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 7]

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 73]

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 1,826]

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 1,826]

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.

[Kieran 15]

You'd flown under the radar, absolutely. Already back in 2010, I had a Lion King rpg on Proboards rated R as in the USA movie rating system terms. I think that's 2-2-2 in the RPG Rating System. Even though it was just lions and based on a freakin' Disney movie, I still got a DM from Proboards staff telling me to comply with the PG-13 rule. So, yeah, Proboards is the worst place to be if you want anything above PG-13 content.

Some years ago I decided to go with mybb which is basically the same as Jcink, only difference being that some features/tools need to be added as plug-ins if wanted. And mybb is an open source software which is a major plus. Anyway, most importantly I went with self-hosting. It's by far the cheapest option whilst offering the most freedom. There is no forum host that could ever offer as low a price and as fantastic value for money.

My web hotel and domain combo costs me some 60 bucks annually which is about 5 bucks per month, for 10 Gigas of space and very fast and reliable server and much more. Thus I have plenty of space and resources to use it for all of my several RPGs and other web projects. So technically the cost is more like a few tens of pennies per site. Even if I counted only my RP sites it would be 1 buck per site a month. Forever.

And because I am literally the site's owner I have utter complete control of everything; I can take full back-ups of any and all sites whenever and however often I want, there's no restrictions on mature content and there are no ads whatsoever, I have absolute full control of every little bit of the site's functions, and no need to depend on and wait for a forum host staff to reply/help when there's a problem because I am the forum host staff and thus I have control of all the tools whilst mybb Support community is very helpful. I've often managed to solve problems quite quickly with and without the community's help, and there really isn't technical problems very often on mybb anyway--it's a very stable and simple software.

Sure, customizing a forum's skin and layout is a bit of a chore on mybb/Jcink but once you've done it a couple of times it's easy to remember what and where so soon it's not too much at all whilst you indeed have complete freedom to do whatever with it. Personally I don't go all out with the appearance because I prefer simple, clean skins and layouts but the point is one could do anything with it and therefor it's worth the effort it takes. And there's a large library of ready-made skins and a place on the Support forums to ask someone else to make a skin for you in case you don't want to or don't have time to customize your site's looks yourself.

I would never ever go back to free forum hosts or their premium plans for RPGs.

Edited February 2, 2023 by Kieran

[c.widow 123]

1 hour ago, Kieran said:

I would never ever go back to free forum hosts or their premium plans for RPGs.

 

Yeah, Jcink's paid premium plan if it expires/lapses payment the board goes offline completely and no one can access any of their content unless it is renewed OR downgraded (which requires the actual REMOVAL of all mature content). So folks lose their stuff if a) never renewed or b) downgraded and its kinda sad. But even with self hosting you run the risk of losing data should the owner not keep up with payments but you generally can tell when somethings about to die off and can grab your stuff before it goes caput.

 

I will second that self hosting is 100% worth the hype but can be a daunting to folks that are new to it. There are hosts out there that have simplistic admin panels and ease of navigation though. Plus all the wonderful free software options like MyBB, phpBB, SMF, even Wordpress (I've seen a few rp's using that).

 

On 1/30/2023 at 3:41 PM, Morrigan said:

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.

 

Super sad Proboards doesn't offer a way to export a forums database. Another reason to dislike them now added to my list.

Edited February 2, 2023 by c.widow

[Kieran 15]

I want to clarify that as a player I might join a site that isn't self-hosted, except maybe Jcink based I won't join now that I know what happens if the admin for some reason doesn't keep up with the payments for premium service. But as a founder/admin I will never return to those but will stick with self-hosting for all the reasons covered in my previous post.

I acknowledge self-hosting can be daunting to newbies, after all I was one years ago. Just saying it's absolutely worth the effort and time, at least if you have long-term plans for a site and willingness to stick with it.

[remidarjeet232 0]

It's possible that Proboards has updated their policies and guidelines regarding mature content during the time of your hiatus. Companies and platforms sometimes make changes to their terms and conditions, especially with regard to mature or adult content, in response to evolving legal requirements, user concerns, or other factors. These changes can sometimes catch long-standing users off guard, especially if they have not been actively engaged with the platform during the transition period.

bespoke erp

Edited June 12, 2023 by remidarjeet232
Something wrong

[Finn 3]

Proboards are very, very strict. I've run several non-english sites for a good long while on proboards and it was always understood by all of us that you couldn't write the word s*x or their bots would find us and either close us down or warn us. As long as we just kept well away from any english expletives, we went totally under the radar. 

Now I've gone to the other side (i.e English) and it took us less than ten seconds to decide on Jcink premium for these very reasons.