Good morning, everyone. There’s no easy way to say this so I’m going to come up and say it: I believe the forum has only a few weeks left to live. And with that in mind, I’ve decided to start a new forum. I’ve bought the URL writingforum.org (no S) and will be purchasing the Xenforo Cloud software. Moose and Hammer are onboard and we’re already working to build the new forum. It will be ready soon and everyone is invited to join. There’s a very long explanation to follow, but that’s the gist of the situation. How did we got here? As most of you know, our owner, Daniel, has not logged into the forum for three years and has been unable or unwilling to give it the support it deserves. What I didn’t know until recently is that Daniel has also been unable or unwilling to pay the server bills for the last few months. You may have noticed that the recent spate of outages have occurred on January 29th, March 29th, and April 29th. I suspected that he wasn’t paying the bills for a while before that but didn’t receive confirmation until I reached out to thim on March 29th , two outages ago. It was then that he informed me that he might be able to borrow money from his family and get the forum back online within a few days. I said fuck that, sent him the money (not much), was expecting to get ripped off, but to his credit, he paid the bill and the forum was back within hours. Then April 29th happened and we were down again. Pete and Repeat. I sent him the money and the forum was back, only this time I informed him that I would not be paying any more unless he handed the forum over to us once and for all. This is also a very long and boring story. The mod team and I have tried to acquire the forum from him for years. That all happened ten days ago and I haven’t heard from Daniel since. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but the next bill is due on May 29th, 19 days from now, and I’m not paying for it. For all I know, Daniel will pay the bill again like he did for years despite not logging in since 2022. But he hasn’t paid all year. We would have dead for good on the 29th of each month already, so I have no reason to believe it won’t happen again on May 29th. And that major hack in 2023 would have put us down for good if the mod team hadn’t scoured the Earth to find Daniel’s contact information. Literally. The comms went from me in Rhode Island to Iain in Japan, to Moose in the UK, to Komposten in Sweden (I think), before we got Daniel’s phone number back to me in Rhode Island so I could text his ass in Arizona. A surreal experience, but it worked. That was two years ago and I’ve had probably 7-8 more surreal experiences with Daniel since. Usually when tied to an outage, but sometimes not. Like I said, we’ve been trying to acquire the forum from him for years. You’d think a guy who claims to be in dire straits would jump at the chance for a fair purchase price but that’s not Planet Daniel. Those of you who have dealt with him know what I’m talking about. Those who don’t couldn’t be educated in the 19 days we have left. Like I said, I don’t know anything for a fact, but I have to assume that he never pays the bill again and we’re done on May 29th. No matter what happens, I’m done with Daniel. The community here built the forum, not him. Whatever our little family is, we built it, not him. He doesn’t get to take that away from us. No fucking way. So, we’ve decided to build a new forum. I don’t have a lot of details yet. Only that the URL will be writingforum.org (no S) and it will be run with the same Xenforo software we’re using now. The upgraded version. You know, the kind, where shit works. And it’s hosted on their cloud, so there’s no installation or server space needed. Upgrades and tech support are included, so no more outages. And no more Daniel. Ever. I am financing the forum myself and willing to invest what it deserves. It will be protected by a legal LLC, budgeted to include the licensing and hosting with some $$ hopefully leftover for marketing (I haven’t gotten that far yet), and make legal tax filings if necessary. I even created a little P&L for it, like I would for one of my restaurants. I don’t expect it to make money, but if did, it will be reinvested. I’m not a tech guy but I know a lot about business and organizational structure. This isn’t a business by any means but the same principles apply: structure, discipline, guest facing experience, responsibility, a steady hand on the wheel, etc. And shit that works. Did I mention that already? Plug-ins, add-ons, doohickeys, thingamabobs. And most importantly, all of you who want to keep our thing going. I apologize for not informing everyone of our situation earlier. I didn’t want to illuminate a problem without having a solution, continuing to attempt to acquire the forum from Daniel, foolishly thinking I could succeed where others had failed. And the fact that he didn’t rip me off for the money only confused me further. I just didn’t want the forum to die. I love this place and I imagine a lot of you do as well. I told Moose from the beginning because he’s the only reason any of us are still breathing. If he hadn’t taken over when he