users off (and probably go with a solo domain as well).

And I do believe it is nice to have all the features that the boards have now like avatars, PMs, groups, likes, alerts, etc. I think the best software out there currently would be one that has features such as these. The one I was looking into XenForo, as I've seen it offer nice things and power good forums out there, so that's what I'd recommend a new forum uses.

[Fexelea]

Thank you for the recommendations. I think I will attempt to set up proper categories then, and if we can salvage the posts from here people may have an option to keep their posting histories.

The look and feel will be tricky, but the features can be done, the board I run currently on phpbb has many of them ready.

Xenforo is an interesting idea but as a server admin not my favourite - however I'll look deeper and see what the best solution for that is

If anyone wants to collaborate to save the posts and such please let me know

[Arvaarad]

Volunteers: can you code? Can you moderate? Can you help contact people?

 

I'm a software engineer. Admittedly, I'm better at apps than web dev, but I can get by. Depends on which specific languages/skill sets are needed. 

[Whole Particle]

Yeah I'm guessing BW won't just lend there databases out for anyone to use, so saving as much of the content here will probably be tricky.

Any particular reason XenForo isn't a favorite? Does it have a clunky admin interface or does it just chew up server resources for you, etc.? (Just curious there as XenForo is what interested me the most; and worked great where I've seen it in use.)

 

 

Volunteers: can you code? Can you moderate? Can you help contact people?

 

Oh, and I do web development for a living (hand coding Wordpress themes from scratch to be more specific), so if there's any issues regarding HTML, CSS, PHP, or jQuery I could probably offer some advice if needed.

[Fredward]

Honestly all I'd like from a new forum is for it to be 1) well structured with distinct categories and subcategories 2) user-friendly. Threads can always be recreated but a mystifying/obtuse setup is a permanent barrier to discussion. If the template looks like the forums in your link I'd be totally happy.

[Fexelea]

Yay for collaboration!

Fredward: Absolutely understood about the categories, and I'll do my best to keep it a traditional forum, easy to navigate and understand for those of us who are used to them (our current forum is going to get a mobile redesign but it will stick to traditional categories and such)

arvaarad: I'll put a skill set list so you can match!

Whole particle:
Xenforo can be a scary one for server side (ip boards is worse I'm sure) but the main thing is it doesn't play well with integration, and the difficulties for phpbb are in adding plugins, yet I collaborate with a fantastic developer that has created numerous unique features that enhance the forum experience. xenforo had a lot of those by default, but this way I was able to customize them and do things like cross posting to proprietary wiki software that we made in house.

I absolutely will need help if we decide to scrape a backup of the forums here. 20million posts is no joke! i will create a proper project management map so I can ask for specific skills - I hope we can all do this together, sounds fun now actually... I'm a sucker for punishment perhaps XD

[RealKorra]

yeah, but Cassandra is the best in the world. she knows her stuff. she has done lot for Transgender Community this year

Proboards forum can host over 900 million posts. the policy changes very rarely.

[Fexelea]

I've pm Cassandra as well, I think everyone is doing their best to find the best solution to a bad situation, and I'm sure we will all help each other. I'm happy to host and take in as many admins and mods as we need.

My personal view is that I started a community on something like proboards eight years ago. I realised my mistake 500,000 posts in, and it was extremely painful to move.

It's because I've been burned before that I don't want to depend on the whims of an uninterested third party that is in essence a farm, and can turn the tables on you at anytime. I therefore prefer to put my efforts into something I have control over, where I know that I can invest my time effort and money to make it happen

This is completely optional for everyone and amicable for all who feel the same way

[RealKorra]

of course, i understand.

[Kaidan Fan]

I will check out your place Fexelea, it sounds like a fantastic idea!

 

Edit: OH LAWD you have a Witcher section! *cheers*

Edit #2: Registered

[SofaJockey]

The reason I like Cassandra's solution http://biowaresocial...ork.boards.net/

is because social media needs momentum and responsiveness.

 

That platform exists now.

 

If you start building something else, the world will have moved on.

