Important Changes
Nov 1 2008, 04:54 AMAs of today, several changes have happened to the boards and site. The main one being that Resourceempire.com, the former official resource site for JFB has been closed, and the support has been moved back to here, the Jcink.com main support forums.
So in basic, JFB Support is now here: http://forum.jcink.com/index.php?c=11
The first thing you'll notice is that after the community area, is that the support section for JFB is now front-end and not lumped in with the rest. I think this is a good idea to display this section out in the open on its own. It will create less confusion and it'll be easier to access. JFB is obviously the most popular service on Jcink.com right now; so I think giving it a category of its own isn't a bad idea. I've also done the exact same thing with PHP-Quick-Arcade, which is another program I offer here being second most-popular in my mind, and always needs support. As for the rest of the services, I kept them lumped all in one section again. Air-Proxy, NightFire IRC, And AskMrComputer, are great services which are doing fine, and I'm not slagging them off by not giving them their own whole sections, but in general, they are clearly not high-support needed areas where they NEED it. So, they will do just fine there. (There isn't too much to using a proxy site or an IRC Chat server anyway). It does make the board a bit longer than you are all used to though, however, I'm open to feedback on it.
The homepage was also changed today, particularly the blog/news. Instead of using wordpress for site news, I've gone back to syndicating the general announcements/news section here. All of the dates say Oct 31st because I mass imported all the old announcements from the blog. I'll fix the dates soon. The seperation was annoying and not to mention I still kept battling blog spam comments. I think I'll get better feedback and more notice if I do everything via the forums instead. But, I did like the whole blog style layout for the main site news; and I kept that. It's just that everything runs off this board again, and to comment, you'll need an account here instead of having to make an entire seperate one on the blog. This is easier for me to have it all in one place. You can sort our news by date, and even search through it. In addition, as far as development news, I'm going back to my old style forum-topic journal type set up, which I may syndicate to the site as well in blog form. Once again, I feel like I get more feedback and notice if everything is done via the forums.
If you are interested in reading further about this decision to do this, please read the text below. It is long, so I have separated it from the main news post.
If you had existing support topics unsolved, please repost them here. I'll get right to it.
-Jcink
Nov 1 2008, 04:54 AM
Why was this done?
While I believe the Resource Empire move was a great idea months ago, my opinion has changed. For those who are not clear on the history; here's a recap of what has happened. The support forum for JFB was always run from this board up until June of this year. Traffic was doing well at these boards and had been going up. At this point, it seemed like it would be a good idea to move the JFB section to its own forum; and so I decided to move the support section of this board to what was our official resource site since around March 2007: Resource Empire. The theory was great; give JFB more room on its own forum and it'll help eliminate some of the confusion, resulting in less spam issues from the community area. It was finally a chance to use the activity to help build a resource community as well. Sounded like a better idea at the time rather than keeping it here. Despite the fact that RE was still undergoing a revamp since March, it was decided that we'd move anyway and add/do things as the site went along, and the member boost would probably help out with that as well.
So, I said let's do it; and it was moved.
The results were not exactly what I had imagined. We saw RE pick up in various areas of the site, which was mainly all of the activity here carried over. People were "testing the waters" so to speak of the "new" site. But, overall, that was that, and after a month or two, most people didn't stick around. The support spam problem was never actually solved; instead, it got solved on its own by the community itself declining. As time wore on, the activity dropped. RE was no longer a 'resource' board, nor was it bringing in much of a community aspect either as the former location - it was simply a support board. We needed active skinners, graphic designers, and coders - all things we really didn't have and did not gain from the move. At the same time, RE was still in need of a makeover.
At this point, I honestly thought a total radical change was needed for RE to "work out", but I simply don't have the resources nor time to get that done. The revamp of the site was long overdue, and being hit with time constraits on both of our parts, without a doubt the site suffered. To compete in the resource site realm for this kind of software these days is not easy considering IPB 1.3 has been around since 2003. Tons of resources have been made and communities gathered to produce already existing content, which is one of the reasons I chose the IPB 1.3 platform to begin with. It contains, and still does, one of the widest available skin and code resources already made. This is great for users, but it makes it ever harder for a resource site to compete. Couple that with the fact that I'm constantly installing and writing things into the software where codes would fill these needs, and throw in the skin importer, RE was almost in competition with JFB itself. For that reason as well, in this stage of the service's lifetime, the need for a resource site appears to be generally low. In the future, as everything keeps growing, I do expect that to change. But for now, I think it's a basic case of supply & demand - having a resource site would be ideal, but maybe now is not the time.
