Hi there -
I’m sorry to report that I killed the TINY ARMY forum today. I’m just as disappointed as many of you must be, after posting so many updates.
I apologize.
I’ve had a rough week online, as one of my sites got hacked. This lead to my webhost suspending most of my sites. It’s been a struggle to get them all back. In the cleanup, I inadvertently killed the TA database running the forum.
In any case, I wasn’t all that happy with the forum to begin with. We were having some good conversation there, and that is a good thing. I like that.
But it failed in a couple of other key areas:
1. It didn’t allow much in the way of newcomers discovering you or your work. It really didn’t feature any of the new social media ways to build a community, that I like.
2. Your profile was a thread. This is pretty cruddly, especially when folks are used ot a more Facebook way of seeing you.
3. PHPBB is not a fun system to maintain. It has no automatic update functions, and is yet another system that I have to maintain and learn about.
4. I couldn’t make the thing look very good. It was quite cumbersome to modify.
Basically, the age of the PHPBB forum is probably pretty dead. So, I’m going to be doing some work here once again, trying to balance our needs and give us a better web arena to call home.
I’ve decided to use BuddyPress.
BuddyPress is a community building platform. It has a nice forum, individual profiles, subgroups, and a more robust system for interaction. It’s made for communities like us.
It’s based on WordPress, which is rock solid and much easier for me to maintain. It’s also the platform that I’m using for my other sites as well, so the learning curve is more balanced.
Anyway, please bear with me through this transition.
I know it’s a pain for you to login and to register all over again, but I have hopes that it will be worthwhile.
- Daniel