!! We're Building a New Forum at writingforum.org (no S) !!

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

A quick aside, but in the real world, API is the bane of my existence. The OPs software integrates with the restaurant POS computers. The POS computers integrate with the Payroll software. The Payroll software integrates with Quickbooks and other accounting things. A change on one affects everything else. A problem that appears in one system usually has its roots in another system. I miss pen and paper, though when I had to do everything on pen paper, I complained about not having digitized alternatives.

No matter what happens on May 29th, the database will still exist on a server somewhere. Daniel will continue to have access to it. For all I know, he'll start paying the bills again or has already paid for May. Or he'll resume after a month, 3 months, or a year and .org will magically reappear. No idea. It's out of our hands and has been for some time.

We'll have a plan for everything,

 

I had hoped i'd be able to download the root file and MySql file out of the admin panel at the back end, but unfortunately i don't have the right access...one of the many problems here is the limitations that admins work under.

the only thing i can export is XMLs of members profiles and i'd have to that manually one member at a time

I'd tend to suggest that if anyone has content they want to bring over - progress journals, role plays etc they back it up to word or whatever and them simply repost it when we get the new board live

 

Homer can't but I can - probably, like a lot of stuff here the mailer doesn't work properly... however there are workarounds. I'll probably wait til the new site is up and people can click through and register

 

My biggest concern by far is missing the semi-regular members in the 19 day window. Those who might only pop in once a month or a few times a year but contribute plenty of the community during their active periods. Moose can manually pull emails and put them into a spreadsheet for later dissemination, but we would have to identify those members ahead of time. And who knows if the registration emails are still monitored by the members?

I would encourage anyone who has external comms with semi-regular members to spread the word. We're not there yet, but the new forum will have mailing lists and social media presences across several platforms. I have some other marketing ideas as well, but that's like Phase VIII or something. I have $$ in the budget allocated for external things like that after we get everything together.

Main focus right now is to reach as many people as possible with the tools we have in the time we have left.

 

Just checking the back end i have the ability to send a mass email to the registration addreses, i can also send a mass pm to the entire membership, and put a notice that appears on log in. Of course all those things are only good while the forum remains functional.... i can also list out emails as homer mentions for future comms (although there's a grey area about coppa and gdpr there since peopler have consented to be contacted by this forum not the new one)

 

Thank you, Gravy, Louanne, Ps102, Soulfire, and anyone else who I neglected to mention. You guys did all the work and are producing probably 90% of the original writing content output for the forum. That tells me others would be interested and with some more structure and focus we could really go to town. I know nothing about role-playing but it looks like fun and would be interested in participating in the future, time permitting.

Up to you whether you want to suspend posting, but I wouldn't want to kill the momentum. We're not dead yet and anything can be recreated at the other joint. I'd say you guys discuss amongst yourselves what the best way forward is. We'll do whatever we can to accommodate.

 

I'd say just the few threads that you commented on if you think there's anything worthwhile there. The rest of them haven't been touched in years and aren't worth it. There's also issue the legal/ethical/consent issue about intellectual property that was okay'd for this site but not a new one. Nobody is going to be sued or go to jail or anything, but the right thing to do is only take with us what OPs decide to copy and repost themselves.

If we were theoretically able to acquire the database at a later date, it would be a different story. The property would then still be contained under the original consent umbrella with just a transfer of ownership that doesn't violate any legal/ethical grounds. End of the day, thought, I think we should be looking more toward creating a future than preserving the past. The membership is all that matters. The rest is replaceable.

 

A great question that will discussed and decided at a later date we've safely evacuated. My initial thought is I have no problem if people join under a different name than their .org handle so I long we know who everybody is. At least for the veterans. Let's say for example @Louanne Learning wanted to change her name to Satan's Little Vixen. I wouldn't care so long as I wasn't looking at the new member like, hey, this sounds a lot like Louanne. Is it Louanne? She never made it over, but I swear Vixen walks and talks just like her. That probably wouldn't be cool.

After that, though, similar to our current rules, probably not. There are going to be hundreds of little things like this to sort out. They will all be sorted, but only after we're safe aboard the new mothership.

I should mention again that the new URL will be writingforum.org. No "s." I'm actually going to put that in the thread title.

 

Whatever we decide will be easy to execute. Xenforo has features that allow unlimited name changes, name changes with a delay of whatever time between the next name change, staff-approved name changes, etc. Very easy. We'll discuss and decide soon enough.