Iwaku's chat and blog features are going to be removed.

Jorick

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Fantasy is my #1; I will give almost anything a chance if it has strong fantasy elements. Post apocalyptic, superhero, alternate history, science fantasy, some supernatural, romance, and a few fandoms (especially Game of Thrones) are also likely to catch my eye.
Hello, people of Iwaku. I have some unfortunate news regarding some of our site features.

For years now Iwaku has struggled to keep old and unwieldy addons playing nice together and working with new forum software updates. However, there is only so much we can do to keep them working on our end when those addons often lack long-term developer support, and we are finally reaching an impasse with some of them. XenForo is getting ready to launch a stable release of the 2.0 version of the forum software some time early next year, and some of the changes they are making to how addons work means that a couple of ours are no longer going to function. There are no suitable direct replacements for them, and the fact that they've lasted this long without breaking is kind of a miracle, honestly.

The two features that are going to be removed from Iwaku are the on-site chat and the blogs system. They're going to be removed over the next handful of months, ending with whatever day the XenForo 2.0 update happens (we don't know the date but there will be another announcement for it ahead of time). I will explain exactly how this will work for each of them.

The on-site chat will be removed on December 15
This means that the default chat rooms, the custom-made chat rooms, and all of the chat logs thereof will be irrevocably deleted on December 15. If you are using the chat system for roleplaying, now would be a good time to collect your logs and seek alternatives that work for you and your partners. You can still use the chats until that date, but chat logs will be removed as well so be sure to plan ahead.

We don't want to just completely remove chat roleplaying from the Iwaku community, so we will be implementing some permanent roleplay channels on the Iwaku Discord server for those who wish to use them. They will be generic channels for groups or 1x1 roleplaying that can be used by whomever so desires at any given time; smut will only be allowed in the 18+ age-locked Redstar channel due to Discord's Terms of Service disallowing such content being exposed to minors. If you are interested in using the Iwaku Discord server, check out this thread for an invite link and explanation of how it works.

Blogs will be removed from the site some time early next year
To prepare for this, effective immediately the creation of new blog entries has been disabled. This is to prevent a further accumulation of content that will only be removed later. Anyone who has been using the blogs to store creative content should act as soon as possible to store that information elsewhere so it doesn't get lost. The blog system will be totally removed whenever we update to XenForo 2.0 software, and again we do not know exactly when that will become available so I can't give an exact date just yet. There will be another announcement early next year when we have a set day for the update. However, we do luckily have some very good alternatives for all common uses of the blog system, as listed below.

  • Buying hosting services from Atabyte, which also hosts Iwaku itself, will get you a fancy domain and a site that you can arrange to suit your needs. Also, anyone who pays for hosting services from Atabyte gets Iwaku donator privileges for no extra cost. See this Resource for details on Atabyte hosting. There is also the cheaper option of getting hosting with an Iwaku.org domain; details on that offer can be found in this other Resource.

  • The Characters Gallery is a good place to put your characters. Note however that the Gallery has some rules in place to keep it reasonably well organized. The two rules most often broken are that the Gallery is for roleplay characters only, not objects or inspiration art or whatnot, and that there can be only one entry per character. To avoid ending up with the Maintenance staff frowning at you and making you fix your mistakes, avoid making them by reading this handy Resource for guidelines on using the Gallery. Gallery items do not get deleted unless they are in horrible violation of the rules and the creator cannot be reached to have them fixed; entries from banned, inactive, and deleted accounts get moved to the Inactive Players category (and they can be returned to the proper category if you go inactive and then return).

  • If you've got something other than characters to store somewhere, the Showcasing forum of the Community Connections section of the forum is perfect for it. Your worlds, your plots, your art, your fanfic, your poems, your other solo writing, and more can all be housed in Showcasing. You can also make a character megathread of sorts to hold all your characters in Showcasing, if you prefer that to the Gallery. We never delete Showcasing threads (unless they're spam or full of illegal porn or something) and they only get archived if your account becomes inactive, deleted, or banned, so they will always be accessible in some form. These threads can be moved back to Showcasing by request if an inactive person comes back and wants their stuff pulled out of the archive.

  • If you have a world or some pieces of one that you would like some feedback on, you can instead post a thread with the Project prefix to the Building Worlds forum of the Creative Content section. This is meant only for people seeking collaboration or feedback, so if you just want somewhere to put your stuff to avoid deletion then use Showcasing instead. Same deal here for archival and such as with the Showcasing threads.

  • If you've got any opinion pieces or reviews that you'd like to preserve, or if you want to post one in the future, the General Chatting forum of the Community Connections section is a good place to post them. It's sort of the general catch-all place to post anything that isn't related to roleplaying or other creative endeavors. Threads in General Chatting get archived after 30 days of no new activity; they'll only be deleted if they horribly violate site rules or on request of the thread starter (but even then only a soft delete that can be reversed).

