Num7

Yeah that's right, their archive was awesome! :)

vBulletin 3. Its adminCP is imprinted in my mind forever. So many memories. I vB3 rocked back then, it has tons of awesome plugins like vBadvanced and vBCmps if I remember correctly. They could be used to build a full fledged portal on top of the forum. Blogs, groups, etc. So cool!

I see how it can be a problem. Think about it, it's the same as Hollywood nowadays. Hollywood stopped making movies long ago. They're now churning out content as fast as they can. Disney, among other things... Look at how much Star Wars content they've created. Most of it is low quality woke crap. They went from being movie creators, to a content-pooping-machine. AI can be the same. You may copy and paste it, it will look human enough, but that doesn't mean it will have human qualities. I do use AI, but I mostly rewrite what it generated, so that it has my style and my touch. I see AI as another tool to help me create stuff. I don't want to rely on it to create stuff for me, to a point I become unable to create myself. That would be sad.

There are many interesting takes on the place of forums in our day and age. Nowadays, there are so many services and platforms available, that it's hard to find a proper one, let alone, one that won't prevent your community from thriving and growing. Here's how I see some of the services mentioned above. Discord: It's a cool chat platform that's been trying to become a forum as of the last year (or last 2 years perhaps?). Sure, it has threads now, but it's not its core feature. Its core feature is chat. And in the chat, you can't have a long-form discussion. And you often get ignored. So if your forum is well-suited for long-form discussion, you shouldn't have to worry about Discord taking over your niche. Perhaps you may even want to add it to your offer, as a way to offer a good chatroom to your members. Reddit: This is an interesting one that's been slowly replacing forums here and there. I remember noticing about 10 years ago that more and more videogame companies were closing down their official forums in favor of a subreddit. I think it's a good use case. But moving a forum like Administrata, or mine, to Reddit? Don't think so. What's special about Reddit is that once you're registered, you can take part in any community, which is nice. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter: Sure, they harm forums. X threads, Facebook threads, Facebook groups, etc. I know I'm annoying, but I'll mention long-form discussion again. Twitter and Facebook aren't made for long-form discussion. Posts and comments aren't the same thing as a discussion with actual replies. It's therefore important to focus on the primary advantage your forum has over those social media sites. Your members' ability to engage in...? You guessed it! Long-form discussions! :)

I got paid in experience, not money! ;)

[HEADING=2]Amid all the buzz about WPEngine vs WordPress, I thought I'd drop in and talk about a cool alternative: FlatPress. Unlike WordPress, FlatPress skips the whole database thing and uses flat files for storage instead. What does that mean for you? Speed and simplicity. Without a database to query, FlatPress is lightning-fast, making it perfect for anyone who values performance.[/HEADING] https://www.flatpress.org/ Setting up FlatPress is a piece of cake. Just upload the files to your server, and you're off. No database headaches, no complicated installations. Plus, it’s super easy to customize. Whether you’re a developer or just starting out, you can tweak and create themes with ease. They've got modern, responsive themes that are simple to mod and look great right out of the box. Back a couple of years ago, I created a new theme called Leggero-v2, that is now their default theme when you install FlatPress. You can see it in the screenshot above, the one with the red header. I also created and currently support 2 themes that are modern and responsive. You’ll find them below. FlatRead is a remake of the Read WordPress theme, while Grey Matter is a remake of the default Jekyll theme. https://num7.paranormalis.com/p/flatpress-themes.html One of the best parts? Security. With no database to hack into, you’re adding an extra layer of protection. And because it doesn't rely on a database, FlatPress is gentle on server resources, making it perfect for smaller hosting plans or if you just want to keep things efficient. If you're on the lookout for a simple, secure, and fast blogging platform, FlatPress is worth a try. It’s a fresh alternative to the usual suspects and meets the needs of modern bloggers without the extra baggage. I’ve used FlatPress a couple of times for my personal blog, it was great. I chose to switch to Blogger at some point, because of FlatPress’ open source nature. I always felt the urge to “mod it until it dies.” Which means my blog was in a constant state of total turmoil and never-ending development. That’s how fun FlatPress is and how OCD I am sometimes. Oh well! :P Looking forward to hearing from you! Hope you like FlatPress as much as I do.

My God, time goes by so fast. Can't believe we're already half through October. Man... I remember when I was a kid, my parents kepts telling me that as you get older, time goes faster. I'm 37... Imagine being 90. Time must go by in an instant. An entire year must feel like 3 weeks or something. That's scary.

Interesting. Let's ask ourselves this: Would you rather have this silly banter on your forum? That's a good question. Yes Discord, may mean less forum posts. But would these banter posts be quality posts? Probably not. So you're losing in quantity, but not in quality. Does that make sense?

