What happened with Proboards while I was away?

[Menalippe 3]

For context, my site has been open since July 2015, and it's been advertised as a 3/3/3 on the RPG Rating scale the entire time. Part of what made me choose Proboards was that, as I recall, they were much more hands-off about mature content than JCink.

 

Fast forward to today, I get a DM from their support team telling me I'm violating their ToS; they don't have a premium plan like JCink does, but they want people to use their Forums.net paid service.

 

The cheapest plan on that site btw? Is 50 bucks a month.

 

I was on a very long hiatus from 2019 til late 2022 after a death in my family made maintaining an RPG the last thing on my mind. Did I just manage to fly under the radar for that long, or did Proboards get disgustingly greedy within that time frame?

[Auroxtra 6]

My experience with proboards has always been that they've always been rather strict when it comes to keeping content pg-13; when I was hosting a website there, I had gotten notified there was content on my site that was against their TOS's despite my attempts to adhere to them.

 

I use jcink, so I had to look up proboards nowadays to see about that $50 fee; it looks as though that sister company of theirs is tailored towards businesses, as opposed to more personal or smaller use such as a roleplay forum. Which... yeah. That's a ridiculous amount of money for our purposes!

I would personally recommend the switch to Jcink in order to have that mature content if you want it, but others may have better solutions for you since Jcink and Proboards are my only experiences!

[Menalippe 3]

I'm already working on building a JCink version of the site, though so far that's reminded me why I went with Proboards when initially building a site; it's a lot less idiot-friendly, and I haven't even gotten to themes or graphics or non-standard features yet.

[Mistress Of The Obvious 65]

Proboards has been pretty strict with their content for sometime. For a while their paid option on Forums.net allowed for more mature content that was a lot cheaper than $50 a month. That is surprising. I'd say you managed to fly under the radar.

 

If you have any questions on Jcink instalation let us know. It can be confusing.

[Menalippe 3]

6 hours ago, Mistress Of The Obvious said:

If you have any questions on Jcink instalation let us know. It can be confusing.

 

I almost certainly will... JCink admin controls are very confusing and it's SO GRANULAR when I'm trying to change things like colors and such

[Morrigan 1,819]

Proboards has ALWAYS been known for its stricter more hands on policy about being a maximum of a PG-13 place. (For the most part 2-2-2 on the RPG Rating scale). They won't even allow you to get a backup, they will straight up remove it and tell you to go fuck yourself basically. I also remember them not investigating either. So if you were reported... you would be shut down. To the point that vindictive ex-members got sites shut down on Proboards.

 

As for Jcink there are quite a few themes out there and its more granular but also more customizable. I have a sort of start that I never finished on how to theme it in the Guides section.

[Menalippe 3]

On 1/21/2023 at 5:41 AM, Mistress Of The Obvious said:

If you have any questions on Jcink instalation let us know. It can be confusing.

 

Is there a "JCink for Dummies" type resource anywhere?  I can google Jcink questions all day but it seems like 90% of the time I can't make heads or tails of what's being said or how/where to implement a piece of code someone has offered as a solution to a problem I'm having.

[Everglow 30]

23 hours ago, Menalippe said:

 

Is there a "JCink for Dummies" type resource anywhere?  I can google Jcink questions all day but it seems like 90% of the time I can't make heads or tails of what's being said or how/where to implement a piece of code someone has offered as a solution to a problem I'm having.

you can go to jcink.com and ask a lot of questions.  There's several really helpful people there.  Also, there are a lot of JCink discords that are super helpful too when starting off.  There's a learning curve, but having worked with both jcink and proboard's admin panel, I'll never go back to proboards.  You should look into transferring your content from proboards to jcink as well.  I'm pretty sure John has a path set up for that if there is information you'd like to keep.  

[Menalippe 3]

20 hours ago, Everglow said:

you can go to jcink.com and ask a lot of questions.  There's several really helpful people there.  Also, there are a lot of JCink discords that are super helpful too when starting off.  There's a learning curve, but having worked with both jcink and proboard's admin panel, I'll never go back to proboards.  You should look into transferring your content from proboards to jcink as well.  I'm pretty sure John has a path set up for that if there is information you'd like to keep.  

 

Transferring like, other than copying and pasting ad nauseum? (Also, who's John? A user on here?)

[Morrigan 1,819]

4 hours ago, Menalippe said:

 

Transferring like, other than copying and pasting ad nauseum? (Also, who's John? A user on here?)

John is the owner/operator on Jcink. You can commune with him best on his support forums at jcink.com

 

As for transferring I think there is a way to pull the data but it requires a spider bot. I've seen it before but I think copying and pasting is more reliable.