Why do we need to change forums?
About a month and a half ago, Zetaboards announced an imminent forced upgrade to Tapatalk for all existing Zetaboard forums. A little bit more detail was provided in later announcements, which can be found here, here and here. Supposedly, the founder of Zetaboards is working on a Zetaboards/Tapatalk hybrid forum. At this time, no information about the hybrid’s functions or appearance has been made available to Zetaboards communities or administrators. Additionally, although no specific timeline has been provided for when the conversions will take place, we know it has already been rolled out in at least one NS region (Europeia) without much notice.
When this change was announced, the TNP admin team began investigating what options are open to us. We quickly identified several problems with Tapatalk that make a switch to that software problematic for us. Namely:
What forum software will we be changing to?
We have looked at several forum providers and evaluated them on a range of factors, including aesthetics, pricing, support, hosting, versatility, and ease of use for both administrative functions as well as regular needs (i.e., how easy is it for admins to remask people? How easy is it for a moderator to pin a thread? How easy is it for a user to find an old post? Etc.). We also looked at likely longevity of the different forum options, as it would be unfortunate if we faced another forced migration to Tapatalk. Based on all of these factors, and the experiences NS members have reported with the different services, we believe that XenForo is the best option for our new TNP forum.
Why XenForo?
XenForo offers a number of advantages to both administrators and users, a powerful underlying platform, and options not available with ZetaBoards.
On the user side, XenForo provides options for social engagement, allowing users to add one another as friends and post status updates. It offers customizable alerts for members, so each person can select when they want to be sent an alert about new activity. It also allows for more profile customization than was permitted by Zetaboards. Users can display multiple rank badges, so others will easily be able to tell that someone is a citizen, is in the NPA, is a deputy minister, and is an elected justice. Previously, only one badge would display (generally the highest-ranked one). Finally, XenForo allows secondary forum accounts to be linked under one main account. Users can easily switch back and forth between their main and their secondary accounts, which is a feature that might be useful for our roleplaying community.
In terms of forum security, XenForo offers significant improvements over Zetaboards. It has add-ons that can automatically detect spammers and block them from registering, which will allow us to eliminate the current practice of putting a user in validation until they’ve made three posts. XenForo’s admin control panel is also better designed, allowing for faster and easier security checks and easier detection of multiple accounts. Lastly, admins will have complete control over advertising on the forum. If we enable it, the ad revenue it generates will go to us, not the software provider. We can also disable it entirely, which would put an end to the rogue redirecting pop-up ads that have been occurring on Zetaboards and other sites.
XenForo has an active support team and a growing user base, and sees regular bug fixing and maintenance. Developers (both independent and employed by XenForo) have created a number of add-ons to the base forum software which create additional functionality on the board. Some are free, others are available for a small fee. Examples of these add-ons include shop and currency mods, automatic welcomes, birthday threads, and many more.
If you want more information:
Here is a quick comparison of the costs we are looking at. We currently pay about $400-$500 per year to Zetaboards for ad removal, which works out to about 200k page views per month.
[c]Zetaboards[c]Tapatalk[c]Xenforo[c]Initial License[c]$0[c]$0[c]$140[c]Renewal[c]$0[c]$0[c]$40/year (Optional)[c]Ad Removal[c]$0.18/1k views
200k views = $36/mo
[c]$10/mo for first 20k views, then $0.50/1k views ("Premium")
200k views = $100/mo
[c]$0 (Admins can turn off ads on the whole board for free)[c]Hosting[c]$0[c]$0[c]~$10/mo[c]Custom URL[c]$0[c]$10/mo (included with Premium)[c]$0[c]Custom Favicon[c]$0[c]Not Available[c]$0[c]Custom Emoticons[c]$0[c]$10/mo (included with Premium)[c]$0[c]Yearly Costs (after first year)[c]~$500[c]~$1200[c]~$160
To summarize these costs in prose, we would need to pay $140 up front to acquire the XenForo license, which comes with 1 year of support, and about $10/mo to set up private hosting. If we have the funds to do so, we can also purchase some add-ons for the forum. Going forward, we can choose to pay $40 per year to XenForo for access to future upgrades and support. We could also choose not to pay that fee. If we do not, our forum will remain valid and working, we will just not be eligible for upgrades or support. We would also pay the hosting cost, which will work out to roughly $120 for the year. In total, that's about $160 per year on an ongoing basis. That number might be higher if we purchase any add-ons that have an annual fee, or if we need to upgrade our hosting, but it shouldn't be too much more than that.
For Tapatalk, conversion is free, but if we want to retain our custom URL and block ads, we would need to pay them an estimate of $1200 per year, every year. That includes their $10/mo "premium" service, which blocks the first 20k page views of ads, plus an additional $90/mo because our community is kind of insane and looks at the forum two hundred thousand times a month. Every month.
