ATTENTION ALL USERS: Forum SUCCESSFULLY MOVED today!

BinaryOrange

EDIT: Hi everyone, the forum successfully moved hosts today and will not die for a while yet! HUGE Thanks to @Megalomaniak and his friend Ra for doing the huge amount of work required to move the database and everything else over, from my understanding it took 1.5 days.

The main email account still needs to set up so if you need to contact me, message me on here and I will get back to you ASAP. taht email should be back up and running in a day or two as well.

/END EDIT

Original post, completely irrelevant now!

[please see further down for details on the move] Hi everyone,

I am sorry to inform you that due to extenuating and unforeseen circumstances, the forum will no longer be available after March 11th, 2018. The original founder and myself do not have the time to run/maintain the forum any longer, and despite many efforts it appears the official Godot team does not deem the forum necessary for discussions, and as such it appears they have no interests in taking over the management.

If something changes, I will of course update you all. Perhaps if you make a loud enough noise on here, the Godot team will see that the forum is a necessary platform for communications. Otherwise, there is always the official FB group, the Discord channel, and various other discussion platforms available on the Godot engine website.

Apologies for the extremely short notice. But this is what happens with community-run/funded projects sometimes, something just phases out slowly or it dies a sudden death. I'm sorry to say it appears our situation is of the latter.

TwistedTwigleg

It’ll be sad to see the forum disappear. These forums were what kickstarted my releasing games publically a couple years ago. These forums helped me have the courage to try and release games for anyone/everyone to play, Instead of letting them sit on my hard drive and gather dust :smile:

Huge thanks to everyone who has worked the forum. You guys are great and I wish you all the best! Its a shame the Godot team does not deem the forum necessary, because it is a great place with a excellent community!

If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know!

bitwes

Thanks for running a great forum. Sorry I kept making G.U.T. posts for each release I had. I didn't much care for getting yelled at for doing that but I was VERY impressed that someone was paying that much attention. Well done keeping the community in shape and making the forums as productive as possible.

Ace_Dragon

I hope you can find someone to hand the keys to the forum to. It's taken a while, but the activity here is slowly picking up month to month (so it would be good to get to where the ball really starts to roll).

Most of the other channels have disadvantages compared to this forum, a few are just chatrooms while Facebook makes it hard to find older posts. The Reddit forum is extremely minimalist (one page and with very limited features for replies). The Q&A is very good for questions, but some types of threads like those for projects aren't often found.

I would not forget that the main forum for Blender users is also community-run and has become a major asset for that project (so it points to what I hope would become the same for Godot).

keltwookie

Very sad news indeed.

@Ace Dragon said: I hope you can find someone to hand the keys to the forum to. It's taken a while, but the activity here is slowly picking up month to month (so it would be good to get to where the ball really starts to roll).

Most of the other channels have disadvantages compared to this forum, a few are just chatrooms while Facebook makes it hard to find older posts. The Reddit forum is extremely minimalist (one page and with very limited features for replies). The Q&A is very good for questions, but some types of threads like those for projects aren't often found.

I would not forget that the main forum for Blender users is also community-run and has become a major asset for that project (so it points to what I hope would become the same for Godot).

So true !

The Godot management team forgot one thing: It is partially thanks to this forum that Godot gained users and popularity these latest months. And I don’t talk about project presentations only, but it is also a matter of discussions which, for some, are really detailed answers and precisions (contrarily to these other channels with often 2 sentences as answers only), a great source of informations for newcomers or beginners. All those (so- called) “social media” can’t pretend be communities and sorry, but don't count on me for registering on those channels.

Isn’t there anyone here who do have the time to manage forums? Apparently it is not a hosting issue, right? If it is the case, and as said TwistedTwigleg, let me know.

NeoD

In the first Godot forum Reduz opened threads, answers questions etc...and he makes this forum the main place for discussions. When the old forum was replaced by a very buggy website something was broken and people was splitted to their popular social websites without having to subscribe and Godot team does nothing to redirect people here. People prefers to stay on shitty platforms. Many times I tried to redirect some people to forum without success because I'm just a random guy. Anyway if newcomers try this forum now they will facing this thread who tells them the forum is dead.

Ace_Dragon

NeoD; The link to this forum is on the community page of the Godot website, so you have that at least.

As I said before, there's some FOSS projects where things like forums are run by the community, not the developers. The Blender Foundation for instance does not run its own user forum and has not for over a decade, but there are people in the community who are dedicated enough to run a user forum (which some devs. do visit).

Also in the case of Blenderartists, that forum has just changed hands for the third time (even the most dedicated owners will need to move on at some point, but a good sign of a strong community is if you can find someone ready to take over).

Megalomaniak

A real shame, I don't have a facebook account nor do I use discord and I don't really care much for the stackexchange type Q&A either(although I do find it better than the other two), so I guess I'll largely be out of active community engagement 11th onward.

It was a good run while it lasted.

memzen

I posted a question a few months ago and there were a few responses but no answer because they didn't know how to code in GDScript much better than myself. After spending many hours to find a solution I posted the answer a couple of months later. Any developer could have answered the question but none of them came to the forum, probably because they were so busy meeting deadlines and afterwards needed a rest. I assume some developers do visit other channels such as Reddit and Discord, so closing the forum to force newbies to use those channels so they can get answers is reasonable. When a question of mine on the other channels does not get answered and moves down the queue to never be seen again, I will simply repost it. ;)

MagicLord

Discord is about tchat but it is not so different from the forum, it can be difficult to find old answers, but it is for instant or daily answers and questions, so it's faster to get answers with users that are already connected.

