Senkusha

I don't particularly care about having a massive population on my forum. All I want is like between 5 and 20 people posting one to five posts weekly. I want a community or like minded individuals. I believe, that ultimately, that's what we as forum administrators desire.

That's good to know! I just need to wait for my funding to arrive, and then off to learn some CSS...I guess! LOL ❤️

I really like the fact this theme can be light/dark toggled. Are the gradient colors customizable? I like the almost magical color scheme, and may use this theme when I finally get XenForo for my role play site.

Better late than never. I finally voted! Lots of great competition this month!

Today's the first day of my vacation, and I've had a chance to relax and take a look at the Demo site. Wow. Do I feel a bit overwhelmed by all the options! I like how I can customize the default look without relying on knowing CSS! A could of things that I really like about the interface from a Member's standpoint, is the automatically expanding post box. Not needing to scroll up/down is really nice. But something I discovered last night, and I'm not to sure many people know about this, but if you quote somebody, and say there are two bits you want to respond separately to, all you have to do is press enter at the discussion point, and XenForo will create a clone-quote box with a separation for you! That's amazing foresight! I thought I'd have to manually put a quote in, but XenForo did it automatically. Needless to say, I'm highly impressed. applauds. Although, when I do finally migrate over to XenForo, I'll miss the adaptability I currently have with TinyPortal. Maybe there's a portal solution that I haven't seen yet, either way, I've got a lot of planning to do, even to migrate my new Primatica role playing forum over to XenForo.

I haven't had too much success using Reddit. People claim they're interested, then vanish, despite multiple "ping" requests.

And that's why they are called professionals!

That's just unreal! I don't really know what to say.

Perhaps vibrant is a relative term. Compared to my forum, that has zero participation beyond myself, I think it applies here.

You must have something of value that makes sense for members -> customers to get from you rather than other sources. If you can answer that question, then go fo it! I'm not sure if there's any money to be made from a role play forum. It is purely a hobby after all.

There are plenty of purposes for forums in 2025+. Sure, some communities die, but others are still vibrant, like this one! And besides, some forum administrators refuse to yield! I'm trying YET AGAIN. I will not fail. I'm determined. And I will succeed... somehow.

Thank you! "Looking nice" is the best compliment I've gotten on it! 🥰

This is the first time I've put together a forum specifically for the pleasure of role playing. Usually I'll just add a section for role playing, but my latest creation is going to be an immersive creative writers haven-- assuming that those writers adore magical girls. I've had this idea for a long time, I was just never sure how I wanted to proceed with it, but after dabbling with various role playing directory forums over the past month, I think I figured out a strategy. Whether it'll work, who knows, but I've gotta at least give it a shot, right? I'm eventually going to move over to XenForo like I originally planned-- assuming the forum takes off and I actually get some active members. Otherwise, why bother sinking money into something that's dead, right? At any rate, I'm have fun, and that's all that matters, true? But for right now, I'm just going to use SMF with the Reseller theme, only because it's responsive and looks pretty clean. And I'm pretty sure there are a ton of other improvements that can be done. So why not just try to knock them out in the beginning stage? I'm pretty proud of the site banner. Not bad for using GIMP and not really knowing what I'm doing. Anyway, if anybody's interested you can check out the world of Prismatica: A Magical Girl Role Playing forum

Okay, this is quickly blossoming into a full fledged sub-forum! I've embraced it, and expanded upon the idea. The above will only be one Realm on the new sub-forum, that's dedicated to Magical Girl Role Play!

I agree. Discord is a different fruit, so to say, like an orange, whereas forums are your apples. Both are used for digital/virtual communication, both are fruits, but one is used for more in-depth discussion that's archivable (new word, apparently). Discord gives that instant dopamine gratification hit, whereas forums allow for that enduring endorphin buzz that you get after a long work out. And given the nature of the current economy and people losing their discretionary spending power, anything that's got a paywall attached to it is going to suffer.

That's true. But it only costs $60 per year after that (assuming the price doesn't increase). However, right now even that's too much for me to afford!

I'm working on a new role playing game, Magical Lyrical Radiant Strike, a Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha-centric game, featuring originally created characters. I'm in the process of determining which rpg system to use, and creating the world of magic, spells and all that typical magical girl stuff.

This morning I got the itch to play a Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha role playing game, so I put some feelers out on Reddit, inquiring about the best possible system for something that would allow for spell and device construction, while being light on the combat mechanics-- that's where most forum role playing games die, combat. I might get one, possibly two people, hopefully! I honestly haven't heard of Lemmy , so no, I haven't yet, but I'll be sure to check it out.

