ALL READ! [SWFans.net Roleplaying Community]

[Jeseth Cloak]

Alright, this is about the CSC thread that came up. It's cluttered and I want everyone to see this. I previously visited another board, I believe it is a UBB and the Admin there made a roleplaying area at my suggestion. I believe he would be willing to host us as a community, but I'll still need to ask him about what the average bandwidth pull would be for us and if he could handle it, and there would also need to be Moderators appointed there. Currently I am a Moderator for the RPing area there but I haven't been there in a while, so the Mod status might not be mine anymore. In any event I don't really want to keep the Mod status if we move. I don't know if he would appoint another Admin because unlike with this board, which wouldn't be a hassle to set up again, if someone screwed with the code for his board it could cost him a lot of money, and a lot of time to set up... I guess we'd have to earn his trust as a community before he would be willing to appoint anyone as Admin.

So what does everyone think? If you're interested, I'll inquire more on our behalf, but I do need someone here to give me an estimate of our bandwidth pull that's more or less accurate. I think if we sent a few bucks his way every now and then, we could probably help him out and assure that the community would remain intact. :)

[Force Master Hunter]

If we go, we go as a full community, Roleplayers, Props, Box Office, the lot. Else, we may as well go to cc.net, where roleplaying is all setup. I dont believe we roleplayers should go by ourselves.

[Nupraptor]

Yeah, we need a whole board.

(would add more, but is tired)

[Jeseth Cloak]

I'll ask him and see, but like I said, I need to tell him more or less how much bandwidth we'd be using up so he knows...

[Nupraptor]

It's just not a very viable solution. First off, the bandwith usage for this board is considerable.

Secondly, we would need to be able to assign our own admins and mods. We'd need the ability to create forums, ban users, etc. without having to go through someone else. Also, many people are very uncomfortable with the idea of a singular person controlling the whole board: One good argument and we're gone.

Thirdly, wherever we move has to be an entire board because it's going to be linked to from the actual SWFans.net site: It would seem more than awkward for them to have other content on their board, especially if it's not all family oriented.

We'd need to be able to host all of the other communities, as well. We can't just split everyone up in different directions. The RPF people constitute a much larger percentage of this board than us, and thus a larger portion of the community. We have to all work together in this.

If we were going to just move into another board, cc.net would be it. You haven't given us nearly enough information to go on (what is the general subject matter of the board, for example) and it sounds like a tenuous promise at best.

Again: We need an entire board. At last check, most everyone seemed to be giving their approval of a vBulletin board.

[Nupraptor]

IMPORTANT: Anyone who sees this message, please check the CSC discussion thread by clicking the link at the top of the forum. There's been a rather nice development.

[Hwoarang]

okie Nup, gotchya

[Jeseth Cloak]

Well, it's a Star Wars board much like this one, and I'm sure he'd change it all to suit our needs, but if we moved to CC.net could the rest of SWFans.net move there as well? It's not the best idea, but just one that came up I thought would be a solution if and when there came a time that we needed this kind of option. For now I guess I just wanted to make it public knowledge that this other option exists if we by some chance run out of ways to go.

[Nupraptor]

It's a nice suggestion, but we really need a board of our own. The reason why I mentioned the CC.net forums is because that's where many of the older members here hail from. It's familiar to us, and there would likely be no trouble in having them assign administrators where necessary.

There are still many more questions about any unfamiliar board. Where is it hosted? How reliable is the host? How much bandwith usage can it handle? What type of connection is it hosted on? Etc.

As it stands, the most logical and viable solution seems to be purchasing a vBulletin license (one time fee of $160) and hosting it on Liquidweb ($150/year).

[Jeseth Cloak]

Yeah I would have to agree with you there. I really like vBulletin over UBB and YaBB and Liquidweb seems to be a very reliable provider with a good track record of not shafting their customers.