did, we would have been done a long time ago. But I didn’t tell the rest of the mods until the second time I sent Daniel money. Soooo… new forum. Like I said, I don’t know what it will look like, but it will be similar. We will have a Workshop, Progress Journals, Contests, Role Playing… remember how I’m always telling you guys in the role play forum to back up your work? Now you definitely want to back up your work. And anybody else who needs a copy of a story, or a blog, or a Progress Journal. Now’s the time. Like I said, I don’t know what’s going to happen on May 29th, but we’ve seen what’s happened on the 29th every month this year. Moose is much more familiar with the Xenforo software then I am. We think we can get a new forum up within a few days. I’ve been demoing the Xenforo Cloud software and it is very, very cool. They’ll be more details to follow with that. I’m going to hang around my laptop for most of today to discuss things and answer questions. I don’t have a lot of detailed answers yet. Step one for me is taking care of the membership and making sure we can reach as many people as possible while we still can. Once we’re safely aboard the lifeboats, we can discuss what we want a new forum to look like. I will definitely want to hear from all of you about that in due time. I’m all about collaboration. Maybe not consensus, but you all know what kind of experience you’d like better than I. I’m new to this but have a shitload of ideas, all of which can wait until the immediate problem is sorted out. I also want to make clear that this isn’t an abandonment of .org situation. My attitude isn’t screw this place, I’m out. But I have to prepare as if .org won’t be here on May 29th. If it still is, great, we’ll deal with it then, but we’ll still have a new roof over our heads if it isn’t. Daniel is unpredictable. He paid for the upkeep for years despite never logging in once and he may decide to do so again. But I won’t be dealing with him anymore. I know this is a lot to digest but I wanted everyone to know the truth and have as much time as possible to process the situation. I’ll hang out as much as I can today to discuss. Thank you.
This certainly is a lot to take in. My first thought is to say thank you, to you, and Moose, and anyone else involved who have done so much and continue to do so much to keep our community going. The second thought that comes to me is - with change comes opportunity - and I feel confidant that with you at the helm, the opportunity is a fantastic one. I'll be watching the developments closely!
Absolutely. We will need everyone who is interested to help out here and there. I have no idea what that will look like yet. But for now, Louanne I'd say you, @Gravy. @ps102 and anyone else involved should concentrate on the role-playing forum. I'll pop over to the discussion thread in a bit. I know y'all have been backing up your work, but now we have to figure out what the best way to recreate it is. And any ideas about how the role playing area could be expanded in the future. You guys went nuts with it, so there's definitely interest. That's all Phase II stuff, but definitely have your backups ready. We can discuss it more over at the discussion thread.
Guys - AWESOME. I was actually looking to see if it was feasible to do the same thing on Xenforo Cloud. Good luck - and let us know when it's live and ready to sign up. I'm willing to help. I'm an SQL coder, so if you need any database help, feel free to hit me up.
Very feasible. From what I've seen, the self-hosted and cloud-based are identical. Self-hosting is obviously cheaper but the overall package is very reasonable, with all the upgrades and tech-support included. Regarding the current .org database, we have no access. Only Daniel has access to that. I don't know what's going to happen with all of that, but it's a safe assumption that we will never have access to it after May 29th. That's why I'm encouraging everyone to back up what they want. We will be ready to onboard members to the new joint very soon. I don't want to put a date on it, but there will be plenty of time. I've prioritized. the project thusly: Phase I - Announcement: that's what we're doing now. Getting the word out to the members so everyone has time to organize. Phase II - Construction: that will be the official purchasing of the package and actual building of the new forum. I have deliberately not done that yet so I can concentrate on Phase I Phase III - Migration: that will entail having the new forum in a sufficient state to start adding members. This should happen quickly. I want as much time as possible with both forums active so we can round strays and redirect any new members. Moose is very familiar with the Xenforo admin panel and forum construction/maintenance. I was never an admin and have never used it before. But I'm learning quickly. It is intense but not overly complicated. I've been practicing and will catch up quickly. It won't take long at all to build out the user groups and create the basic structure of the forum. No real idea what any of that will look like yet. Like I said, my main focus right now is organizing the membership.
