OK everyone! Here's the latest on the move to xenForo, our (old) new software.
First and foremost, preparations are taking just a little bit longer than we'd expected, so the site will not be going down on the 19th as planned. We're putting that off a week to take care of things. Instead, we'll be starting the transfer on Sunday, February 26th. So you have that much more time to write down all your followers and the people you follow!
Secondly, regarding donations:
For many many years, the site has been funded by the amazing generosity of the community and the efforts of the staff both past and present. This has been one of the greatest things as this has meant we’ve never once missed a donation goal ever and has been one of the major things that has allowed us to become the largest and most respected site in the RP genre. However, this has also become one of our biggest headaches: insanely large sites like us that depend on such a model become the target of attacks such as people sending in fake donations (stolen credit cards, anything that basically upsets PayPal), and this causes PayPal to constantly be freezing our stuff and necessitating appeals (we’ve never lost an appeal but it is extremely time-consuming and inconvenient to not have the required funds every time on time for bills). This happens way too often for the comfort of such a large site. Therefore, we'll be taking down the donation ability after the February goal. So if you want this last (for now) donation badge, please donate SoonTM! We thank everyone who's contributed to the site. You're all terrific people, and we very much appreciate it!
Later on, maybe in a couple of weeks or months (however long it takes for us to properly set it all up after the forum software switch), we will be exploring alternatives to PayPal, and also the idea of a Patreon-style system where users can select any amount of money and optionally commit it to the site monthly (something people have asked for over the years) instead of our current, limited donation system that only lets people do one-shot donations. This will do the following:
Once we resume with donations in the future after the February one ends, we will obviously continue to do badges and other art-based goodies (maybe some custom artwork in the future, but no promises). Obviously our commitment to never putting a feature behind a paywall and never placing ads on the site is still strong as ever, so worry not!
That's all for now. Stay tuned & as usual if you have any questions/comments/concerns please post below!
First and foremost, preparations are taking just a little bit longer than we'd expected, so the site will not be going down on the 19th as planned. We're putting that off a week to take care of things. Instead, we'll be starting the transfer on Sunday, February 26th. So you have that much more time to write down all your followers and the people you follow!
Secondly, regarding donations:
For many many years, the site has been funded by the amazing generosity of the community and the efforts of the staff both past and present. This has been one of the greatest things as this has meant we’ve never once missed a donation goal ever and has been one of the major things that has allowed us to become the largest and most respected site in the RP genre. However, this has also become one of our biggest headaches: insanely large sites like us that depend on such a model become the target of attacks such as people sending in fake donations (stolen credit cards, anything that basically upsets PayPal), and this causes PayPal to constantly be freezing our stuff and necessitating appeals (we’ve never lost an appeal but it is extremely time-consuming and inconvenient to not have the required funds every time on time for bills). This happens way too often for the comfort of such a large site. Therefore, we'll be taking down the donation ability after the February goal. So if you want this last (for now) donation badge, please donate SoonTM! We thank everyone who's contributed to the site. You're all terrific people, and we very much appreciate it!
Later on, maybe in a couple of weeks or months (however long it takes for us to properly set it all up after the forum software switch), we will be exploring alternatives to PayPal, and also the idea of a Patreon-style system where users can select any amount of money and optionally commit it to the site monthly (something people have asked for over the years) instead of our current, limited donation system that only lets people do one-shot donations. This will do the following:
- Increase the reliability and stability of donations. While we’ve never missed a goal, it’s super stressful (yes, I’m complaining about money) when it comes to a site this large to not have any amount of certainty.
- Allow us to have more payment providers. We can either use Patreon directly or see what our options are with xF, it does have a built-in system for this kind of thing.
- Using the Patreon site or a build-in xF feature means we’ll no longer depending on a poorly maintained addon for donations. God knows how many times the donation system has gone down over the years and not accepted someone's donation (yes, people do get upset when they can’t give us their money, though that just shows how much they value the site
! )
Once we resume with donations in the future after the February one ends, we will obviously continue to do badges and other art-based goodies (maybe some custom artwork in the future, but no promises). Obviously our commitment to never putting a feature behind a paywall and never placing ads on the site is still strong as ever, so worry not!
That's all for now. Stay tuned & as usual if you have any questions/comments/concerns please post below!
!
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