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ProBoard vs Jcink vs Other?


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So I have seen tons of different platforms for forums. Personally I've come to love the way jcink works. It's a little more complicated than some, but in my opinion the end result is a smoother, more visually defined forum. On top of this the admin section, and additions, are incredible and easy to understand. 

 

However, the truth is I've only used proboards and jcink, so I have absolutely no experience with any other platforms...in fact I don't even know what other platforms are out there, or how hard or easy they might be to use. What do you use? What do you suggest people try?

 

Am I the only one severely prejudiced against proboards forums just because they're proboards and to me they look a little chunky? XD Does that make me a bad peoples? Lol

 

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I largely use Jcink, but it's more about the customer service aspect and my familiarity with the layout of it that keeps me from using other software. I feel like it's very intuitive, and any problems I encounter John is usually very quick to respond. It's also very easy to customize anymore! Plus, the prices for premium are fair and I've never had any complaints, so I haven't sought elsewhere to host my games. Because I've had such a positive experience there, I would never create a game on any other host. Jcink just uses IPB software for their forums, but as a host I think Jcink is phenomenal. Non-Jcink IPB boards are also good, but from a customer service standpoint, I've found a lot of them inferior or obsolete anymore. 

 

In regards to proboards, I have found some very good games out there that use it that don't make it seem clunky or non-user-friendly. Some sites with really bad coding are a nightmare to work through on proboards, but very nice ones do exist. And I've joined quite a few in my time. It really just depends on how the owners have laid it out. In my experience, strong proboard coders/designers are few and far between. So that's part of the problem. Jcink for some reason has a stronger community of designers, making those sites seem more user friendly. It's less about the software and more about web design! It is also my experience that proboards tends to attract more animanga and animal games, which are both genres I'm not particularly interested in, so I don't actively go seeking that software out for a game. But if I come across one that I like that uses proboards? I'll join it!

 

I've never really been involved in a community that used Xenforo, phpBB, myBB, Phorum, etc. But the host or the software doesn't usually dissuade me from joining a site I'm interested in!

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I switched over to Jcink many years back and I have no desire to change.  Not only does it make sense to me, but the support is awesome.

 

Previously I used Invisionfree, which used the same software.  Unfortunately it's pretty basic and I don't believe it gets updates ever since it was abandoned for Zetaboards.  Jcink, since it uses the same software, is a step up from IF.  I almost never see anyone on this part of the internet using Zetaboards.

 

One host that caught my attention is Icyboard.  I know that the admin of that is fairly active around this side of the internet, and they allow adult content on their free boards (don't quote me on that).  I'm not sure I'd rush out to leave Jcink for Icyboard, but I'd explore it before I'd explore Proboards or Zetaboards.  PB never interested me since they became stricter about adult content and started shutting down sites without warning.

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I adore icyboards, it's basically a free myBB forum where the only restriction is you can't install your own plugins. I find MYBB easy to code for, with the only restriction being my ability.

 

Like @Uaithne said, icyboards allows adult content on free boards....so long as that content is hidden from guests. You can do that with a plugin that allows you to hide threads with a certain thread prefix. (Of course, you can have an adult forum that guests can't view, but I think it's nice to know that your smut can sit alongside your G rated stuff.)

 

 

(Sidebar: Is it just me or have proboards themes grown more attractive lately?)

 

 

 

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I don't think you've seen a good Proboards site to be honest. You should see some of @Robmin's sites. You'd never believe they were proboards.

 

I say go with what makes you comfortable. I never recommend going off the front end but always the administrative panel as that's what you have to personally work with. The front end can ALWAYS be re-designed.

 

For myself I use IPS 4+ pretty exclusively. (IPS is the future version of what Jcink and IF uses).

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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.

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I don't know. I think my issue with proboards is a many factor problem. For one, I'm not interested in most of the kind of RPs that proboards attracts. Mainly the animal and schoolaged ones I see a lot of. Secondly I do notice that the skins are a bit more rudimentary, and I guess I've just come to associate that with a proboards site. I give meaning to the "eat with your eyes" tale, and if the site isn't visually interesting I generally run for the hills...sounds shallow as hell when I put it out like that. Woopsy.

 

 

@Kit the Human I haven't really noticed any sleeker or nicer proboards layouts or skins, to be honest. I am, however, staring at that advert in your siggy like 'yes please' XD

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I've experimented with a few different forum hosts over the years.