In other words, XenForo is vastly cheaper than Tapatalk unless we are willing to sacrifice user experience. It's also cheaper than what we've already been paying to Zetaboards just to get malicious ads off the forum. This is true even if we need to expand our server size or speed based on actual use - even spending two or three times as much per month on hosting wouldn't come close to the Tapatalk fee.
As for stability going forward, XenForo's price structure has been the same for at least 7 years. We can't rule out the possibility that they could increase prices in the future, but we feel reasonably confident that any increase will be gradual and minimal. As an added bonus, because XenForo offers software that is hosted privately, it will be virtually impossible for them to force their users to convert to Tapatalk (or any other service) in the future. And we would own all the content stored on our server, so if the server host went out of business or the quality dropped, we could freely migrate to an alternative.
How will we pay for this?
The start-up costs for XenForo will be partially funded with excess donations to the Democracy Day kickstarter. We do not know at this time exactly how much will be left over from that, but COE will provide an update once he can be sure. We will be holding a donation drive to raise the remainder from the TNP community at large, and to go toward our future costs.
Anybody who contributes $2 or more in the lead-up to the forum migration will receive an exclusive Founder Trophy. This trophy will only be available during this short time period, and it will be displayed on the user's profile. Founders will also gain early access to the new forum to help test-drive it.
After the forum has officially launched, we will add a user badge for anybody who donates to the forum (before or after it launches). This badge will be called Supporter, and will appear with other badges like "Citizen" or "NPA member". We may also add other trophies for people who meet donation objectives, such as "Sustainer" for anyone who donates on a recurring basis, or "Santa's Little Helper" for anyone who donates during December. These ideas are still tentative.
XenForo integrates easily with PayPal, which makes donation quick and easy for our users. Donating will be completely voluntary and optional, and all funds will be put toward the costs of site maintenance, hosting, and improvement. Admins will also provide an annual accounting of expenditures, so that the members of TNP are fully informed about how their money has been spent.
Additional fundraising efforts may be undertaken if the above are not sufficient to fund the forum fully. These could include Kickstarter campaigns or selling TNP-branded merchandise to raise money.
How will we ensure the history of TNP is not lost?
We are planning to convert users and posts from the Zetaboards forum over into XenForo. Eluvatar is still testing and debugging the tools to do this. There are some important things for members of the community to be aware of:
The members of the admin team will remain the same, though changing to a forum we host ourselves does necessitate some changes.
All we know about the timeline for this conversion is that it is "imminent". Not all forums are being converted at the same time, and, as far as we know, advance notice is not being provided to individual forums about when their conversion will occur.
Ideally, we would like to convert from Zetaboards to XenForo on our own timeline, not one forced on us by those companies. We believe the ideal time to convert is in July, after the Judicial Election in TNP has ended. This will allow us time to make sure everything is working smoothly, work out any kinks in the new software, and give our citizens and residents a chance to access their accounts on the new forum before the General Election in September.
This timeline may not be possible, if our forced conversion comes more quickly than we expect. In such an event, we will do what we can to preserve the integrity of the TNP electoral process while not sacrificing posts or forum history to Tapatalk.
We welcome your questions, comments, and concerns.
About a month and a half ago, Zetaboards announced an imminent forced upgrade to Tapatalk for all existing Zetaboard forums. A little bit more detail was provided in later announcements, which can be found here, here and here. Supposedly, the founder of Zetaboards is working on a Zetaboards/Tapatalk hybrid forum. At this time, no information about the hybrid’s functions or appearance has been made available to Zetaboards communities or administrators. Additionally, although no specific timeline has been provided for when the conversions will take place, we know it has already been rolled out in at least one NS region (Europeia) without much notice.
When this change was announced, the TNP admin team began investigating what options are open to us. We quickly identified several problems with Tapatalk that make a switch to that software problematic for us. Namely:
- Core Tapatalk requires a particular layout, which is not compatible with the custom skin(s) that we use. Moreover, the hybrid form would reportedly allow us to import our current skin, but we would be unable to make changes to it without paying for upgraded support.
- Tapatalk does not allow you to use a custom favicon or a custom URL by default. You can pay them to allow you to use a custom URL, but they do not allow custom favicons at all. In other words, we would no longer be able to use the forum.thenorthpacific.org link that we have had for years unless we gave them money.
- The ability to file a support ticket is another thing reserved for those who pay to receive it. Regular users get no access to support if anything goes wrong. This is true even for those forums which are being converted from Zetaboards - if the conversion has a problem, they have to pay to have someone look at it.
- Tapatalk has more advertisements than Zetaboards, which we are concerned will exacerbate the problems we have been having with malicious ads forcing redirects to other sites. They also charge more than twice as much for ad removal.