There is some very nice people i appreciate here, i guess Discord is the main exchange channel so we'll meet there :)

Somnivore

@Megalomaniak I'd recommend Discord if all else fails, it's quite a nice chat client.

BinaryOrange

Sadly I still have not heard from the official Godot team, but I have been looking into a way to keep the forum alive, even if I have to create a new one altogether.

A big part of the problem is that right now, I have no useful or working knowledge on PHP, and this forum software (Vanilla) requires extensive use of it. Otherwise, the finances aren't too much of the problem, I could donate to the "cause" for sure at least for the first year, though I certainly wouldn't mind if the Godot team could do it. :wink:

If I were to create a new forum using something like Proboards, would people be opposed to creating new accounts there? My only concern is that since it would be free, obviously there are going to be ads. And again, all content from this forum would be lost - I do not know of a way to port it over, the original founder set it all up and I have no idea how any of this works.

MagicLord

@BinaryOrange said: My only concern is that since it would be free, obviously there are going to be ads.

TwistedTwigleg

I'm okay with using something else, even if it means losing all of the current discussions. We can simply remake them on the new forum :smile:

(I don't know a lot about PHP, so I'm afraid I cannot offer much assistance there...)

As for ads, I think its fine. I understand why people don't like them, but they keep these free services running, something important to remember given we are not paying a single dime to enjoy the forums :wink:

(Personally I don't really mind ads... Not to say I like them, but they don't really bother me)

BinaryOrange

I suggested Proboards because they are quickest and easiest to setup, however their paid plans are $49.99/month, which is more than what the current costs of this forum are PER YEAR.

I am not sure about view limitations or anything like that through Proboards, that could be an obstacle. I am currently looking at other, better plans. I'm finding some promising looking plans through Host Gator, and it looks fairly easy to set up either phpBB or MyBB for forum software.

I will do some careful price/value calculations and let you guys know what happens. I would just pay to keep this version of the forum running for another year, but I think this might be a good opportunity to give the forum an overhaul and actually make sure I know how to run it, since I'll be the one creating the new one. It would probably be better to go with a system that a lot of people are familiar with as well, that way I can recruit people already familiar with the software to help :wink:

BinaryOrange

Another reason I want to go with something else for forum software is because Vanilla doesn't seem to keep itself updated very well, and it lacks some basic features like Signatures and automated Thread Locking messages.

BinaryOrange

Turns out HostGator wants $100 USD, so that's not happening. I'm currently setting up a board via proboards, and will post a link here once it's ready to share. I have to contact the moderators from this forum and ask them to be moderators on the new one as well. I will also share the link on discord, facebook and other places that may need it as soon as I have customized the board to look a bit more "ready".

If it turns out that Proboards needs to be upgraded, I'll look into the pricing models. For now, it's our best bet at keeping the forum community alive, even if it is displaced.

Ace_Dragon

I wouldn't worry about using a service that gives ads (as long as they don't try to download malware to your computer). This would be especially so since Google Chrome now blocks the more intrusive ones by default (anything that doesn't meet what's called the "better ads" standard).

I also wouldn't worry about trying to get the official Godot team on board, if we can help make the forum become the place for Godot users, some of the devs. might use it because that is where is the userbase is.

MagicLord

@BinaryOrange said: [please see further down for details on the move] Hi everyone,

The original founder and myself do not have the time to run/maintain the forum any longer, and despite many efforts it appears the official Godot team does not deem the forum necessary for discussions, and as such it appears they have no interests in taking over the management.

Are your sure you'll have time to manage a new forum ? the original founder and you do not have time to manage the actual.

if you make a loud enough noise on here, the Godot team will see that the forum is a necessary platform for communications. Otherwise, there is always the official FB group, the Discord channel, and various other discussion platforms available on the Godot engine website.

You said Godot team does not see a necessity when there is Discord and some other channels But they could link Godot page to any forum Godot users could create, it's not their concern i think.

Considering those why did you change your mind about getting a new forum while this one is already running well enough ? Or it is the original founder going away unable to pass that forum subscription to someone else , and we must find another forum ?

keltwookie

@BinaryOrange said: ...I have no useful or working knowledge on PHP, and this forum software (Vanilla) requires extensive use of it.

And again, all content from this forum would be lost - I do not know of a way to port it over, the original founder set it all up and I have no idea how any of this works.

I suggested Proboards because they are quickest and easiest to setup, however their paid plans are $49.99/month, which is more than what the current costs of this forum are PER YEAR.

Why choosing a paid plan ? PhpBB (I use it) or myBB are still great free forum softwares, have tons of plugins available and do not require any particular knowledge to run it. Concerning Vanilla (it is free ! The paid plans are useless in the current case), I use it myself for another project and I don’t know much about PHP and for now, no major issues. A reason to keep Vanilla is that you could easily transfer the current database what could effectively be a problem in case of changing the software.

@MagicLord said: Considering those why did you change your mind about getting a new forum while this one is already running well enough ?

+1, you said all

Edit: What I propose (few things to check first but at first glance, it is perfectly possible):

1) Hosting new Godot Devs forum (Vanilla, phpBB... anything !) for FREE at least for a year (donations welcome at it is not free for me hehe). 2) Create an original theme myself with banner, favicon, etc. Two examples what I'm able to do here and here 3 No ads !

The only thing we have to find is an admin and moderators. The best would be to keep the current team of course. And yes, in this case an SFTP account will be created and the whole thing will be transferred to the forum management team.