Do you have a software bias?

[Morrigan 1,826]

So a majority of roleplay sites are on Jcink but lets be real Jcink offers little that an alternative better option doesn't offer and more (in fact I dare you to tell me that Jcink offers something better than an alternative).

 

That notwithstanding, I always see ridiculous advertisement things like "Jcink premium" or "18+ Jcink premium" in advertisements all over the place. I'm not going to deny that Proboards doesn't allow a "mature" options but what about everything else? MyBB, SMF, IPS Nova, Insanejournal etc!?

 

I think most people know, or if they don't they will now, that I hate Jcink. I not only KNOW it's a discount version of IPS but it's also horrible for modern day Internet. Regardless, I look at and join Jcink sites. However, that doesn't appear to be the consensus.

 

Some people claim familiarity (which I could go into a rant about by itself) or "it's easier" (another rant, different moment) but I feel no one gives a good reason for the bias.

 

I don't like XenForo but I've seen gorgeous sites created on it. I don't like SMF but I've also seen gorgeous sites created on it.

 

Do you have a software bias? If so, what software and why? And be honest!

 

I'm Morrigan. I hate Jcink and Proboards and SMF. I'm middle ground to MyBB and I LOVE IPS.

[Stat 60]

I agree with everything Morrigan said. Jcink is outdated and I don't get all those people who will only join jcink sites. I mean, it does the job, but when you compare it to something like IPS, what's with the obsession? IPS is my software bias, it really is the bee's knees and I'll feel tempted to join any site that uses it just to see what they do with all the features.

 

As an admin, though, I use jcink. I spent months looking at the IPS page and trying to convince myself that I could afford it, but I can't. Jcink is affordable, there are tons of resources for it, Tumblr is pretty much out of bounds for advertising any other software, and you get ads everywhere asking for jcink only. Jcink bias is a snowball. It has become so much the thing, that it seems too much effort to try to fight it.

 

(I'm still totally gonna use IPS someday, when I move to a country where it doesn't cost almost 10% of minimum wage)

[Nariko 15]

I don't think I do. As a member, I'll give anything a look, if it's got a decent premise and I can stand the look of it. Sometimes, I'll even give a site a look even if it's using its software's default theme. These days, though, I find myself turning away from Jcink sites a lot more than I used to, because in their effort to stand out and look different, they've somehow managed to start muddling into a puddle of blended goop, and also tend to make really stupid design choices trying to be unique and edgy. Sometimes, don't reinvent the wheel, folks. (If it doesn't, for some reason, have a character system, or an account switcher, I'm gone. Way too lazy for that. Being honest, I'm probably way too lazy for most Jcink sites, too, because I can't be arsed to do claim crap. FC and who's who, I guess I can stand, but if a site's got more claims than that, uh-UH.)

 

As an admin, though, I've run sites on Jcink, SMF, Nova, MyBB, and IPS. The only one in that list I truly detest and will absolutely never use again is MyBB. Jcink is easy, and affordable, but it just isn't competitive anymore. If I'm really pinching pennies, and don't want to bother someone else to get a site off the ground, I'll go for Jcink every time. Never tried to run a site on much else, but I don't see a reason to, either. I may also never run another Nova until Nova 3 is done. All in all, I've got my preferences, but if something supposedly better comes along, I'm not opposed to giving it a try, if I can. I'm not much of a software snob. Software come and go as web standards and feature expectations change, and I expect my tastes will always have to be able to change as the internet does, so I try not to get too attached to any given one.

[Kit the Human 758]

2 hours ago, SithLordOfSnark said:

I've yet to find a cheaper option that gives you everything jcink does.

 

Any free software (mybb, smf etc) + the free hosting that the Initiative offers. You can edit every template, add whatever plugins you want, and have mature content for free.

 

As far as I'm concerned, any argument that contains the sentiment that "jcink is cheapest" is either ignoring or is unaware of the services and support here.

 

That aside!

 

I hang onto proboards prejudice because I remember a lot of drama over proboards deleting forums for mature or allegedly mature content? I'm not sure if that's still true. I wouldn't mind hearing what current proboard admins have to say about that.

 

Purely as a user, I'll consider the other free softwares equally. They all tend to present the same challenges to me as a primarily mobile user, with some being worse than others due to poor coding on the theme makers behalf. Or poorly coded post templates. The self hosted software, mybb, smf and phpbb in particular have a greater chance of being user friendly to me because you can edit everything. I single out phpbb because it is already natively responsive. I'm not including jcink in that because it's idea of 'responsive' is to remove a lot of features and information.