  • Related to the above, if you want to post rants about things or ask for advice with problems, the Counseling subforum under General Chatting is the place to go.

  • And finally, if none of the above appeal to you, there are free blogging options from services such as Wordpress that might work for you.

Again, I want to be very clear here: all of the blogs will be irrevocably deleted at a later date when we update to XenForo 2.0, so make sure that you secure any blog content you care about as soon as possible.

If you have any questions or complaints, feel free to post them here in this thread. However, please keep it civil and please try to understand that this is an unfortunate necessity rather than the admins taking away your toys just to be jerks. No amount of screaming and cursing will change the fact that sometimes outdated software becomes impossible to maintain.
 
I have to admit, I'm really going to miss the blog feature. I don't use it, myself, but some of the people that I follow do use it. Getting a notification of a new blog post, and a shiny little 1 by the flag for it, was really nice. It made it simple to keep updated about important things from them. (And allowed much more detail than the status posts, which don't send out the notifications)

I understand the reasoning behind it, but that does not mean that these features won't be missed.
Personally, I've never used the on-site chat rooms. I have stalked them before, but I don't think I've ever said anything in them.
Setting up a server on Discord or using Chatzy have just been easier alternatives for me. So, for people who want to do private chat room RPs (1x1 or group based), those are options.
 
There is Not way to Move them at all? Before update?


Thank you for the Update, Having somewhere to store all of this on-site or organize or to have some kind of tool to transfer chats into threads would be extremely helpful otherwise copy pasting all previous posts, or figuring out how to continue on without reference from previous mesages seems really confusing for me, let me know if im misunderstand the chats your talking about, are you saying all conversation chats are gonna be deleted or are those still going to be available and the chat rooms themselves are going to the way side?

By blog i know you mean blog, but do conversations and chats go hand in hand or no.

Thanks :)
 
You know, that makes sense. Really, that so much of the older content is still holding up on the site after updates time and time again is pretty amazing, though I understand when the battle has to be declared lost.

I won't really miss either; I used to use blogs, but I've rarely since found anything to put there, and the Discord server is a vastly superior alternative to the on-site chat.
 
Will there by some kind of Other open post option, maybe a blog like features where members can post updates and things without a word Limit? somewhere on site, if that is not possible i understand.
 
Thank you for the Update, Having somewhere to store all of this on-site or organize or to have some kind of tool to transfer chats into threads would be extremely helpful otherwise copy pasting all previous posts, or figuring out how to continue on without reference from previous mesages seems really confusing for me, let me know if im misunderstand the chats your talking about, are you saying all conversation chats are gonna be deleted or are those still going to be available and the chat rooms themselves are going to the way side?
Private conversations and chats are in fact separate things. Don't worry, your conversations are safe.
 
Private conversations and chats are in fact separate things. Don't worry, your conversations are safe.
Awesome that makes me a bit calmer, blog thing still really bums me out but know Iwaku always wants to improve and get better so I offer my support even if it makes me sad :(
 
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Aw, man, this is a huge (but understandable) bummer for me. I use the blogs not only to store half-written posts and other bits and pieces I need to remember, but to let my partners know if there's something significant going on in my life that may affect my posting. Ah, well, can't be helped. Thank you for the advanced warning!
 
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Hmm... Would opinion-piece type stuff be ok to put in Showcasing? I know you said that kind of stuff should be posted in GC, but, I dunno... the stuff I use my blog for just feels like it's not a good fit for GC, and I would feel weird about putting them there... But if the Showcasing forum is strictly for creative works, and not a place for me to ramble about cartoons, then... I guess I'm out of luck... :/
 
Will there by some kind of Other open post option, maybe a blog like features where members can post updates and things without a word Limit? somewhere on site, if that is not possible i understand.
Unfortunately it's not as simple as just making a feature the way we want it. These sort of features have to be bought from add-on developers and then those developers have to be relied on to maintain the add-ons, so that they keep working every time the main forum software is patched or updated. The developer who made the Blogs we currently use stopped updating them sometime around 2009-2010. D:

We have actually been looking for an alternative Blog add-on for months. Unfortunately none of the ones available are worth being purchased for their listed price and/or aren't compatible with all of our other modifications. We finally gave up. If an add-on comes along in future that works with XenForo 2.0 and is affordable and has good customer service, we would probably snag it. We'll just have to keep our fingers crossed.
 