Man, I haven't sent mass emails in years! Maybe it's time I send one. Last time I did, I used MailChimp. I think they had a 1000 recipient limit at that time, so I refined my email export. Has XenForo improved their mass email feature over the past couple of years?

I'm an IT Jack of all trades. Started as an IT technician. Then IT manager. Now I'm an IT analyst.

Exactly this. Keyword is: NEXT TO. My site has a Discord. Not much in there outside of chit-chat and memes. Occasional, short on-topic exchanges. It's a great place to host chat events though, which is awesome. Discord doesn't hurt the forum. The way I see it, is that Discord is good for instant messaging and chat events. It's not good for long-form discussions. On the other hand, forums are made for long-form discussions. But yeah, you have to be careful to split and setup things properly so that your Discord doesn't overlap with your forum and cannibalize it. For instance, your Discord server probably shouldn't have a channel for every one of your sub-forums. That 1 to 1 channel to sub-forum ratio is cute, but it's not good for your forum.

Yeah, Telegram and WhatsApp are 2 great examples of contending DM apps. Both apps work great, but everyone I know is using Messenger. So I'm forced to use it too! That's too bad! There's also Discord, which has a whole different flavor. Gotta say though, it's probably the closest (IMO) to MSN Messenger when it comes to 1 on 1 direct messaging. It's simple, fast and it has a great UI. To put things into perspective, well, even my mom loves it! LOL

Where I live, most people are on Facebook. Especially adults and retired people. (Teenagers don't use it as much it seems) And it's an absolute shithole. It's unbelievable how rude and retarded people are on there. No matter what you're looking at, don't open the comment section, man. You're going to see grown adults say stuff you wouldn't imagine. 15 years ago, still in my area, the Facebook crowd was slightly younger. Yeah, it was already pretty bad, but not nearly as bad as it is now. I wouldn't complain if Facebook was to vanish. The only thing I'd miss would be Messenger, but hey, another app will take over, just like Messenger did when Microsoft killed MSN/Live Messenger.

I wish XenForo had a proper static page editor. That has to be one of the only things I dislike. Their editor could be better, but they're integrating a new one in 2.4. I understand that a forum software isn't necessarily a content management platform. But since they already have static pages... Why not add a proper editor, and be done with it?

I don't avoid any sites, but some forum softwares bother me more than others. For example, I'm not a big fan of phpBB. It simply doesn't feel as fluid and modern as most other forum softwares ou there, especially the paid ones.

Wow, that's an interesting site! I'm keeping it for later, I'll certainly check a couple of services and apps that I have in mind. TOS are a strange thing. They're full of weird stuff we automatically agree to on a whim. So odd.

This has to be the best TL;DR snippet you can start your forum rules with. It also comes in very handy if you're not sure how to moderate a situation, or if someone is dancing around the rules, trolling and being edgy. I wish forum rules weren't necessary. But they are... So I present to you Wheaton's Law! https://www.wheatonslaw.com/dontbeadick.html [ATTACH type=full" size="1669x702]151[/ATTACH] I had someone I had to moderate (and eventually ban) who kept telling me the rules were too long for him to read. Yeah, sure... So I told him to read the first item only, and respect it. Which he didn't. What was the first item on the rules, you may ask? "In doubt, follow Wheaton's Law: Don't be a d*ck" In the age of social media, it's not as easy to moderate as it used to be. People are used to saying all sorts of nasty stuff on Facebook. Well, our forums ain't Facebook. So be nice! Remember! Don't be a d*ck! And don't let others be on your site!

This thread is for the general discussion of the item Paranormalis. Please add to the discussion here.

Discussions about politics or religion often turn into all-out flame-wars. So these 2 subjects are watched closely. At some point (I think it was after Trump lost the 2020 election), I had to add a rule asking folks to avoid using political or religious arguments in discussions and debates taking place outside of their dedicated sections. Otherwise, anything that's illegal and trash, of course.

Hey man! Happy to see you here! :cool:

[mention=72]Cloaked[/mention] Hey, so cool to run into you here! :) I've located your Paranormalis account and sent you a DM. 🤘

I switched from Google Analytics to CloudFlare Web Analytics earlier this year. GA just doesn't do it for me anymore, it's become way too big and complex. It was a chore to find key information... I like what CloudFlare offers, even though it may be a little basic. Can you describe your experience with Bing's Webmaster Tools? How does it compare to Google Analytics? Or is it more like Google's Search Console?

Hello there, welcome! :)

Hulk SMASH! Welcome! :)

It used to be this way a couple of iterations ago. That's a good idea. :) I'll look into it when I have a chance! Thanks for the welcome, all!