Staffing Is self-hosting becoming more "acceptable"?

[Sadrienne 242]

I'm starting to notice a trend that I really like. 

Back when I first got going as an admin, the forum software you chose was... very important. Members who liked Proboards would not join an Invisionfree board, and vice versa. There was (and can still be found) a strong reluctance to "learn" new software. 

Even though, as a member, basic forum functions are essentially the same---no matter what software you use. Register an account, create new topics, create replies... all that really changes is where a few things are placed, I never really understood the aversion people had to new/less common software types.

Boards that were on phpBB or SMF were a hard sell, and the same with my beloved IPS. 

Now as I'm doing ad rounds, I'm finding a lot more self-hosted sites, and those on softwares other than Jcink and PB. I'm finding SMF sites that are incredibly successful, myBB is taking off, and even admins migrating over to IPS for the epic features (I have a whole guide dedicated to that alone). 

Do you guys find that self-hosting is becoming less feared, and more welcomed? Those of you who do self host, what steps have you had to take to ensure members feel comfortable coming onto your "foreign" software?

[Gothic 307]

Oh absolutely. 

 

When I first transferred AeRo over to myBB in 2009, it was like I was torturing my members, lol. Eventually, they did come around and enjoyed a lot of  the features that proboards didn't have. I think there is less judgement about it now. Members now seem to be happier to try something new. I remember that there was a bit of a rivalry between IF and proboards. I see a lot of jcink only these days. 

[Arceus 1,082]

I'm not gonna lie, there was a period of my life where I basically had to make SMF look as close to a Jcink/IF board as I possibly could manage to, at the time, or people wouldn't even look at it. Some genres are also a lot easier to sell on self-hosted softwares, like really popular ones, or really niche ones, because if someone likes the thing enough, they'll try it anyway. Animanga anything skates by on being animanga, back in the day we all RPed on Forumotion and MySpace, so we're not as ruffled.

 

Nowadays, I think it's just there's more out there about these things. They're seeing it more frequently, and it's become less WHAT IN THE FRIGG EVEN IS THIS?! and more Oh this I keep seeing it... is it really that cool...? Yanno? And so, I think the aversion to self-hosting back then was really kind of a side-effect of not seeing it that much. Maybe a handful of sites were not IF. Zetaboards had the same issue after it was introduced, even though it was literally a fork of IF's hosting company. When SMF boards started popping up, nobody knew what that even was (doesn't help they tended to look Terrible), same with IPS and MyBB, but those get stat bonuses for being what a couple super popular RP directories are on.

 

So. Yeah. I think we're finally coming out of the forum software dark ages, where people only knew maybe one or two of them, and wigged out at one they hadn't seen before, because they're seeing them way, way more often.

[Deep Sea 326]

4 hours ago, Mousie said:

Do you guys find that self-hosting is becoming less feared, and more welcomed?

I think so, yeah. The internet has matured a lot, and it's easier to find hosting solutions that aren't too expensive and fairly user-friendly/easy to follow instructions. At minimum, it looks like people have figured out that boards look a little bit nicer with a custom domain name.

[Uaithne 543]

I think about what @Morrigan said in my Are there fewer RP sites these days? thread and I wonder if it's possible that we're maturing and such shallow things don't matter as much anymore.

 

Another thing to consider is that many of us play primarily on Jcink, but now there is no actual "standard" way for Jcink to look these days with all of the CFS/HTML modifications one can make to the skin.  Similarly, many of the self-hosted sites I've seen have smoother skins that "blend in" a little more with the crowd.  They don't stand out as much with large, blocky fonts and chunky forum structure.

[Morrigan 1,826]

From a member perspective people have fewer qualms save for "content" issues. That is because things are all the same "Add Topic" or "Start Topic" still exists across all types of sites and it's become a pretty solid standard that if you can do the thing the software doesn't matter.

 

I'll be honest, I've always preferred self hosted primarily because of the extreme flexibility. It's a pain in the ass to work on Jcink because the templates are so inflexible (and yes I mean it and no I'm not asking it to change just stating the obvious).

