I resign

I've just had a nosy at Grav's AIM logs, and this is what I've picked up (form oldest to most recent, as per Grav's post):

- Guest Posting/Zend ]- vBSEO
- New Style
- Guest Poting
- STore Hack
- Activity Hack... how does it work?
- Portal/vBadvanced
- Blog Function

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Guest posting has been allowed to some degree - I think that there is a quick sign up feature to allow guests to quickly sign up and post, with the option to fully sign up within twenty-four hours.

New style - well, this is being addressed.

Store hack/Activity hack - first things first, we need to know how the activity hack works. And then we need a Store Hack that is compatible. Are there any members, other than WW, with extensive knowledge of PHP, enough to create their own Store Hack that is compatible with the Activity Hack?

Portal/vBadvanced - I don't know how many have checked WW's test, but what's he doing is done with vBadvanced, and is a portal of types.

Blog function - is it possible to integrate LiveJournal or Myspace blogs on their own Zelaron page, or within a users profile? I quite liked the idea of Users being given their own page (an extensive profile with extras) which was raised a few threads back.

The store hack tie-in to the activity hack is simple. The activity hack only controls the generation of funds. The issue there is simply finding a store hack that is capable of doing advanced things without being a mess. Besides the issue of people exploiting to get things for free, there's the issue of, for example modifying other peoples' user titles. If I modify someone's title for a month, then they go and modify it for a day, the proper thing to happen after a day would be for it to go back to mine, but there's a lot of code involved in tracking stuff like that.

As far as the blog stuff, I know there is at least one 3rd party modification and there is an official Jellsoft blog product for vB. I don't think either of them allow the extent of customization as LiveJournal or MySpace, however. I told Grav that I'm against this, but my time is not needed for this. Especially if we go for the Jellsoft version, it should be an incredibly simple installation (requires the forum upgrade I'm working on on the test board, however).

The vBSEO stuff may not be as much trouble as I initially suspected, but I haven't really looked into it.

I still think guest posting is a huge mistake, as it will prevent most people from ever making accounts. A quick registration may be as simple as a form hack, but it may be complicated by the verification image.

I thought we almost came to an agreement at one point that we would be able to limit an IP to, say, 5 posts before locking them out and forcing them to Register? Maybe that is just my own genius idea though?

Anyway, I read this thread, and although I can sympathize with Grav and the like, I don't agree. I mean, WW is my age (25 or so), and if his life is anything like mine, after 4-5 years on Zelaron (I honestly don't know how long Zelaron has existed...), you basically lost most of the luster that once existed. And once that "pizazz" is gone, the motivation to actually sit down and write/implement coding to temporarily please some members is all but gone. I'm not saying this is the case either, but I wouldn't blame WW for his lack of catering to everyone's need on a whim. He's done plenty for Zelaron, and continues to do so. I wouldn't mind having like 1 or 2 changes a year, because it's not like Zelaron is broke. There are still a lot of posts and activity. It's not growing exponentially, or even barely linearly for that matter, but it's not declining either, as far as I'm concerned.

Why try to fix something that's not broken? Sure we can try to make it better, but give the guy that has the power, resources, and intuition to do it some slack. Seriously.....

Oh, and farewell.

It's been broken for a while...

Not really. I can think of things that can improve, but I don't see anything that is clearly deficient that it would eventually turn Zelaron into non-existence.

It's been on a steady decline. We hardly ever get new members who post, and it's even rarer to find members who stick around. The old members are getting tired of this place. They are slowly leaving as well. Sure, we have spurts of activity, however I'm sure if we could find an activity chart we would certainly see decline over the last 3 years. It's only a matter of time until this place has 5 or 6 posts a day. After that, people won't bother checking this daily, and will eventually quit checking altogether. That trend needs to be reversed if we want to keep this place going for longer than a couple of years. Not steadied, reversed.

i agree with MJ