!! We've built a New Forum at writingforum.org (no S) !!

point of note about this, members can only soft delete. The data will all still be there so if you have concerns about how Daniel might use the moribund database deletion doesn’t really help

Also editing the page to a dot or whatever doesn’t work either since the site retains copied in the action log

At the minute not even I can hard delete ( this goes back to an episode many years ago when a chap called raven who was the admin at the time had a psychotic episode and deleted about a quarter of the site)

I may be able to give myself hard delete powers but I doubt it

to be honest though I strongly doubt Daniel will do anything with the database… it’s much more likely that after a year or whatever of non payment the host would delete it.

 

I think the auto notification is broke ( thing eleventy that Daniel hasn’t fixed)

no issue with you telling newbs to check this thread ( or when the new board goes live to go there) we encourage everyone to spread the word

on that note could you let Wrey know. It feels courteous given how much he put into this place and he’s welcome to join the new place if he wants

 

Good morning. A few updates. I officially purchased the Xenforo Cloud last night and the new forum is up and running. It's just me talking to myself in cyberspace so far, but we're ready to start building. The site hasn't been set to the URL yet but that should be ready in a day or two. There are a few boxes I still need to check off on my end, namely how the LLC will jive with my personal taxes, but that won't affect anything related to construction.

Stay tuned to the announcements!

 

Sig looks great. I'll copy it too.

And happy Mother's Day to everyone. I'm entertaining today but should be around later in the evening.

 

A random thing - mothers day this side of the pond was on March 30th this year... its strange how its not one date world wide

 

That hasn't been determined yet but in general terms 2-3000 words is the sweet spot for crit, much more than that people lose interest... i don't see any issue with novels in the workshop so long as people are just posting excerpts

 

On a Friday? Always a Sunday here, which is why the date moves around. Busiest day of the year for my higher end joints, right on the heels of Cinco de Mayo, the busiest day of the year for my Mexican joints. The joints that fall into neither category just kind of sit there, like, nobody cares about us!

Yes. Like Moose said, not a thing has been determined yet. But the main jam with the new joint should be the workshop. And that sweet spot of ~2500 words is critical, I think. Nothing wrong with posting longer excerpts, but they're not going to get any traffic. We can do anything we want and will work with all you to create the best possible product, but I really want to optimize the experience as much as possible to attract new members. The Workshop is the jam. It's the signature dish that gets everyone in the door. The regular writing tips and advice are great too, but all that points back to the critique machine.

That's exactly how I feel. End of the day, everything else we do is replaceable. We will ensure there's no possibility of a situation like this ever occurring again.

That would be the most awesome thing ever.

I do appreciate the questions. Just bear in mind that we have no answers. Literally zero. Our entire focus has been on organizing the membership and getting the new forum set up to accept the memberships. We haven't discussed a single thing about what the new joint will be like yet. I'm sure everyone on the management team has a thousand ideas, but we're sitting on them until we can get all prep done. Still, I encourage y'all to keep 'em coming, just please understand that we will not have any answers yet.

Regarding the management team, everyone is onboard, which is awesome. @big soft moose, @Hammer, @Seven Crowns and @dbesim. One of the first things we have to do is create the user groups, permissions, and general membership framework of the new forum before we can add anyone else. I have to get Moose settled over their first as admin, then the mods settled, then we can migrate everyone else. I don't know how long it's going to take, but it shouldn't take long.

We're going to keep this thread open but will probably post new announcements in their own threads, as there will be specific information and questions/comments/concerns prompts that need to stay organized.

 

Thankfully it's not a real bar. We had to redo one this year and it was like $20K for just the basic top. Peanut rail is gonna be another $5K.

 

Again we don’t know… that’s more stuff that will be decided once we’re all in the lifeboats . My personal opinion is that a writing site should have writing focused blogs and that other subjects should go to Facebook or blogger or whatever… but that’s just me not site policy)

we won’t be able to migrate the blog content even if I had access to do it ( which I don’t) because the plug in we are using for blogs here isn’t compatible with the newer version that runs on XF2 ( and we may not need a plug in since XF 2 native blog runs a lot better)

id suggest anyone who wants to save their blogs backs them up to pdf or word or whatever for now

 

Agreed. If it's something we do it needs to be writing focused, which would seem to be covered already under the progress journal. And like Moose said, there are many other outlets for personal blogs. By starting over, we have an opportunity to reshape the vibe. One of our biggest issues in the past was trying to be all things for all people. We had wayyyyy too many things that weren't in the same zip code as the writing world. I'm not saying blogs were one of them, but they ticked a lot of the boxes.

Another big thing to remember is that .org was essentially a self contained silo. It never had any social media presence or attempted to use 99.9% of the cyberspace toolbox to recruit or promote itself. There was a Facebook page once, but that's been dead for awhile I think.

Hell, I'm surrounded by some of the best liberal arts colleges on the planet. Brown, PC, and RISD are right in my backyard. I bet you even a few dozen old-school flyers would probably draw more aspiring writers here than any SEO. And that's one tiny town in one tiny corner of one tiny population. We have people from all over the world and unlimited options.

My point is that the vibe doesn't have to exist solely as a self contained vessel. No more than each person's digital presence exists as only a forum member. There are ways blogs and things that maybe don't fit into the immediate writing jam can exist elsewhere but still be conjoined, if that makes any sense.