Staffing ProBoard vs Jcink vs Other?

[anthrxmilkshake 86]

Yeah, so we ran into this issue when my friend added me to her premium. Turns out you HAVE to have the root admin account in order to make a forum premium. They do it from the admincp from the root admin account. What I ended up doing was making myself a second admin account, changing the root admin name to her username, and allowing her control of it. Now, I would be careful doing this because it gives full control of the forum over. However, I trust my friend with absolutely everything.

 

@Uaithne

[VirusZero 176]

See, that's the thing. People really aren't supposed to share. It's meant for you to add multiple forums that you own together. People are just giving out account details and trusting that whomever they're sharing them with won't screw them over.

And like mentioned before, it's 6 right now... but if it becomes a problem that people are abusing the system then don't be surprised if that number drops to like 4 or 3 again in an effort to curb people from doing this. 

 

For a non-roleplay example, Sony originally allowed content to be used on 4 different PS3s. But people started sharing/letting their friends log in to access stuff so it got dropped to 2 PS3s. And for PS4 you get your one primary, which you can be offline/disconnected and don't have to worry about content locking on you. But if you have a second PS4... in order to use any content you have to be logged in. This means if your internet connection dies or Sony's servers go down for maintenance or something... you can't play games you bought.

[anthrxmilkshake 86]

Actually @VirusZero This was the suggestion of the jcink team, to hand over root admin account to my friend so that she is the official owner of the forum. It makes no difference to me if she owns it in name or not. The forum is newer, and was created specifically for the group that is on it now, though we've opened it publicly as well. 

 

Here is the reason Jcink staff says it is frowned on, in their words, per their post:

 

This is a gray area. I will point out that it's not explicitly forbidden in the terms of service. But we also do not endorse doing it. The agreement checkbox is there with the intention to discourage this practice, and as a somewhat legally binding statement that you weren't trying to jack someone's board that you didn't own.This is because:1. You are having them give you the password to their board, even if temporarily to change it back when you're done. This is a big "no" - we would never ever ask a user to give away their root password to anyone for any purpose. It is a security risk, even though you are not going to delete their forum.2. You, as the primary subscription holder, can render their board useless at any time by removing their subscription without warning, then we have to deal with that. You decide to stop paying, remove people, etc. We don't want to deal with it, and if that becomes and issue it won't be good.Your subscription is intended for your use only. A way around this, as owl mentioned, is to create boards yourself and then let others run them. This is fine because you "own" the board.

 

That being said, in the same thread, it was also stated that you could "Request a transfer of ownership" fromt he original board so that you OWN the board, which is what I've done. It also states there that if you CREATE the boards, and allow others to run them with no input from you, this is also fine because you own the board, and therefore they belong to your subscription. Hence my suggestion that you could find several others with whom to share the cost. Get with them, have one person create the board, and that person would also be 'technically' responsible for paying the subscription. This is ALSO why I insisted you were very careful by doing this. You will be, in essence, giving one specific person ALL power to the existing boards on the premium subscription. However, if you're a group of friends who know eachother very well, and all of you want to open boards, it IS a viable option and IS allowed by jcink if done properly.

[Sage 289]

Yeah I would never suggest sharing the premium subscription unless you know the other person/people very well. I own a premium subscription for a few boards, and I am technically the owner of all of them (the root account for all the boards is my login). The other boards under my account are run by very good friends of mine, but they know that should they ever leave those boards, I'll take them off my account. And they all trust that I won't go into their admin cp without permission to mess everything up. You should never give someone you're not familiar with that kind of access, and even if you are familiar you should still be wary. The act of adding a forum to another's premium subscription is actually very easy, it just requires the root login. 

 

@anthrxmilkshake I would love to see the source for that quote you provided! Do you have the link to that thread handy?

[grimfox 1]

Proboards doesn't seem to go down as frequently as JCINK does (it seems like it's at least once a week >.>) but I'm a lover of jcink. I started my forum rp career on PB, and only moved over to JCINK at the beginning of this year. It takes a second to get a handle on the changes, but there seem to be a lot more detailed admin controls that let you do nifty things. 

 

I'm now interested in trying some of the others listed here, though!

[Huskerdust 625]

I guess I'm in the minority here but I actually find the current trends on PB skins much more aesthetically pleasing than what's going on in Jcink skins. That's just the skinners though. As somebody else mentioned, any skinner with skill can make any software look amazing. 

 

I'm the odd one out here as well in that I prefer SMF to everything else. I have attempted to use other softwares but after using SMF, I feel rather spoiled. I think if Jcink didn't constantly have those errors (502? I can't remember) and had a bookmark system more like Proboards and SMF, I might like it a lot more. As it stands, it's just super inconvenient to track threads on it. 

 

I'm lucky in that I'm friends with a skilled SMF skinner and I'm married to a programmer though, so the two of them together can smack together some awesome stuff on SMF. <3 If it were just me, they'd be some basic skins but at least I'd have all the amenities I love, like the sub-accounts and bookmarks. 