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Hmm... Would opinion-piece type stuff be ok to put in Showcasing? I know you said that kind of stuff should be posted in GC, but, I dunno... the stuff I use my blog for just feels like it's not a good fit for GC, and I would feel weird about putting them there... But if the Showcasing forum is strictly for creative works, and not a place for me to ramble about cartoons, then... I guess I'm out of luck... :/
What do you mean rambling about cartoons isn't creative
 
Hmm... Would opinion-piece type stuff be ok to put in Showcasing? I know you said that kind of stuff should be posted in GC, but, I dunno... the stuff I use my blog for just feels like it's not a good fit for GC, and I would feel weird about putting them there... But if the Showcasing forum is strictly for creative works, and not a place for me to ramble about cartoons, then... I guess I'm out of luck... :/
Showcasing is supposed to be for creative works, yes. Can you give me an example of your cartoon ramblings? If it's reviews you could do a megathread in GC and it would be perfectly fine there.
 
What do you mean rambling about cartoons isn't creative

I just mean, TSPAKI more closely matches the definition of "opinion piece" than "creative work", and I wouldn't want to repost every TSPAKI entry into Showcasing if they're just going to be moved to GC, because... I would feel weird about posting them in that section.

So if the only place that I would be allowed to post them is GC, then I would probably just have to lay the series to rest. Which is a real shame, since I never got around to writing about MSB:RA like I promised you all. :<
 
Showcasing is supposed to be for creative works, yes. Can you give me an example of your cartoon ramblings? If it's reviews you could do a megathread in GC and it would be perfectly fine there.

They're... kind of like reviews... sometimes, depending on what exactly I'm talking about. (Edit: It's not even strictly about cartoons. Or TV shows at all. I wrote an entry about a KFC ad I heard on Spotify once.)

I'll post some links once I'm online from a computer. Unless someone who already follows the series like @IntrusivePenDesperateSword can get a link for me.
 
Unfortunately it's not as simple as just making a feature the way we want it. These sort of features have to be bought from add-on developers and then those developers have to be relied on to maintain the add-ons, so that they keep working every time the main forum software is patched or updated. The developer who made the Blogs we currently use stopped updating them sometime around 2009-2010. D:

We have actually been looking for an alternative Blog add-on for months. Unfortunately, none of the ones available are worth being purchased for their listed price and/or aren't compatible with all of our other modifications. We finally gave up. If an add-on comes along in future that works with XenForo 2.0 and is affordable and has good customer service, we would probably snag it. We'll just have to keep our fingers crossed.

My blog was used as an emotional/ life dairy, a very healthy coping skill for me and my mental health, silly to pour it all out over the years but I understand now it's not that simple. Thanks for telling me, I do hope that you do find another add-on, the blog feature was one of my favorites for keeping people updated about roleplay and my life, so Fingers crossed right along with you.

Is the Moving and collecting of all blog posts completely in each users hands or will things be moved for easier access so that we grab things and move them bit by bit if that inst possible and you already have your hands full enough I get that too. Just trying figure out how to pull so much content from this site to my computer without a lot of struggle, of copy and paste and making each blog into a plethora of tiny files to be collected and dated. Im not super computer savi so maybe im over complicating things, the only thing I could think of was printing and then scanning in to keep them without so much physical work.

If anyone has any other alternatives for how to remove all the blog content yourself conveniently please give me instructions im happy to learn, I have an HP with a windows Ten system.
 
My blog was used as an emotional/ life dairy, a very healthy coping skill for me and my mental health, silly to pour it all out over the years but I understand now it's not that simple. Thanks for telling me, I do hope that you do find another add-on, the blog feature was one of my favorites for keeping people updated about roleplay and my life, so Fingers crossed right along with you.

Is the Moving and collecting of all blog posts completely in each users hands or will things be moved for easier access so that we grab things and move them bit by bit if that inst possible and you already have your hands full enough I get that too. Just trying figure out how to pull so much content from this site to my computer without a lot of struggle, of copy and paste and making each blog into a plethora of tiny files to be collected and dated. Im not super computer savi so maybe im over complicating things, the only thing I could think of was printing and then scanning in to keep them without so much physical work.

If anyone has any other alternatives for how to remove all the blog content yourself conveniently please give me instructions im happy to learn, I have an HP with a windows Ten system.
We are leaving it up to you guys, since we don't know what is and isn't something a given member would want to save and Staff already have a lot on their plate.

If copying and pasting is not working for you, an alternative to wasting all that paper is to save each blog page as an HTML file. You can't edit it like a Word document, but it opens as an "offline web page" in your browser. You can save pages as HTML documents from your browser's tools. What browser do you use?
 
Oh man :c this is sucky news! I love using the blog to store useful things but also I love writing big updates for people to read and it's a nice place for me to vent or to update people.

But Iwaku must grow! Now don't mind me whilst I sift through to find anything work keeping 8)

Thanks 4 letting us know <3
 
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All my characters :/