I considered all of the things I'd like to see happen to RE but what I came to, is that it isn't logical to expect some of them to happen. That's OK with me right now, rather than keep things going as it is. I think the move on my part was done hastely; it was done before everything was fully ready and that partly contributed to the decline. But, it wasn't a "failure" - I think it was just wrong place, wrong time. We did get some decent sections going though. The code requests section done by Posiden perhaps turned out to be the best service (but there was a lot of feature request spam... as that is where all the feature requests started flooding in), and reviews, while not entirely active, was being run well by Gunblaza. The only problem there was the community itself needed to keep that section going wasn't there. I'm taking note from things on RE that helped me see the service from a different angle, and it's been a learning experience. What I am saying though, bottom line, is that as a resource site, it was underperforming. And, I felt a total revamp, to the point of even changing the name and making a brand new site was required. Considering time, and what happened to be done, it's best to close and scrap the current site, come back here, work on the service itself more, and possibly go back to the drawing board sometime in the future. And when, and IF the time even comes, no, I won't move this existing establishment to a resource site. Things will just stay here.
Oh, and I'm not trying to insult all of the members that DID contribute and stuck around. Don't take it that way. I was really thankful for many of the people that did come for both community reasons, and resource reasons. I hope you guys continue to expand upon your skills and whatever you do, don't stop making things. The talents are useful in various other aspects even beyond forums. But you see, right now, on this service, I find there are very few of you out there. And with this type of environment that was at RE, a resource site can't run effectively. I personally think a long list of planning, and further community based expansion of the service itself is required before a resource site is made. Given current demand, I'm just not seeing a reason to jump on it. I'd rather put more of my focus for a while into promoting the site, adding more new features and better the service(s).
Now, you may be wondering, how will moving it back here "help"? It probably won't at all, initially. It'll take a bit of time to grow up the community around the board that once was. But I do feel that over at Jcink.com things seemed stronger and more cohesive than they are now. Once again, I do not see any of the problems we initially moved from my boards for solved at RE. I feel there is really no reason it can't be run out of the section it was.
Also take note of the forum I added called Themes & Codes to the JFB section. I added this to give the people who did enjoy contributing codes and skins to the service a place to put them. I also think that seperating that section from the large pool of codes all mushed together in other "Code Snippets" board is a better idea. Simple codes to do small things to the page on the service are definitely something good, as apparent by REs code requests section, so that can be their home. I'm hoping some of you guys who enjoyed contributing your stuff will post here. I don't expect this area to be very active though right now, as you probably guess. But, building it up slowly is definitely not a bad idea for the future. Be sure to read the guidelines posted before you contribute.
Before I end this, I'd just like to say thanks to Taylor W, Resourceempire.com founder, for everything he did for RE, and the JFB service. He's definitely made contributions that won't be forgotten and are still in use every day. I also want to thank all of the other RE staff and users - it was great working with you too (as well as discussing this issue as a whole) and I appreciated your time here and hope you'll also stick around.
Regarding staff issues, I've decided to make posiden5665, who was previously REs head of code requests, global moderator. He's offered to help me out with support questions and general community moderation, so welcome to him. I feel that we should be able to handle the given load for now with just this, so I've relieved both chakka and Gunblaza from their posts. They are also busy on their own projects at the moment, so a step down was fine with both of them. However, we have *not* brought code requests itself back. Posiden hasn't been able to keep up with them as of late but, we will see what happens as time goes on, and if the section will return. But, posiden will still try to help out when he can and make codes for people in the support area. It just won't be a full time deal. Finally, he is currently away this weekend but will be back on Monday.
That's pretty much it. Bluntly, RE has come to an end, and here we are now. It'll remain up as an archive for a while to go get posts, pms, etc. If you have any questions or comments, post them here and I'll surely answer them. I apologize for all of the moving. Let's make a "new" start with what we've got. I still have some work to do with getting things fully switched over, so please bear with me.
Nov 1 2008, 05:24 AM
Honestly I didn't see this coming
I was and am always daily active at RE, kinda like my small family. Now I got2 start new here. Anyway, I support Jcink in any decision it makes, so I still will be active to help the community grow. I know you had your reasons.
Nov 1 2008, 05:26 AM
I apologize. There are a few of you guys who were active daily on RE, and you were definitely one of them.
This was not an easy decision. I had long talks with the staff over this as well, and it's been on my mind for a while. No doubt I'm expecting a few angry/sad people, but please try to look at it from my perspective.
Thanks for understanding though. By the way, off topic, but I'm going to follow up with your latest PM here.
Nov 1 2008, 07:57 AM
I'll be honest Jcink, I think this can go both ways. I love the skin over here, (Because it fits the JFB Theme) but I think this should have stayed over at Resource empire. But, that's your call, and whatever you think is best, go for it
Nov 1 2008, 08:21 AM
I was my pleasure reviewing there jcink.
Nov 1 2008, 09:03 AM
I wish you could have reviewed my forum though Maybe you could PM it to me? haha.
Nov 1 2008, 10:02 AM
I understand. I will miss RE, though. Ah well... I'll still be here!
Nov 1 2008, 11:30 AM
QUOTE (Chip_J @ November 01, 2008 08:03 am) I wish you could have reviewed my forum though Maybe you could PM it to me? haha.
Im not doing any reviews for a little while till i get Scribes revamp up.
Nov 1 2008, 01:18 PM
so now that RE is closed where will the "Import Skins" come from if no one has access to the site?
Nov 1 2008, 01:50 PM
QUOTE (PShores @ November 01, 2008 01:18 pm) so now that RE is closed where will the "Import Skins" come from if no one has access to the site?
