The thread where we discuss YC's revival

He's considering doing WHAT?
I would never consider starting from scratch, so long as I have access to the databases I'd perform the migration no matter how long it took.

Oh, hey there TimYoshi, been a while.

It sounds like he isn't too hot on how MySQL works. He said he'd look at migrating only members, but nuking all the boards. You can't do that, member profiles would be out of sync and all manner of other things would have to be changed in order to make it work. There would be links in user profiles to threads that don't even exist and PM counts would show that a user has PMs yet when they look none show up. The list of potential problems with that go on and on. The only real safe way of doing it is doing a full migration which he didn't want to do, getting the board installation copied over, linking the board to the database and then pruning members not active for +200 days, then nuking all the boards and remaking them. Unless he does this on the source board first, and without a decent backup that is known to work I wouldn't even attempt this, and then dumps the SQL database then it should be ok, but if that backup doesn't work (face it, backing up is a complete waste of time if you don't know how to restore from backup, or check to make sure the backups work) then there is absolutely no way of going back.

Just copying the member tables is not enough and I hope he realises this before he makes a pigs ear of it.

I really hope he knows what he's doing. I don't agree with starting from scratch, but I hope he has planned it all out and tested that plan already if he intends on doing anything to the source board before migrating.

It's probably less hassle to just migrate the entire board. :/

Well, decided to bring this thread up again. Seems the place is slowing down yet again. So how to make YC alive again? We need events of sorts.

So alright, we have an RP running. That is a good sign that YC is still active in one form. But we need to keep the other sections of YC alive too. The journal section is seeing some activity from time to time. That's great, but it'd be nice if it had more activity.

How about the fanfiction section, both Yoshi and non-Yoshi? It has been a long long time since I seen any updates from the two sections. I used to love reading frequently updated fanfics of YC back in the past... but well, there aren't any active fanfics today. It'd be nice if someone decides to create a large, interesting, on going fanfic. I know one fanfic that was doing just that, but I hope I see an update of that certain fanfic sometime soon.

Art. The art sections of YC, both Yoshi and non-Yoshi. So I have made the Yoshi a day (week) thread in hopes that artistic activity is up again. I hope more people can participate in that. I used to love checking YC to see what artwork is being posted up from the various artists of YC. I hope to see more of such activity today. It has been... who knows how long since the last time a very detailed, finished artwork was posted here in YC, that is more than a mere sketch. So okay, I know some members post their stuff in other places like deviantart, but it'd be nice if some are posted here in YC as well, even if it is a link to said deviantart (or similar site) page. At least then YC would have some activity in said area.

Events... I would assume Secret Santa 2010 may start anytime soon in the last quarter of 2010. Last year went okay, but I hope this year can be successful too. I hope there will actually be a Secret Santa 2010. Events like that make things alive around here. We could use more events, but well... we need to think of ideas of what events can happen around here in YC. Apparently Summer Secret Santa never happened.

I'm making a sort of an event by deciding to make a group picture of YC. I'm hoping many of the members around here will sign up to be in the group picture.

Link to said group picture sign-up: Link

I was thinking maybe a good group picture would make the YC community more together and not seem rather separated.

And well, banners. The YC banners that is. I liked the idea of the members of YC making banners for YC itself. I have a simple idea: How about we make seasonal banners... Like we make banners that match the season of Summer, Spring, Fall/Autumn, and Winter. Monthly might be overkill, so I say seasonal. This is simply an idea, but it'd make Yoshi Corner more lively if this can be done.

This is all I have to say for now.

There are multiple problems with a restart, one of them, being a community manager for two boards myself, being ethical.

A restart involves changing our online presence. Our links will change so users bookmarks will instantly become invalid. Because of this, users will commonly hit up Google or Bing to see if they got the right link. When they find they did they panic, because our new links haven't yet been spidered by Google or Bing by this point because it's too new.

A restart also involves erasing the boards history. This is the ethical reason because it will no longer be possible to look back at the boards history, for current members, and new ones alike. We can't just not log back on here, or close it. If the board is no longer used, Proboards commonly begin a 30 day grace period before wiping it out. Archiving is unfortunately out of the question. And before anyone mentions a migration, that's also out of the question. That is sadly impossible with Proboards (Unless you bodge together a php script that trundles through every single thread and the member list, but this is kind of against their terms of service due to excessive bandwidth and resources).