 

That, plus the age of most of our part of the niche, not talking about the generation, have started into the "I can't be assed/arsed/fucked/whatevered to do that" have started actually making things easier on members. The easier something is, the easier it is to convince someone to do it.

 

Currently the only issue with self hosting is convincing the admins that can't be assed to learn something "new" or to step out of their comfort zone/box thinger that it's actually worth their time and effort. Jcink and Icyboards offer a lot (and when you have no or limited cashflow are the best option) however sometimes pushing beyond your limits helps you figure out things you never thought you would do. Take me for an example, never thought I'd actually start learning javascript save for editing it and I'm starting to work on actually writing my own custom scripts.

 

So all in all, to answer your question, there was never a problem with it @Mousie it was always user perception of superiority without any actual facts. Now that some people branched out and figured out well "MyBB isn't so bad" and people actually realized well "maybe my box isn't worth staying in" people are just not assed to care as long as it's what they want.

 

This was more a blubbering statement of blah. It's always been acceptable. People are just coming to realize it's more prevalent now than it was before because people are realizing how much MORE they can do with self hosting over a free host.

[Kit the Human 759]

17 hours ago, Mousie said:

Those of you who do self host, what steps have you had to take to ensure members feel comfortable coming onto your "foreign" software?

 

I've put in forum redirects to character apps & wanted ads because they both are done on IPS pages and almost universally, these things are done on forums. So I think redirects catch users before they get too confused.

 

When I finally get my new theme and member page up (bit of a who's who) I'll add another forum redirect for folks.

 

I also have a step by step guide on how to write your application. I think that's the extent of it? I do take note of what people mention they're struggling with in passing and make adjustments to make it clearer.

[Sage 289]

In my experience, people have recently started getting really excited over finding self-hosted boards. Some of the crowd I run with will gush over how professional these forums are and how they're not just gonna disappear or die off overnight like a lot of non self hosted sites tend to do. They like the idea of permanency that a self-hosted board creates, and something about that url not having jcink or proboards in it makes it feel extra homey. That's a sentiment that's come up often when we talk about this kind of thing. Which I find fascinating.

 

I've actually looked into self-hosting our game, but cost is a big issue. I pay for Jcink premium currently and couldn't afford the $30/mo plan for IPS right now, plus any other additional costs, and don't feel comfortable asking the rest of the staff or members for help. Maybe one day when I get a real job.

[StormWolfe 557]

6 hours ago, Sage said:

I've actually looked into self-hosting our game, but cost is a big issue. I pay for Jcink premium currently and couldn't afford the $30/mo plan for IPS right now, plus any other additional costs, and don't feel comfortable asking the rest of the staff or members for help. Maybe one day when I get a real job.

 

@Sage  I believe the cost for hosting here at the Initiative is very low and you know the support would be excellent. I can also recommend Utopia Host.  Their support is pretty good and their prices are amazing. So, you would simply need to pick your forum software. There are free options (SMF, myBB, etc.) and there are some you need to purchase the license for. And, there's Nova (free).

 

Honestly, I prefer self-hosting over the usual site hosts such as jcink because I like having more access and control. The downside is having to manage the server side of things.

 

I chose IPS's cloud option while I learn the application and it works for me. Eventually, I will buy a license and move my site to the Initiative or Utopia.

 

There are pros and cons to both options. 

[Val 28]

I honestly hope that this becomes more of a thing. I was lucky enough to co-admin a site years ago with a lovely lady who was a professional web designer, and she wrote the entire board software almost from scratch. We had a lot of neat features (such as apps-in-profile) that were ahead of its time back in the day. I have to wonder how great it'd be to actually have a forum software designed specifically with the needs of RP in mind.

[Kit the Human 759]

21 hours ago, Sage said:

In my experience, people have recently started getting really excited over finding self-hosted boards. Some of the crowd I run with will gush over how professional these forums are and how they're not just gonna disappear or die off overnight like a lot of non self hosted sites tend to do. They like the idea of permanency that a self-hosted board creates, and something about that url not having jcink or proboards in it makes it feel extra homey. That's a sentiment that's come up often when we talk about this kind of thing. Which I find fascinating.