[NFT47 40]

I started off on Proboards. That is the coding that I understand the most and where I have done mod and admin positions on. I generally enjoy it because it is easy to use and I got a good coder to skin both my sites. That being said, I am on several Jcink sites and I tend to notice a more mature caliber of members on Jcink. I tend to get the most compelling stories and dedicated players there. I also am enjoying these sites as a member (well a mod on one) but I think that impacts my experience as well. Not saying that proboards can't attract older members, but I tend to notice more mature writers on Jcink. Honestly, I like both and they have their ups and downs for me. It's a bit hard to choose between the two, but I agree Proboards doesn't go down as much as Jcink tends to.

[KAIJU 0]

Everyone touched on pretty much everything but I'm adding my two cents as a coder.

Jcink is just...I don't know easier to code for? It allows personal BBcodes and the like that intergrate into your site. I haven't used Proboards or any of the others for a LONG time, but back in the day proboards was simplistic and didn't have very much to offer coding wise.

 

I feel like Jcink seperates everything just right for coding. If that's an issue for you. Not a lot of people code so much anymore. But it seems very "user friendly" to me and I haven't gone back from it.

[Cypher 4]

I've long since moved from proboards to Jcink. I don't hate Proboards, but there's tons of little things that make being on Jcink easier, such as the account switcher to the custom bbcodes, to offloading code into webpages and then recalling those pages in the wrapper.

 

The one thing I do miss from Proboards is the plugin for the color wheel/selector. I loved that thing and the ability to create color favorites per account. I wish there were something similar for Jcink.

[ScoobyDoobyDoo 2]

I used to love Proboards before they updated their entire system and soon went to InvisionFree for awhile before discovering JCINK. I am loving JCINK and will not leave it ever. I guess it depends on what people are used to. 

[Robmin 10]

Thanks for the tag Morrigan!

 

I'm a long term Proboards user, but I'm that used to fighting against the hate I do my best to buck the proboards clunky trend.

 

I've tried jcink and conversely find the back end clunky, confusing and too gosh darn hard for me to want to get my brain around it, so I've settled onto proboards for that reason. Equally I've had no issues with customer service (if anything I've had excellent customer service) but its very much different strokes different folks

[featherstone 69]

My directs experiences are:

 

- zetaboards. I started there because I had little experience and it was the first option I stumbled upon. It's very basic. Not bad for beginners, but you can't customize it very much, and I can see why it's not popular. 

 

- icyboards. I like it! It's where I learnt to actually code, and the support is good, too. By the way, I asked personally and they are NOT using AdSense, so that issue with ToS is not a thing.

 

- MyBB - after learning how to use it on IB, I'm trying my hands at self-hosted MyBB (hosted here on RPG-initiative - THANKS!). As far as I can see it's not much different than using Icyboards, although I didn't need to run any update by now. Anyway I love MyBB, it has a lot of plug-ins (including the account switcher everyone wants for RP) and is very customizable. The main downside is that there aren't so many pre-made skins, so you must learn some coding to get what you want.

 

As for other boards, I believe jcink must be good just because of how popular it is. Personally I can't afford premium, and worrying about being family-friendly on a horror board is a tad uncomfortable. I think its main advantage is that not only you have a lot of resources, but you attract more people as it has a very loyal fan base and even directories that won't advertise anything else.

 

As for PB, I get why it has issues - restrictive ToS no matter what, mainly associated with specific fandoms that may not be your style, etc - but I don't find it inherently clunky as most complain. Nothing is clunky if it's customizable and you're good at coding - and, indeed, I've seen some very nice skin for Proboards, possibly better than the epidemic of jcink themes you can't really tell one from another. It is probably a good option for, say, animanga boards, but will make you lose members if you play other genres.

[Narrator 7]

On 6/15/2017 at 11:10 AM, Midian said:

I have been using proboards since I started RPing and have always loved working and playing on them.  I have tried to use jcink but the layout confuses me (this is possibly because I am so accustomed to proboards).

 

I will say that jcink sites look rather amazing.  My site's graphic artist looks at alot and uses them for ideas on layout and color.

 

I'm a Proboards user too. I have very basic HTML and CSS skills so for me, it's easy to navigate and I actually utilize their Proboards Support directory A LOT and they have always been helpful to me. I've never tried jcink though.

I'm just the same in that I'm familiar with Proboards now so it's what I use. I make a lot of changes though because I don't necessarily love leaving anything with its original, default appearance.

I actually find some RPGs that are overdone a put off as a veteran play by post player, because oftentimes the admin disappears and you're left with broken links and broken images, etc. etc. You find that on any host though. It just makes me sad for some games that looked like they had such great potential. I find one somewhere and be really into what I'm seeing and then realize the last post was in 2015 😅 so much effort to make it pretty just to abandon it. That's poor forum (terrible pun shamelessly intended).

Edited September 11, 2017 by Evereras

[Krobon 1]

As an admin I much prefer Jcink nowaday, they have great support for one and have always been pretty easy to work with. As a user I really have no preference.

[Faie 5]

I only use jcink for the simple fact that it allows me to link my OOC account with my Character Accounts. I love the features they have added for RPers.