- InvisionFree,

- Zetaboards,

- Jcink,

- Rapidboards,

- proboards (this was the first host that I created a forum on), 

- Conforums (the first forum I was ever on was on conforums)

- Forumotion,

- IcyBoards

 

For software itself, I've tested out:

- IPB1.3 (yeah, I have installed IPB1.3 and it's not overly fun)

- phpBB 2

- phpBB 3

- SMF 2

- MyBB 1.6 

- MyBB 1.8

- PunBB 1.4

- Elkarte

- Vanilla

 

I may have used FluxBB as a member but not admin. Same for Xenforo, IPB 3, IPB 4 and vBulletin.

 

So with that out of the way, I liked Jcink most of all the various forum hosts for a few reasons.

1- Free SQL backups.

This was a major selling point for me. The ability to take a backup of my forum at any time and save it to an external location. So if anything ever happened (like with IBFree) I could go elsewhere. InvisionFree and IcyBoards charge a fee per backup while others simply don't allow backups to be taken. (For years proboards didn't allow backups, now you can get one... but you have to upgrade to their white label version at like $50 a month for it.)

 

2- The permissions system is set up so it's pretty easy to mass change settings. This is more a gripe from IcyBoards/MyBB but in other software it can be a pain to set up group permissions. MyBB is annoying because there's no master list of everything, you have to build your permissions based on inheritance from forums. (EX- if Category A allows viewing then Forum A inside it will by default allow viewing too.)

 

3- Jcink himself was a lot more approachable and easy to get along with. (I haven't talked to him in a while now, but I doubt he's changed from that.) Plus he was always receptive of ways to improve the service. It wasn't like with Zetaboards where they'd shoot down a suggestion just because it was a tuesday or something.

 

I don't overly care about the themes because, truth is, any skilled designer can make any forum look good. It's just knowing (or being able to figure out) which classes and ids to edit to make what changes. 

 

Now I'll also admit that I'm not overly fond of proboards for other reasons...

Spoiler

For example their greed is one major thing I dislike... How they charge $14 a year to let you use a domain name (on top of paying the registrar). Their "premium" service is basically $50 a month. Ad-free was like $5 for 10,000 views with no ads and they expired after a month. (So if you had 3,000 remaining after a month... you lost them.)

For a while they were also experimenting with paid affiliate buttons during account creation. (So you go to register and you enter a few details like username, email, etc... then it'd give you the sponsored affiliates page and then you'd enter more details and be registered.) Though this was fairly short lived.

 

They also had a habit of being very deletion happy. Delete first and question later. Which sucked because they'd erase forums full of stuff but then later, when asked, either couldn't or wouldn't answer. But to further add insult they also couldn't restore the lost data, only the categories.

 

They also had a tendancy for some of the worst ads on a platform. Numerous times people got virus alerts popping up on their PC because they visited a proboards site that had these bad ads. It happened repeatedly back in 2007-9. Which, sure, is a while ago now, but I still don't overly trust them.

 

 

For self-hosted software, my preference is MyBB because it's fairly easy to use. I haven't had much opportunity to play around in the paid software's ACPs (only a brief time in Xenforo) so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.

The ACP is fairly similar to Jcink's. (The Mod CP of Jcink is in fact based off the ModCP from MyBB...) Installing mods is pretty quick and painless. Creating custom mods, if you know what you're doing, is also not terribly hard since they have a pretty good hook system.

They also have a pretty good selection of mods to make things simple... Spamalyzer, IP2Location, Account Switcher, Alerts, Tags, Pages, Likes, etc...

 

The only thing I'm not super fond of in MyBB is the permission system. But it's one small gripe in an otherwise great software. (And it's an issue that MyBB themselves have kind of admitted going forward into MyBB 2.0)

Edited by VirusZero
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Thanks for the clarification @SithLordOfSnark !

 

You can still have adult content on Icyboards forums without paying to remove the ads - because Spork doesn't care. Just hide it from guests. (The spirit of the law is that advertisers don't want their ads turning up next to porn because it implies endorsement of the content. Personally, I don't think that the odd smut thread on a forum justifies having to fork out cash to get around a term of use that wasn't made in response to RPers activities. Your mileage may vary. Clearly, I firmly fall into the camp of: it's ridiculous to pay money to be allowed the odd smut.)

