Again, we are not "switching to Discord". Closing the forums and having a Discord server are two entirely separate, unrelated things. The forums are closing regardless. Discord existing is a convenience that means the community will still have a way to communicate that isn't emailing through the site but we are not closing the forums specifically to switch there. The other option will be to communicate via email directly through the site but that's obviously not as flexible so instead of complaining about it, maybe just be glad the Discord is there as an option.

I keep looking back here, there is no new site date so it feels like this is a ticking time bomb without a clock lol
It's like knowing the sky is gonna expld but you don't really know when, just that it's soon

Man, all of our cool signatures will be gone 
Unless they stay there for archivial reasons?

The ticking site time bomb............

The forum will be left online in its entirety as a read-only archive. You'll even still be able to log in to see PMs. You just won't be able to send new PMs, post, etc. and new users will not be able to create accounts. I don't have a definitive date yet but I'm pretty sure it's going to wind up at https://archive.vg-resource.com when all is said and done.

Honestly, I think making the forums read-only in favor of discord is still a bad idea. Cuz we all know how discord managed to fuck up peoples' user expereince via updates over the years. Does any of y'all remembered discord announcing they're bastardizing usernames (after every discord user voiced their complaints, and yet discord staff ignored them & apply that bs anyway), adding an un-needed shitty bot that'll make AI art in all servers which you CAN'T turn off or disable, & downgrading the file uploads from 25 MB to 10 MB for free users being a good thing, I sure the hell don't.


And if none of y'all wanna take my warning, I hope y'all are fine with This upcoming feature ready to ruin users being a thing (currently it's being beta-tested in the UK & Austrailia, it'a BS cuz what if a user is actually over 16, but looks younger than 16, that'll result in an unfair permaban from the service) and many more bad updates to come.

I don't think Petie can state for a 5th time that the forum is not being put into read-only in FAVOUR of Discord. They are completely unrelated to one another. We aren't closing the forum because of Discord, we are not continuing the run our Discord because we are closing the forum. We aren't in control of the forum software, just as we are not in control of Discord...

I really don't understand what you're requesting we do here; do we continue to operate a NEW forum, with all the vulnerabilities and lack of updates that we currently experience, completely from fresh, with the similar low engagement of this forum in its current state, and confusing between what is the archive and the new version? Because that sounds... awful. We have explained already that the software the forum runs on is not made by us - we aren't able to force them to keep working on it. We also cannot operate it independently with just Petie and I behind what is software made by dozens.

Again, we aren't closing the forum because of Discord.
We don't run a Discord server because we're closing the forum.
These are completely unrelated.

(04-29-2025, 04:30 AM)Shin FireyPaperMario Wrote: And if none of y'all wanna take my warning....

It's not a replacement, please calm down 
The forums aren't being killed because of Discord, it's because the software is old and this thing runs like a potato

---

Though I do have to wonder, are the little user profile things going away? Or will those stick around?

Honestly, this is probably fine - if it's paired with strongly pushing the wiki as being the place to put everything of importance.

The biggest problem with Discord for our purposes is that it's not public for the internet to search, index, and archive information. The wiki is public, so this can be done properly. Sure it's not meant for discussion, but that's okay, because it doesn't need to be. Keep the discussion in Discord or IRC or what have you; keep the tools, guides, FAQs, "here's my workshop and showreel", etc on the wiki where everyone can see it (and collaboratively improve it).

The Discord is not meant to be an information repository - it is just intended for discussion. We'll be launching a new wiki after the new sites launch which is where the actual useful information is intended to go. This has always been the plan.

Will the wiki have pages for ripping from specific games???

The wiki will be open for members to submit to so pretty much anything that's relevant can be added.

Goodbye forum. I didn't hang a lot, but it was fun.

It's been a while since I spent time here. Sad to see another message board go, but I'd be lying if I wasn't already mostly on other forms of social media these days anyway. Thanks for the service this place provided. Looking forward to the big site update- I think everybody's hard work will really pay off

Oh... that's really sad to hear. I didn't visit the forum incredibly often because I'm more of a developer than a spriter/ripper, but I have a lot of respect for the work y'all do.

While forums aren't as trendy as they used to be, they still serve a very valuable purpose - they're easy to find through Web searches, they're great for sharing useful resources, and their asynchronous nature is helpful for people who don't have time to watch a chatroom 24/7. I'm definitely someone who prefers the forum experience over Discord.

I can understand why you might get frustrated with running a forum. MyBB is good software, but development has dried up - there hasn't even been a security patch in over a year, much less progress on the long-awaited MyBB 2.0. Dealing with bots and making PHP upgrades can be a frustrating experience, too. I know this all too well.

If you're planning to archive the forums just because you're frustrated with the maintenance, I'd like to extend an offer to do one of two things:

1. Get the forums up-to-date. Install the latest version of MyBB. Update any plugins. Get up to PHP 8.x. Wrangle some of the searchbots. Make a few small SEO tweaks. This is what I did for the MFGG forums, which also run MyBB, over the past couple of months.

2. Migrate to different, newer forum software. I've been contributing to the JaxBoards project lately, and it's really cool - it's super-fast and is optimized to take advantage of PHP 8.

If this sounds interesting and you're willing to reconsider your plan, please shoot me a PM.

We aren't archiving the forum because of maintenance - we're archiving it because it's all but dead. The current iteration of the sites uses the forum as its user data source which tied our hands for a while. The new version uses an entirely in-house user system which gives us a lot more flexibility so the forum just isn't necessary any more. This forum is as up to date as it gets, we use very few plugins, and I'm using this version of PHP because it's what's currently available directly from the OS repository. I imagine we'll update PHP next time we do a major version update on the web server itself.

For the record, I also prefer a forum experience over Discord but forums simply aren't coming back. We're not closing the forum in favor of Discord (they've run side by side for nearly a decade at this point) but we will be redoing the wiki (with a completely vanilla install of MediaWiki so we don't run into issues like we had with this one where old plugins prevented us from updating) so that will address web searchability and resource sharing.

The offer is appreciated but this decision isn't being made due to a technical limitation or a lack of experience/knowledge - it's just time to move on, unfortunate as that is.

Edit: Wow, talk about timing. It looks like MyBB 1.8.39 was released 10 hours ago. Looks like I have an update to install after all.

Man, logged on for the first time in a year to find this.

Farewell VG resource forums, you will be missed.