 

Obviously I find IPS the most user friendly and am fond of every rp site that uses it, even if I don't join.

[Arceus 1,082]

I'll usually join anything. Unless it's Proboards. Nope. Noooopenopenope. Their ToS does and has always wigged me out. Not that I think they actually do whatever they want with content on their site but the fact they're skeevy enough to say they can. AND they've even thrown in crap privacy policy to make matters worse. Wasn't a big fan of XenForo though either. It just feels funky. Idk how to explain it aside from like that. Lol

 

As far as adminning goes it has to be SMF or Jcink. ... and even when it's Jcink it's probably Jcink temporarily because I will eventually get frustrated with it. I can't do another self-hosted software because I'll eventually hit a wall where I can't figure out how to do something I want and just throw my hands up like I can do this in ten seconds on SMF bye. I've reached the point where most other things are hard to me. Lol. I like IPS well enough and I think it does a lot of things right, but I also think it's over-hyped. P= (Still love y'all though.)

 

Tbh though... if I was ever going to get my "perfect software," I'd have to code it myself. And I still very well might. Hey, I've got time, why not.

[Poe 18]

I used to LOVE proboards, I joined my first pb forum back in V4. Things were super simple to catch onto and mature content was still flying under the radar. Then the mature content apoc happened and sites were wiped off of the face of platform for mature content, with no hopes of getting anything back. I stuck with proboards after this, against my better judgement, and then V5 came along. V5 came off as making things easier in the admin panel, but for me it made it more difficult and more buggy. Plus proboards started a thing against HTML in the posts, because of some security issues that they were having, which raised a giant red flag for me.

 

That was the reason that I jumped the proboards ship and haven't looked back. I heard that V6 is coming and I can only imagine that it will be more terrible. As you can tell I am not open minded when it comes to PB.

 

Jcink is the next host that I jumped to and I have to say I like Jcink. It has its flaws for sure, but I have it easy to navigate the admin panel and easy to implement the things that I want. I wouldn't mind trying a different software, but I don't think I would leave Jcink for one simple reason. The Jcink community is huge and those that RP exclusively on Jcink are also huge in numbers. A lot of the members I currently have aren't open to other software, so I think sticking to Jcink is the way to go for me personally, with what I want for my site and my community.

 

That is not to say Jcink is the best host out there, to be fair I don't think any of the hosts are the best. We all have different needs and wants out of our hosts, and I think a lot of people are just sticking to what has worked for them in the past.

 

So I would say the only bias I have personally is against proboards, get your awful software out of here proboards.

[Kazetatsu 263]

I personally can't stand jcink, something about how most jcink sites look make me feel as if I got hot sauce in my eyes.
 

I like smf, proboards, mybb, and am willing to try almost any other type of forum host.

[Elena 546]

1 hour ago, Poe said:

I like Jcink. It has its flaws for sure, but I have it easy to navigate the admin panel and easy to implement the things that I want. I wouldn't mind trying a different software, but I don't think I would leave Jcink for one simple reason. The Jcink community is huge and those that RP exclusively on Jcink are also huge in numbers. A lot of the members I currently have aren't open to other software, so I think sticking to Jcink is the way to go for me personally, with what I want for my site and my community.

 

Yes. Jcink is free, easy to use, doesn't require me as administrator without technical skills (coding, graphics) to know too much, and when I get blocked, his support board replies quickly. I am not interested in Premium, I am not interested in self hosting, in installing plug-ins or doing anything like that, and that is ideal for me.

 

I have written on several boards, I have administrated an Invisionfree before, and I love Jcink more. I can join other sites, if I love them too much, but never go as far as moderator or anything. A simple member who can just write without post templates and so, yes, it works on any site.

 

I also don't like Nova, I was on one and, while I love the idea of joint posts, I don't like at all that they can't be seen until finished, and such a post is actually a whole forum thread. It doesn't allow co-ordination between plots. Also the threads are considered as written one after the other linearily, and I love my board calendar which arranges threads in the order needed for the story 🙂 Appropriate chapters = threads.

[Deep Sea 326]

My heart belongs to Xenforo - all the XF sites I've been on run smooth as butter, and the automatic resizing is fantastic. Plus, unlike the IPS sites I've been on, the XF sites have custom BBCode. The WYSIWYG editor is great, but I'm not quite ready to let go of my bbcode, and I'm not quite ready for the headfirst plunge of "stylizing all my posts with inline css".

[Huskerdust 625]

I’m pretty much just an SMF fangirl. I have joined sites outside of it and probably still will in the future but when it comes to running a site, I haven’t found anything I like better than SMF. 