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Roleplay Architects: Grab a friend (or many friends!) and just write.

You can also find me at:

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@VirusZero - I knew someone would have some extensive advice to throw in here about numerous sources. I'm inclined to agree with you on both the jcink and the proboards front. This is because proboards her proven themselves time and again incapable of handling issues from a customer service stand point, this is a personal qualm of mine, and not just taken from my personal experience, but from observing others attempt to deal with them, as well. There is also the payment portion of it as you've pointed out that I definitely flinched hardcore over when I glanced through it. 

 

That being said you did give me a couple ideas should I ever decide to self host, so I'll keep these in mind.

 

@Kit the Human - While I absolutely agree with your assessment of the idea of paying for a few smut threads, and have particular qualms with being told 'even if it's hidden from guests' that it's still not acceptable, I don't feel the same on the 'breaking the rules' thing. While icyboards MAY look the other way now, that won't be the case when their advertisers begin cracking down and removing their adverts, and those who will suffer for it are the people currently going along with their own rule breaking. It's happening on youtube, and will begin happening elsewhere quickly enough. It's always just best to suck it up and go with the flow. Paid service means no adverts, which means no advertisers rules.

Edited by anthrxmilkshake
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I agree with Anthrxmilshake in regards to mature content and IcyBoards. 

While it is true he looks away and states he doesn't care. If the advertisers threaten to pull the money supply then that is unlikely to remain the case. Adsense especially is notorious for cutting off funding if they even suspect something is amiss. (And if there are too many issues they will blacklist you permanently so it's not even worth taking the risk.) I mean let's be realistic here, running a service like IcyBoards is not cheap. (I know that the DDoS protection alone costs upwards of $200 per month. Plus the server costs themselves.) So if they ever came to Spork and said he needed to get in line... he'd do it to preserve his service. (And that would likely mean anyone who had mature content on the free version would probably be tossed under the bus as well.)

It wouldn't be anything personal, it'd simply be that keeping the service going is more important than those few forums who are breaking the rules and threatening everything. (From a cost-benefit standpoint it's an easy decision... close a few forums that break rules or have the entire service go under because the costs are too high. Not that those affected would really see it that way though.)

 

Spoiler


My experience with the roleplay community in general (not specific people here mind you) has been that roleplayers are incredibly entitled. They don't care about the rules or anything so long as they get what they want. But when things go sideways (and they inevitably do) they're often the cause of it and really don't understand why things have to change. We saw this with Imgur when they blocked Jcink. Who complained? Roleplayers only pretty much. Why? Because they went against Imgur's ToS to use it as a content delivery network for their stuff. (And they had the gall to complain about how bad Imgur was for customer service and whatnot when it was their own improper usage of it in the first place that ended up with that happening.)

And the same thing will happen again because they didn't learn their lesson the first time.

 

(Not to mention I find it more than a touch hypocritical if they have rules at all when they flagrantly violate the ToS of their host. Like seriously you can't be arsed to follow your host's rules so why should anyone give a flying toss about yours? Same mentality at work.)

 

 

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That's a good point, @VirusZero. My site is for adults, but because I can't afford premium, I choose to obey the standard TOS. Unfortunately, I believe I'm likely losing potential members from this, but what other choice is there? I'm not going to violate TOS for a free service run by an awesome person who bends over backwards for his customers.

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I think one of the best ways to get a premium account for, probably, any of the locations where you need premium for adult content is this::

 

Find a few friends who also own forums and want premium. You can have five forums on one account with jcink alone, and it is only $80 a year for the premium. If you find four friends to help you pay that and each of you have one forum on the plan, that's only $16 a piece. You can add donation buttons to each site that empties into one account through which it's all paid and easily pay that price once a year. 

 

Me, I only got premium for my forum because a friend took pity on my financial situation and donated a spot on their premium account to my forum. Lol. 

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No, I think you're right. I just looked into it myself because we only recently decided to actually open forums. So my numbers are a bit off. Thanks for correcting me @SithLordOfSnark ! Always good to have the right information. 

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Okay, quick question here.  How does one add somebody else's forum to the premium?  I had a member offer to make Blue Windows premium because she had a friend who had an available slot on her premium account, but she required my username and password to the admin CP in order to do so.  It sounded a little odd that Jcink, who is normally really tight with security, would use that route for people to share.

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