 

I've actually looked into self-hosting our game, but cost is a big issue. I pay for Jcink premium currently and couldn't afford the $30/mo plan for IPS right now, plus any other additional costs, and don't feel comfortable asking the rest of the staff or members for help. Maybe one day when I get a real job.

 

Just in the interests of getting the information out there, you can do IPS for 20 a month. It's easy to miss!

 

But I do appreciate that knocking off 10 bucks in the face of plugins to buy might not make it anymore feasible for you personally.

 

Like @Stormwolfe said, the Initiative hosting is very affordable as it is donationware. 

[Terion 10]

When I started out with my first forums, I never self-hosted. I think because, at the time, none of the software to do so was free? That's my recollection at least.  I don't necessarily recall it being important which software you used but most of my RP in my early years was done via one board that was largely unrelated to RP (it was attached to an adoptable creatures site) and we just had a mini RP section and no one was really big on which software you used.

 

Ha, I'm pretty sure my vampire board back in the day violated the rules of ezboard and Invisionfree more than once with violence and sex.

 

I actually looked back into self-hosting again not that long ago (maybe, eh, six or seven years?) since I started paying for my own hosting for my personal website and discovered that I could have mySQL databases. First I started off with SMF because I liked the system and that's how I rebuilt my vampire RP by learning that one. Then when I came back to build my Animorphs RP, I started with SMF but half of the coding I'd used to build my vamp had vanished and I couldn't find the instructions for some of my really cool stuff. One of my players convinced my to try out myBB instead and while I'm still getting the hang of some parts of it (I was terrified of crashing my whole site when I updated the software recently), I did dig deep into my own web design skills and learned how to read a touch more php in order to design a theme for my site that was original.

 

All told I've used ezboard (which is now Yuku), Invisionfree, Zetaboards (though that site was never live, I played with it), Proboards, SMF, myBB, and a few that were another system that I don't recall now and can't look up because the sites are dead. Including one that was a forum system on an ancient Geocities site of an old online friend for an X-Men RP (even the Wayback Machine doesn't have a record of that one anymore).

 

There is one board system I've found I have an issue with across the many that I've looked at over the years and that is jcink. Mostly because all of the boards I come across that use it seem to have horrendously small text and I'm just like, "I already have really shitty vision, I do not need to make my eyes worse by straining at this website." Board design like that has made me leave sites that sounded really interesting simply because I could not comfortably read them.

[Icewolf 258]

I think what you have to consider is not whether it's more acceptable to self-host, but why people don't choose to do it. I would expect that most people, if given the choice, would prefer to have their forum self-hosted because you don't get the annoying adverts and you have more freedom over the kind of content you can have on the site, plus, you also have a nifty, unique domain name which doesn't have .proboards, .jcink, etc, on the end.

 

Why don't people choose it?

 

- The cost, for a start. Not everyone can afford their own hosting. You have to look around various companies to get a good deal on it. I'm lucky, because I found a host that's reasonable with the cost. (£30 a year for hosting, £6 a year domain name. Some domain registrars are cheaper than that, if they are putting on an offer but I prefer to have the domain name and the host under one account. It's easier to keep track of it that way.) If the forum is run by a teenager, they might not be able to pay for it themselves. (Heck, there was a time when the bank wouldn't let me have a debit/chip and pin card, so I couldn't buy stuff on the internet. That only changed I think because the standards changed, and now I have one.) So the cost of purchasing it/or not being able to purchase it might be one reason why people don't/can't opt for self-hosting. (This is just the cost for hosting and domain name, which is the bear minimum you need to consider. People are luckier now because there are more options - when I first started running my Star Wars fan fic site years ago, the only options for a forum were ezboard, or paying for the software/subscribing to use it.)

 

- The skills set/time people have to devote to it. It does take a while to install things and get things running properly on a server where you've chosen the software. Not everyone has the skills and time for this, and if you don't have the skills for it, it's risky spending money on something you might not be able to use. Sometimes, people just want to get the site up and running as quickly as possible and not have to worry too much about the technical aspects of it. Most people will choose a host and software based on the ease of it. Using a host like proboards gives people a chance learn a bit of coding and not lose money from it. (It's even better if you can find a host that uses a software like mybb because then people can learn about the software before making the switch to self-hosting.