06-02-2025, 08:02 PM
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.
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.