 

 

[VVitch 8]

Oddly as everyone is trash talking JCINK, it's precisely JCINK that brought me here lol I was looking at the JCINK Twitter feed and a list of roleplay sites were recommended to me there.

 

I like JCINK because it is easier to customize and while I was at first overwhelmed by some of the settings which tend to cross one another at some points, it's still frank and straight forward.  It's not trying to be some social media hub/forum mash up which I have to say makes a lot of sites (such as this ) a bit confusing. At this point, I  am just randomly wandering and touching stuff around here to be honest lol. I roleplay in hosted chatrooms which involves the use of forums for information purposes and roleplay archiving. The forums are not the main attraction but a sideline where we as typists break from the roleplay to gather and talk, network and count our shinies. So in that regard forums like JCINK, SMF and probards---they are all essentially the same.

 

I have hosted communities on SMF, zetaboards and now JCINK and each have  had their pros and cons but I by far appreciate that while JCINK has it's limitations, it's affordable if you do want to go +18 and it has neat options that are built into the forum like the Store. I used to run a forum where all the awards and inventories were manually done and it was hell. Not everyone wants to mess with strings of HMTL/javascript until their eyeballs cross.

 

Edited January 16, 2019 by VVitch

[Morrigan 1,826]

1 hour ago, VVitch said:

Oddly as everyone is trash talking JCINK, it's precisely JCINK that brought me here lol I was looking at the JCINK Twitter feed and a list of roleplay sites were recommended to me there. 

 

I don't think anyone here has trash talked Jcink. A few people have argued that it's not technically the cheapest option but no one has actually talked down about it. I have no personal love for the platform but that's a personal peeve and in no means because of Jcink itself as it offers what some people want. I just prefer the more modern version of the software. Which we run here.

[Archivist 26]

I'm a phpBB fan. it's clean, simple, and I find it's easy to admin. The only problem I really have is being able to update it. I used to be able to do this but since 3.0 I have to find a tech to do it for me. 

 

I'm on a site that runs another board software, and I do like what they have- they use IP Board.  I'm there for the content and the people but the board does have some nice features. 

 

What I don't get are the people who say things like "I won't join a site if it doesn't use the forum program I like".

 

I don't understand this mentality. I get loyalty to a product but really? You're going to put the program above and before the content of the site?  This is not like, not joining because the site doesn't have a forum style that works with your cell phone or tablet, that's an easy fix. These people are saying that the program is more important than the content of the stories. And aren't the stories the reason why we're into writing RPG's?

Edited January 16, 2019 by Archivist

[VVitch 8]

10 hours ago, Morrigan said:

 

I don't think anyone here has trash talked Jcink. A few people have argued that it's not technically the cheapest option but no one has actually talked down about it. I have no personal love for the platform but that's a personal peeve and in no means because of Jcink itself as it offers what some people want. I just prefer the more modern version of the software. Which we run here.

 

I wasn't being literal with the term but to be frank you clearly have some hard feelings about a platform and as a user of said platform I didn't expect to come to this joint, first day, and read what I did. So there is that.

 

And it's a bit ironic encountering folks online who chirp about oudated software when Reddit is right there staring us all in the face with a platform that in its classic form was also bare bones, not many bells or whistles. It reminds a bit of the Instagram vs Facebook vs Twitter arguments you see. Who cares. The journey may be different but the destination is all the same.

 

In this case, it's roleplay.

 

Also, to balance out the negative I would like to say I appreciate how hands on the admin of JCINK is. After zetaboards ended it was refreshing transitioning to a new platform and having an Admin who was very personable and willing to interact with the users. Zetaboards ended terribly with users and communities feeling blind sided and 'ghosted' by its admin and people were very sour. JCINK might not be the bells and whistles some prefer but there are human elements to it that make it pretty alright, too. (Which is my personal preference and bias speaking now.)

 

Customer service and support also play a big part in developing brand loyalty. It could just be that JCINK is still kicking because users appreciate their treatment and the service they receive there.  Similar to having a favourite, out of the way restaurant that might look dumpy but serves up some fantastic food or has some entertaining staff.

 

 

Edited January 16, 2019 by VVitch

[Rune 1,099]

I dont have the time, skills, money or interest in learning self hosted stuff atm. 

 

Jcink offers everything I need for minimal effort. 

 

People include jcink premium on their ads because it's another way to say 18+ and that they don't have ads. 

 

It's a trend. A few years ago people only wanted invisionfree boards. Another host will show up and we'll be here again listening to pros and cons and none of us considering changing because we're happy/lazy/biased.