Import skins is not actually physically tied to ResourceEmpire. It was run by RE, but the skins themselves had no direct connection to the site, in fact they aren't even hosted off the same board. A lot of them were contributed with permission by skinners from other services. Personally, I have yet to address how I want to handle the importer and adding new skins for now. I think it's a section that has been underused in general and could be a lot nicer actually.
It's going to remain up though, don't worry, but I'll take down the RE branding.
By the way, thanks Chip_J for pointing out I had the wrong permissions on the feature requests board. That's been fixed.
Nov 1 2008, 03:22 PM
The end of an era Been fun but part of me is glad to be back here as well
The only thing I would say is that, as much as I feel a category dedicated to JFB is definitely a step in the right direction I would also argue that the "Themes and Codes" should be better developed. It was an eternal frustration on this board to find decent JFB codes in the Code Snippets and within less than 24 hours this new forum has become the same. Skins are mixed in at random with codes and nothing is clear. I really don't see why keeping the layout we had at RE wasn't automatic lol it worked pretty well and arguably you don't even need to "validate" the codes just to let people decide which section they fit into themselves. The biggest example of this for me was the BBCode section of RE's code forum, over at this site for ages we had that awful BBCode topic which was completely un-user friendly (despite being well maintained).
Just my two cents.
Nov 1 2008, 03:25 PM
Perhaps then it should be split into two subforums in that area to start? One for skins, and another for codes? By the way, I hate that BBCode topic. I plan to do something with it, but it's up for now.
Nov 1 2008, 03:29 PM
Why not just split the Templates and Codes forum into multiple Subforums? You could have one for Skins (thats all that is really needed) one for Add-on Codes, one for Element Changing codes (badly phrased there, was better at RE lol) and one for BBcodes. That covers everything and heck I wouldn't be adverse to breaking down the BBCode topic myself sometime this week and posting it all as individual topics in a BBCode forum.
Nov 1 2008, 03:40 PM
OK, well I'm not quite sure a split for appearance codes and addon codes is needed, but I'll give it a shot. I don't want to go too deep with it, but yeah. Even if they don't get a lot of posts I guess it won't matter much since it isn't the focal point of the place anymore.
I just finished adding those boards as per your suggestion to see what happens.
Now I do need to sort through all of the codes/ though I lumped into the one section, but that shouldn't take long. Edit: Ok, sorted, there weren't that many. But I think I'm going to go through them all later today and check for broken/stupid ones. In fact, BOTH code areas seem like they really need somebody to just take out an hour and sift through and delete the garbage. I'll do it.
Nov 1 2008, 04:42 PM
You are welcome Jcink. I am happy to be of assistance any time.
Nov 1 2008, 07:49 PM
Can I get My Posts That I had At RE?
Here?
Nov 2 2008, 05:28 AM
We will not be adding postcounts for anybody - sorry. It's not like they should matter anyway.
Nov 2 2008, 07:36 AM
Personally as a Jcink forum user I found the move to RE Confusing. As a member who uses the support forum specifically for that use, Support I struggled to comprehend why it had to be moved and renamed.
I have been a member and user of a few free forum hosting services and of other support forums over my long years (yes im old) and in fact before I take up any service I browse the support forums to see what issues are being raised and how they are being dealt with, for this reason I couldn't understand why I had to go elsewhere to get my support dealt with, It seemed to be branded differently although the support people were from here so why give it another name.
Having no real interest in coding or learning to code I felt no need to regularly browse the coding parts of RE unless something specific caught my eye that I could use on my forum to make it easier or nicer for my members. I fully understand you guys wanting to develop your skills as coders that's your choice not mine, for that reason the learning to code part should be kept away from the general support forum and only fully tested and working codes should find their way into the support forum as a resource for members to use.
A support forum to me should be un-cluttered, easy to navigate and well managed Jcink supplies a free hosting service for forumers, so for me that is where the priority should be to support them.
Anyway that's my two cents worth, Jcink you are doing a great Job here, any issues I have raised have been answered professionally and quickly and that's what I am looking for.
Nov 2 2008, 10:21 PM
Well, thanks for all the support and feedback. This was much more well-received than I had thought it would be. We've had more activity around here in the past 2 days than I've seen around the service in a while, so thanks to everybody for pitching in to get things going again.
Nov 5 2008, 07:12 AM
QUOTE (Jcink @ November 02, 2008 11:21 pm) Well, thanks for all the support and feedback. This was much more well-received than I had thought it would be. We've had more activity around here in the past 2 days than I've seen around the service in a while, so thanks to everybody for pitching in to get things going again.
I still miss RE
So used to the forum set up and what not. Here slightly confused at times. Anyways, your welcome. We aint going no where.
Nov 11 2008, 07:24 PM
Peace.
Nov 11 2008, 08:44 PM
Good decision.
Nov 11 2008, 08:50 PM
holy bumpage
Nov 12 2008, 07:08 AM
QUOTE (posiden5665 @ November 11, 2008 08:50 pm) holy bumpage
batman!