Xepher Community Forums for Hosted Sites?????

[fesworks]

Directed at Xepher himself:

I've been thinking about my forums recently... Some webcomic communities ... well, many communities actually, have unified forums for webcomics "under their belt".... I was wondering if you might be interested in setting up a Xepher Community Webcomic Forum Collection. One login for multiple sites is always a better option and more appealing to potential forumites. You'd be in control of the boards to know that crap would not be going down with e-mails or such. You could assign us as Moderators to our specific forums...

In any case, I'm not sure of your opinion on this. I've just been considering trying to move my forums to somewhere else with a better forum model, and more chance to get people on board etc.

I'm also curious to know what other people think... I know some people like individualized forums, but if can get normalized forums in one place, we don;t need to worry about upkeep of the code and such, plus, again, when people don't need to make multiple logins for several different sites, the chances for crossover and increased posting... um...well, increases.

The only thing I could think that might be desirable in addition to centralized forums might be customizable/additional smilies...

Thoughts?

[Xepher]

I think it's a decent idea, if there's some interest. The current forums here seem to have all the functionality that's needed. Apparently there's an option for custom smileys too, if you really want it.

Fes: I setup a board and a sub-board for you to play around with. You're moderator of the parent one, see if you have moderation on the sub-board as well or not.

[fesworks]

Needless to say, Jenny Everywhere and PSI would be taking their forums here. Jason and I are going to see if the Ardra readers would mind to go over here too.

Compared to our forums (because I don;t know what I'm doing), These Xepher ones have us totally beat... I mean, you have attachments, real posting options ("Bold" and "Add Link" stuff), and Private Messaging!

[w0lfmare]

I am also interested in setting up a forum for my site here on Xepher. Is it as simple as requesting it, or is there a process I need to go through?

[Xepher]

Yes actually, it's that simple. :-) Let me know what you'd like the section of forums to be titled, and I'll set it up.

[w0lfmare]

Excellent! Just "Bloodline Forums" will do.

[Xepher]

Here ya go! http://xepher.net/forum/index.php?board=15.0 You should have moderation privileges for that board as well. Let me know if you have any questions or need anything else.

[w0lfmare]

I need to know the rules you have in place for your forum, and any automatic filter functions that I should know about. I want to avoid changing my rules too much before officially announcing it ^^

[Xepher]

I don't have any formal rules, beyond those that apply to xepher.net in general (on the info page at http://xepher.net/info.php ), or that aren't stated when people register for an account. Basically it comes down to "don't be a jackass." If you want more specific, basically the standard stuff... no spam, no porn, no copyright infringement, no illegal content, no hate speech, no harassment, etc.

[w0lfmare]

Alright, and filters? I think I remember something about filters blocking links sometimes, do they block anything else?

[Xepher]

Here, or somewhere else? Because I don't think I've even seen the word "filters" anywhere in the forum config or admin sections, much less enabled any. There is a "censored words" option, but its list is completely empty. Generally speaking, I hate censorship, and especially automated censorship, so I tend to avoid restrictions as much as possible. If someone abuses that, then they get warned, kicked, or banned as appropriate, but by a live human (me) and not a piece of code, so don't worry about it too much, unless you know your users are going to TRY to be jackasses. :-)