- Tapatalk’s Code of Conduct is enforced on all Tapatalk sites, and it is overly broad and intrusive. The CoC forbids, among other things, all of the following:
- Making an off-topic post
- Cross-posting (aka, making an identical announcement in more than one thread)
- Posting a thread in the wrong category
- Linking or embedding videos without explaining what they are
- Having more than one account
- Being "offensive"
- "Overt" public displays of affection
What forum software will we be changing to?
We have looked at several forum providers and evaluated them on a range of factors, including aesthetics, pricing, support, hosting, versatility, and ease of use for both administrative functions as well as regular needs (i.e., how easy is it for admins to remask people? How easy is it for a moderator to pin a thread? How easy is it for a user to find an old post? Etc.). We also looked at likely longevity of the different forum options, as it would be unfortunate if we faced another forced migration to Tapatalk. Based on all of these factors, and the experiences NS members have reported with the different services, we believe that XenForo is the best option for our new TNP forum.
Why XenForo?
XenForo offers a number of advantages to both administrators and users, a powerful underlying platform, and options not available with ZetaBoards.
On the user side, XenForo provides options for social engagement, allowing users to add one another as friends and post status updates. It offers customizable alerts for members, so each person can select when they want to be sent an alert about new activity. It also allows for more profile customization than was permitted by Zetaboards. Users can display multiple rank badges, so others will easily be able to tell that someone is a citizen, is in the NPA, is a deputy minister, and is an elected justice. Previously, only one badge would display (generally the highest-ranked one). Finally, XenForo allows secondary forum accounts to be linked under one main account. Users can easily switch back and forth between their main and their secondary accounts, which is a feature that might be useful for our roleplaying community.
In terms of forum security, XenForo offers significant improvements over Zetaboards. It has add-ons that can automatically detect spammers and block them from registering, which will allow us to eliminate the current practice of putting a user in validation until they’ve made three posts. XenForo’s admin control panel is also better designed, allowing for faster and easier security checks and easier detection of multiple accounts. Lastly, admins will have complete control over advertising on the forum. If we enable it, the ad revenue it generates will go to us, not the software provider. We can also disable it entirely, which would put an end to the rogue redirecting pop-up ads that have been occurring on Zetaboards and other sites.
XenForo has an active support team and a growing user base, and sees regular bug fixing and maintenance. Developers (both independent and employed by XenForo) have created a number of add-ons to the base forum software which create additional functionality on the board. Some are free, others are available for a small fee. Examples of these add-ons include shop and currency mods, automatic welcomes, birthday threads, and many more.
If you want more information:
- You can read the XenForo manual here.
- You can try a demo of XenForo here.
- You can check out XenForo features here.
- You can check out reviews of XenForo here.
Here is a quick comparison of the costs we are looking at. We currently pay about $400-$500 per year to Zetaboards for ad removal, which works out to about 200k page views per month.
200k views = $36/mo
[c]$10/mo for first 20k views, then $0.50/1k views ("Premium")
200k views = $100/mo
[c]$0 (Admins can turn off ads on the whole board for free)[c]Hosting[c]$0[c]$0[c]~$10/mo[c]Custom URL[c]$0[c]$10/mo (included with Premium)[c]$0[c]Custom Favicon[c]$0[c]Not Available[c]$0[c]Custom Emoticons[c]$0[c]$10/mo (included with Premium)[c]$0[c]Yearly Costs (after first year)[c]~$500[c]~$1200[c]~$160
To summarize these costs in prose, we would need to pay $140 up front to acquire the XenForo license, which comes with 1 year of support, and about $10/mo to set up private hosting. If we have the funds to do so, we can also purchase some add-ons for the forum. Going forward, we can choose to pay $40 per year to XenForo for access to future upgrades and support. We could also choose not to pay that fee. If we do not, our forum will remain valid and working, we will just not be eligible for upgrades or support. We would also pay the hosting cost, which will work out to roughly $120 for the year. In total, that's about $160 per year on an ongoing basis. That number might be higher if we purchase any add-ons that have an annual fee, or if we need to upgrade our hosting, but it shouldn't be too much more than that.
For Tapatalk, conversion is free, but if we want to retain our custom URL and block ads, we would need to pay them an estimate of $1200 per year, every year. That includes their $10/mo "premium" service, which blocks the first 20k page views of ads, plus an additional $90/mo because our community is kind of insane and looks at the forum two hundred thousand times a month. Every month.
In other words, XenForo is vastly cheaper than Tapatalk unless we are willing to sacrifice user experience. It's also cheaper than what we've already been paying to Zetaboards just to get malicious ads off the forum. This is true even if we need to expand our server size or speed based on actual use - even spending two or three times as much per month on hosting wouldn't come close to the Tapatalk fee.
