Independent Hosting

[George Holland]

If I want an arcade, I can setup an arcade. Blogs? Can do that. A portal system that'll display the news all newslike? Doable -- all easily and more consistently than on Zetaboards.

You can do all of this on Zetaboards - as a note.

[Charles Cerebella]

I also prefer zetaboards tbh.

[Seker]

As someone who converted a forum yesterday, I'll echo a_o_e; if you're going to try to convert, you'll want to do it before the board gets huge.

[Raxion]

Well, I can say I've officially changed my position on this.

First and foremost, it seems like this government has made progress so my previous "this may not last long" argument is not as strong anymore.

Second, the lazarus forums are beautiful. If Osiris had that we will definitely attract people here.

And also Milo's recent point- if we're going to convert we should do it now.

[Cormac]

Given the recent destruction of The New Galactic Empire forum by the owner of its independently hosted forum, conversion to an independent host is on ice for now -- at least from a technical perspective, as root administrator of this one -- as I personally don't have the resources at this time to host the forum (i.e., I don't have the money). Aside from that, I don't think a second forum switch this soon would be beneficial to the community.

[Lord Ravenclaw]

Thrawnn claims he was drunk when it happened, granted, Ygfbv has stepped in and they now have a SMF forum using the database he made available when I demanded it from him. It is unlikely I'll be working with that new forum because I cannot use SMF efficiently at the level an administrator should.

[Charles Cerebella]

I'm still of the same opinion.

[North East Somerset]

At the end of the day: a fancy forum does not an active community make. That's a crucial point. The NPO of all people should know that. Their forums may use a very versatile advanced platform, but at the end of the day they must be one of the dullest places in the world - judging by their forum activity over the past few years. In fact I know of some appallingly outdated forums still running the IF platform that have more active and vibrant communities, which people clearly enjoy to log on and post in more.

Now NPO is using the same platform as Lazarus, although I must say I much prefer the Lazarus skin it looks much cleaner and brighter - and the theme is more distinct. We in Osiris can certainly do something to make our forums look better like introducing a better logo, skin and header etc. That will go a long way to making the forums more professional - on a ZB platform. I imagine we'll do that following the implementation of a new flag etc.

The main limitations to ideas like Blogs, Arcades, etc - are the imaginations and perseverence of people to actually bother setting them up, making them work, making them interesting so people actually use them - and then maintaining them. Not the forum platforms ability to accept them. That's why you see so few add-on features successfully utilised in a NS context. We're not here to play arcades, we're here to make forum posts. Basically, main thing we want to use a forum for is to hold discussions with each other that can be kept on the record and replied to at any point, and Zetaboards does that admirably. If you want to set up a blog, you can use one of the many off-site platforms - or apply for a sub-forum for your "Newspaper".

Finally there is the risk of the forum host owner or whoever pays for it holding the community to ransom, which is one additional complication that Osiris could well do without.

[Seker]

Lazarus also has better software than the NPO, actually.

Osiris should use proboards.

[Lord Ravenclaw]

The NPO uses IP.Board Community Suite, the same as Lazarus, The South Pacific, Equilism and The West Pacific.

The only difference between them in this case may be the version they're running.