[Remix-General Aetius]

Well I have joined this place and made my first Welcome thread. I don't want the best of us to be spread out in multiple forums. Let's all pick the same watering hole.

 

http://biowaresocial...ork.boards.net/

 

Stay close to me.........if you're not afraid  

[Fexelea]

It's good for you who chose that. There's no need to spam this with links, as what I'm trying to do is very different

Thank you!

[JobacNoor]

yeah, but Cassandra is the best in the world. she knows her stuff. she has done lot for Transgender Community this year

 

Please stop.

[TopTrog]

Hi everyone

I am making this thread so people can collaborate and express their expertise and we can get a proper project management going to set up an alternative

....

Thank you, your site looks really good  . I can´t offer much in terms of technical help, but I´ll post a link to the MP forums where I hang out mostly. There is a bunch of quite tech-savvy folks there who might be interested in contributing to this project  .

[Fexelea]

I have the basis for structure now set, and will have a forum by Monday with the right categories. The reason it will take a little while is so I can research if we can safely import user/post data to an already active board. If we cannot then imported data would reside within an archive.

I should also have a list of skillsets needed then so anyone with coding and html, js, Css or server experience can collaborate, and of course in the meantime if anyone would like to assist in moderating please let me know.

For everyone who wants to just hang around, I appreciate your patience. Good meals take time to cook!

[duckley]

Please let me know how I can help. I have no technical expertise but can moderate.... I have an MSW - so should be good for something!

[Dai Grepher]

I think the ideal solution would be to have BioWare transfer ownership of the forums over to a new party. This would be done with a simple name change for the domain, and a few trusted members of the BSN as admins. However, knowing BioWare this might involve contracts and such. They might not agree to any of it, just because.

Another option is to start a new forum. This would just mean that BSN members would need to agree to use this new forum as our official community board, and we would have to create new accounts there. It's uncertain if the new forum could receive the database info from this one, but if the data is converted into .xls then I'm sure it would be possible to move it across different software.

This forum uses Invision Power Services. Setting up a new forum with the same company would ensure that a data transfer of member info and threads/replies would go smoothly.

But there are other companies out there. One that I know of with appealing, clean, and user-friendly message board formats is xenforo. Their boards also have more options which can be selected at the preference of the admins and always added later if needed.

As I wrote, one of the issues is cost. Any forum would cost money to host. We might be able to start a go fund me or kick starter at first, which would get the site established at least, but long term we would likely need to turn to featuring web ads.

[Fexelea]

Duckley I will certainly be in touch!

Dai grepher those are some valid points. Ip board is a resource hog and whilst it would be the easiest migration, it would also be a costly one in the long run for a fan site as its poorly optimised. Xenforo is a good tool, but right now I have a highly customized phpbb that could receive the data so I'm trying to work with that as its already hosted and developed, so I know I can keep it online.

Our current forums have one advert for registered users, on the footer, I would hope we can keep a similar format and the plus minus should balance itself out or at least be close to break even. Developing a migration bot will be expensive in man hours though. If anyone wants to help with this let me know. I'm not sure bioware can/will share database information directly so I'm thinking we'll have to scrape.

Either way I'm willing to foot the bill as I already have server space that we can use

[SofaJockey]

For everyone who wants to just hang around, I appreciate your patience. Good meals take time to cook!

 

That's a good point, hanging around with interest 

[Clover Rider]

yeah, but Cassandra is the best in the world. she knows her stuff. she has done lot for Transgender Community this year

Just going to point this out for everyone here since today I feel like being a nice guy.

 

But this poster is Cassandra.

 

And is a huge troll that was banned from the very first BSN spin-off forum.

 

Also they have never done **** for the transgender community.

[TheRatPack55]

Well, I've joined vroom vroom, seems like a good community to just chat and voice your opinions without being immediately silenced or labeled "toxic" for it, and fextralife, which I've used before for DS stuff and they were always dedicated and reliable. Neither is a space where you can engage in BW games talk like you could on the BSN, but rn I don't feel like I want to talk about BW lore anyway, so I'm set.

[Dai Grepher]

Okay. I'll do whatever I can. Let me know what needs to be done and I'll see.