As for stability going forward, XenForo's price structure has been the same for at least 7 years. We can't rule out the possibility that they could increase prices in the future, but we feel reasonably confident that any increase will be gradual and minimal. As an added bonus, because XenForo offers software that is hosted privately, it will be virtually impossible for them to force their users to convert to Tapatalk (or any other service) in the future. And we would own all the content stored on our server, so if the server host went out of business or the quality dropped, we could freely migrate to an alternative.
How will we pay for this?
The start-up costs for XenForo will be partially funded with excess donations to the Democracy Day kickstarter. We do not know at this time exactly how much will be left over from that, but COE will provide an update once he can be sure. We will be holding a donation drive to raise the remainder from the TNP community at large, and to go toward our future costs.
Anybody who contributes $2 or more in the lead-up to the forum migration will receive an exclusive Founder Trophy. This trophy will only be available during this short time period, and it will be displayed on the user's profile. Founders will also gain early access to the new forum to help test-drive it.
After the forum has officially launched, we will add a user badge for anybody who donates to the forum (before or after it launches). This badge will be called Supporter, and will appear with other badges like "Citizen" or "NPA member". We may also add other trophies for people who meet donation objectives, such as "Sustainer" for anyone who donates on a recurring basis, or "Santa's Little Helper" for anyone who donates during December. These ideas are still tentative.
XenForo integrates easily with PayPal, which makes donation quick and easy for our users. Donating will be completely voluntary and optional, and all funds will be put toward the costs of site maintenance, hosting, and improvement. Admins will also provide an annual accounting of expenditures, so that the members of TNP are fully informed about how their money has been spent.
Additional fundraising efforts may be undertaken if the above are not sufficient to fund the forum fully. These could include Kickstarter campaigns or selling TNP-branded merchandise to raise money.
How will we ensure the history of TNP is not lost?
We are planning to convert users and posts from the Zetaboards forum over into XenForo. Eluvatar is still testing and debugging the tools to do this. There are some important things for members of the community to be aware of:
- Save important content locally just in case something goes wrong, or we aren't able to get all of the most recent posts. It would be a shame for someone to spend a long time drafting a bill for the RA or a long RP post, only for it to be lost.
- Passwords will not convert with accounts. Users will need to reset their passwords following the change. Make sure your email address is up to date and accessible to you, or you won't be able to reset your password.
- Avatars and signatures might not convert. Download the images that are important to you in case you need them later.
- Private Messages will NOT be saved. You MUST individually preserve any of the ones you want to keep.
- In-post links may fail. We will continue to use the same custom URL (forum.thenorthpacific.org), so links using that layout should continue to work as expected. However, links to the s13 Zetaboard will, at some point, begin to redirect to Tapatalk, and then fail entirely. The same is true for old invisionfree links. Translation: We will make every effort to keep links that look like http://forum.thenorthpacific.org/topic/630406/1/ working but http://s13.invisionfree.invalid/TNP/index.php?showtopic=490 and http://s13.zetaboards.com/TNP/topic/630406/1/ will break. We may be able to convert most of those back to the custom URL, but can't guarantee that all of them will be caught. (And we certainly can’t update any ancient bookmarks for you
)
The members of the admin team will remain the same, though changing to a forum we host ourselves does necessitate some changes.
- Eluvatar will host the forum and have access to the underlying server. We believe his record as an administrator and his technical expertise make him well-suited to this task. This new responsibility will not give him any additional power within the team. Darcania will have backup access to this server in the event of an emergency.
- A generic Root Administrator account will serve as the root of the forum. Flemingovia and Eluvatar will have access to this account. This is identical to the current state of affairs, except that the root account will not be called Hersfold. The root account is not used for routine administration matters, nor will it be in the future.
- The PayPal we use used to collect donations toward forum costs will be held by SillyString, and Eluvatar will have backup access to this account in the event of an emergency. A bank account with a debit card will be held by SillyString and Eluvatar. This account will be used to pay TNP bills and track expenses.
All we know about the timeline for this conversion is that it is "imminent". Not all forums are being converted at the same time, and, as far as we know, advance notice is not being provided to individual forums about when their conversion will occur.
Ideally, we would like to convert from Zetaboards to XenForo on our own timeline, not one forced on us by those companies. We believe the ideal time to convert is in July, after the Judicial Election in TNP has ended. This will allow us time to make sure everything is working smoothly, work out any kinks in the new software, and give our citizens and residents a chance to access their accounts on the new forum before the General Election in September.
This timeline may not be possible, if our forced conversion comes more quickly than we expect. In such an event, we will do what we can to preserve the integrity of the TNP electoral process while not sacrificing posts or forum history to Tapatalk.
We welcome your questions, comments, and concerns.
![Midir [Mondari]](/data/avatars/m/5021/5021626.jpg?1538375103){kind=avatar}