If we move to another hosted solution, we haven't really accomplished much other than moving board. We could pay for hosting, however it'd be the job of the manager of the board to perform regular maintenance to ensure we're secure against all the latest exploits. A little bit of a cumbersome task. I support this though because it means no ads! But that also means that someone has the task of paying to host the board and perform maintenance and actually not gain anything from it, other than a monthly invoice. I already do this on two boards, and if a move is in order, it is certainly possible to move on to one of my already existing servers so I pay no extra. I already own a large portfolio of domains, so could quite easily acquire yc.com/net or yoshiscorner.com/net. Also, if we want to go to Invision Power Board, that's $129 one-time for a license and $25 every six months too if I remember the costs. I do prefer IPB over other board software as it employs a lot of fantastic features not available in others. The anti-spammer modules are excellent. Also, if we perform a maintenance (board update) and it fails, we have the experts at Invision Power to rescue us (I've had to call on this four times in the past and it's invaluable). Or, we could just go with phpBB (free) and hope we don't have such problems!

A new skin is most welcome, and will be compulsory if we move anyway so if we don't decide to perform the move, maybe we could focus on a new skin here?

Lastly, if the other managers decide on a new beginning but we choose to maintain our online presence, may I also suggest that current boards are archived off in to their own forum as sub categories, with read-only permissions applied and new structure placed in to the root index rather than a full wipe?

I'm in support of progress, and if the other managers feel that a new beginning is the way to go, then they have my full backing.

Cost for me is almost a non-issue. I already pay max-whack for server rental and cPanel licensing fees anyway so it won't cost extra. Domain will, but that will normally set me back around $25 a year but I might be able to snap it up for cheaper because I get some pretty excellent deals on domains. The real cost is if we jump to IPB or not. I recommend IPB because it's safe if whoever performs maintenance runs in to a problem, easy and quick to call in the experts to rectify the issue. I should note, I already own two IPB licenses and I am now eligible for volume licensing discounts, so I might be able to buy licenses much cheaper than the usual going rate.

I'll do the math a little later tonight and reply here when I've got an idea of how much it would cost.

It'll be more expensive for whoever is hosting to host on standard shared web hosting than it is to host on my servers. I can do this too if needed (cheaper as most fees are already being paid).

Re: Moving/rebooting/whatever:

You know that we don't _have_ to destroy this forum, right? We could keep it as is, like a museum. Refer to it as "Yoshi's Corner Classic" or something.

Going with a move/reboot would arguably generate a lot of activity. Change is exciting. People get to be involved in things from artwork to organization, administration and decision-making. The community gets a chance to re-identify, to reinvent itself, to separate from - but not necessarily destroy - the past and put the focus on what's next. People come and go, old ways die and new ones emerge. It's a way of staying current.

If we go with a reboot (preferably a self-hosted forum solution), I'd be more than willing to help you guys. It'd give me something to aim for, because I swear, I'm going to stay loyal to this community and, by whatever means necessary, help this place prosper. It's been over a decade and I'm still a fan of Yoshi! Some folks here are non-fans, and that's okay, too! The older members were/are great people. The newer members are great people too. Let's come together once more. This is our home.



More inbound links will help that. But first we should make the reboot, if we decide that's the way to go.



We can't just put up a notice on here about the move? Both an announcement in the fader and a forum thread?

Oh, nice, you brought back your old avatar to boot. Yeah, YC was amazing when I first got here. I wonder if everyone is having issues with school/work/generally not having enough free time?

Or maybe we just need to generate discussion or some such?

You know, on this one site I go to, we have a get-together every month where we produce some really shoddy games for amusement. It does a pretty good job at uniting folks together. I still think we should go for more Secret Santa. It's something that would arguably add a lot of appeal to YC.

Yes sir, I brought back my avatar. ^^

But know that a big reason I haven't been contributing much to activity is from school and work. So I'm sure that's how it is for a lot of us here, unfortunately.

I think posting links to YC would be sweet. It could help.

We did have a podcast briefly, but after running it for one episode (issue? podcast? I don't know how these things are named) the guy who started it pretty much left YC and it never got off the ground. Also it degenerated into silliness pretty quickly.