I've been using SMF for decades. It's free, pretty stable, and I know it like the back of my hand. But it looks antiquated, no matter what theme I try to use. In the war to gain new members, I think this could be killing my forum, so I've been taking notice of the forum software that the various sites I frequent use. Number one, is XenForo. It helps that I like it as well, as it's clean, modern, and has a bunch of features that I could use. But... Making the switch is difficult. Right now, I have zero member participation. It will cost me over $200 just to get the core license, and the add-ons that I want, not to forget looking into a customized theme, because as awesome as the default theme is, there's always a different look that would benefit my site branding better. And if I'm going all in with new software, maybe I should take this opportunity to hire some people to professionally create my branding. After all, looks are always going to be considered before content. While I'm contemplating this transition, I should come up with a list of additions that I will want. Being that my website is an anime and role playing website, one feature I know I'm going to want is sub-accounts. This is a feature that allows members to post as different users (or characters in my specific use-case), which would give a more immersive role playing feel while participating on the site. So far, this is the only extension that's caught my eye. But, I could just stick with SMF. It does mostly what I need, and I have many customization already implemented, perhaps too many. The problem is that while SMF is stable, I don't see it getting a visible face lift anytime soon. The developer team is working on 3.0, but from what I understand, that's all under-the-hood code re-working, making the code base OOP functional versus procedural. Once that happens, I'll loose my ability to hack the guts of the forum, because as much as I try, I just can not wrap my head around OOP coding. Perhaps my brain is too simple to understand something so complicated. Or, maybe I'm just too old anymore, and tired. Maybe I should wait for to implement a transision and start fresh, with a host of new members--assuming I can gather these people from who-knows-where. As it is right now, my forum seems to be a cluttered mess. I've got ancient posts, that I originally thought would have been a good idea, to show how people have role played in the past, but all that did was waste my time, and disorganize my content. I tried to install various gamifications, but I think that just added more clutter as well. And if I do decide to transfer over to a different software, it may be best to just start over from scratch. Having zero active members, means that I could just build a test site on the side, convert that site over to the new software once I have the funding available to purchase the licenesing. So many questions!

The article mentions old software. I've considered migrating to something like Xenforo, but the price tag is giving me big time anxiety. Also many of the expansions are paid for. I can't see investing money I don't really have into a hobby when threre's no active community to begin with. But, then we have the chicken-and-the-egg thing. Many members don't like it when you switch the forum software on them. I think that Xenforo may be loosing fans like myself, because there is no free option to get the community started..

Be active! Yup, I agree. Be active for your members. But what if you don't have any active members? I, as an administrator can only create so much content. I can ask questions, but if there's nobody there to answer back, the forum just becomes an empty void, an echo chamber. Attracting active members is crucial. And I'm not so sure google is such a relable spot to advertise on anymore, not with the trillions of websites that exist. Finding a particular, unknown site is like looking for that proverbial needle in a haystack, and most people today don't invest that kind of time.

(Honestly, I'm not really sure which tag is most appropriate...anyway....) I've run a forum on and off for decades, and I flip flop between ideologies. We need to try to stand out from the crowd to attract potential members into our communities, but at the same time, members also tend to prefer the familiar. (Just look at the disasters that many admins have experienced when upgrading, let alone switching forum software.) I have a pretty niche site. Anime combined with role playing and creative writing. However, as neat as I believe the concept is, the forum is dead. I probably have myself to blame for it, as I've gotten distracted with life, other projects, and lets face it, I've been battling depression too. I've taken a few months and have looked around the internet to see what my competition looks like. Most of the anime forums tend to be reviews or news based sites, hash about recent or upcoming anime/manga. Most of the role playing forums I've stumbled across appear to be slightly more active than my forum, with many recent entries appearing late last year. Knowing this, I've made a strategic decision to focus on what I think of as classic anime, that being from 1990 to about 2010. Before CGI took over as the primary method of animation. Before much of the deconstruction-era of anime began. For role playing, I chose to focus on the game systems, because most of what I saw out across the internet were games. Sure, I've got a collection of games, but...they've been dead for quite a while, and considering that I have no active members right now, any game I think about starting dies a painless death. And as for the role playing systems, most game publishers have at least a Facebook group, if not a dedicated forum on their own site. Recently, I pivoted more toward general creativity. I tried 3D modeling, software applications, the creative writing process.. But there are already forums dedicated to these topics, so my forum would be redundant. Now with that background out of the way (yes, I'm a determined SoB, and refuse to quit!), wanting to stand out may be getting in the way of attracting members. I'm beginning to think that being witty with my board names could be confusing guests? I'm not actually sure where I read it, but on one of the many boards that I frequent, it's advised to keep naming conventions generic. And even though this goes against my branding, perhaps I should follow this route, because obviously my ideas seems to stink, points to current experience. But I can't help but wonder, maybe nobody truly cares about discussing old anime anyway. After all, those conversations have already been had. Despite newbies discovering the old classics, I'm sure they can just go Google search and find answers to their questions, or get lost in a Facebook group thread. Maybe I'm seeking more than just naming advice here. Maybe I just need to completely pivot in a totally different direction and start anew with a completely different hobby? Notice: Depression truly stinks. 100% avoid.

That because most cartoons animations have been turned into marketing campaigns, and everybody's too afraid to offend anybody. I'm not sure about currently, but I know for a while, it seemed like everybody was sue-happy, people being sued over the tiniest of reasons..

I recently made homemade hummus, and OMG! is it good! I used dried chickpeas too, some garlic, lemon juice, sun dried tomatoes, onion, and olive oil. Got to use the little food processor and turned out I made a BUNCH! It's so good on bread. Next I'm planning on making some rye bread from scratch. I even got the caraway seeds...oh, and I can make pumpernickel too!

I would, and although I have the ability to check in daily, I don't have enough free time to actively moderate. Sorry. 😓 But if my situation changes in the future, I'll keep this in mind! 😊