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Other Stuff => General Wargames and Hobby Discussion => Topic started by: Bravo Six on May 01, 2020, 04:33:11 AM
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A couple of years back our online community for Vietnam Wargamers, Fields of Fire, was migrated by it's owners from Free Forums, to the abysmal , ad laden platform of Tapatalk. The layout was awful, the ads were annoying, and the cutomizability was pretty limited. The admin control section was pretty counter intuitive and all the work and patience required to fix the forum made me just throw my hands up and close the forum down. Having been hacked years before that and having to rebuild from scratch was a tall order. So it sat like a duck in the water.
Since then, I've heard many sentiments from the extraordinary gents who posted there for years, about what a loss the whole situation was to them and how much they missed the comradery. It is that as a motivator, that made me decide to look into avenues to rebuild the community with the hope of weathering further storms. A few fellow gamers have been using the Forummotion platform and it's free forum services, so I recently looked into that and decided on that as a place to start. I have since set up the bare bones and done many tweaks to return Fields of Fire to it's original look and function similar to what we had at Free Forums, and what the long time members felt comfortable with.
We've always been a small and tight (but friendly) community of gamers in this niche period, full of knowledgeable folks both on the conflict itself, and matters related to wargaming in general. But we're always looking to add quality folks to our community. With that, I invite anyone who is interested in the period of the Vietnam War, and joining a community of quality people rebuilding things from the ground up, to drop by.
Thanks and hope to see some of you over at the new AO.
https://fieldsoffire.forumotion.com/
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This isn't a criticism, just intrigued really.
But why not use forums that already exist? My experience of forums is that they tend to rely on very few people to run which means when one or two of them become unable they slide into mothball territory.
Wouldn't it be easier to say, point people in the direction of the appropriate board on LAF, possibly request a sticky thread at the top of it or something specifically for vietnam inspiration etc?
Part of the reason I say this is because whilst I am not a gamer in many periods, I often look to them for inspiration. So my 40k Catachans are often inspired by Vietnam era miniature projects etc. But I never really have the time to search massively and tend to dip in and out of the various boards on LAF. And I am sure many of those Vietnam players have other period interests too.
A sort of best of both worlds?
I could be completely wrong mind you.
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Not taken as a criticism at all.
Reasons for not using the existing forum, were mentioned above. Spammed with ads (with high cost to bully you into removing them), eyesore of a layout (with little non pay options to customize), etc. Basically, it's un-usable in it's current state. Best to set it adrift.
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Well hello there
Great news Todd - awaiting my clearance to join now. Will pop on a couple of contribs asa.
Hey McFonz I can see your PoV however I think setting up separately gives group more control over boards, membership etc. It will take a fair amount of effort to admin and we hope that those volunteers can keep it up.
Todd maybe a good thing to have some Resilience added - Back-up site, Continuity of Service plan so if this host disappears/changes policies all is not lost (again). I'm guessing you looked at Groups.io? I have a feeling they charge but user experience is pretty good - at least with groups I'm in.
Anyway big THANKS for diving back into this. Guess yoou can't let it go, like me and casting o_o
See you all there too, best
John
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Tried to register but forum doesn't accept my e mail address :'(
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Tom, I'm looking into this for you. Seems like there's a known issue. Alternately, you can apply using an alternative email and just edit your profile once you're in.
Back-up site, Continuity of Service plan so if this host disappears/changes policies all is not lost (again). I'm guessing you looked at Groups.io? I have a feeling they charge but user experience is pretty good - at least with groups I'm in.
Forummotion does forum back ups, so that's good to know. Free Forums did not. I'm using Groups.io right now for my 20mm Modern Wargaming Group, but the Yahoo Group platform isn't everyone's cup of tea. That said, creating a rally point in the event of a crash or outage, might be a good plan. Groups.io is free from what I can discern.