Introduction

Our community software is pretty robust within itself. Before I moved our community to our current software in 2014, we were at the whim of an online community software called NING. The problem with NING was that the content that we/you worked so hard to produce in the form of gallery's, forum topics, files, blogs etc, was not our property. It was kept on the NING server, and we could not move it off the server if we were not happy with their service.

So myself and Ron Dudelston, and at the time admin John Moody, decided it was a good idea to go out and find proprietary software that we could purchase, and host on our own servers, and we did just that with our current software created by the fine folks at Invision Community. Since then, we have had the flexibility of moving our community from one server to another, one hosting company from another, without losing content or format, because we own it, and we can take it where ever we want.

I love this software, we are not going to change, and we are happy on our current server.

 

The Challenge

Recently all owners of our software including us, were notified by the dev's of our core software that they are no longer going to work with third party developers. Third party developers are very important for our community, we have purchased and maintain a dozen licenses for custom software that I have implemented into our core software based on you, our users feedback, these improvements make an already great software, greater.

Because of this new direction, it makes it harder and more time consuming and cumbersome to work with each individual software developer on my end, I'll have to keep up with the licensing and communications for over a dozen developers, in order to keep our customization's up to date and paid for on time. I see a logistical nightmare looming and more worry and maintenance, and that is a whole lot to add on to an already busy guy with a day job and family to take care of.

 

This was all taken care of before with the two entities working together. The core devs, and the third party devs. There was a main central library of sorts where I could maintain and update, and get support for all our customized third party applications, in one easy to access area at the core devs website, and now that library is going away, and they have a good reason that doesn't matter to us at this point, so I am not upset at the core devs, but pragmatically some changes will have to be made shortly here.

 

Solution

So, in a matter of a couple weeks, the library of devs and third party software is closing for good, and I am going to have to strip down our website to the bare bones core software. The look will change, and some of the apps that you had no idea were apps, but made your life a little easier to get around here, are going to have to go away too.

Some of you may not even feel the difference, some of you may notice, but just know, I'll try to make this all as painless as possible and I'll keep you informed of what is changing as the changes take place. I am sorry, but we'll get through this, we have had bigger challenges than this in the past

 

Thank you for being here and making this community something special.

John

 

Well that sux! More work for you, for sure. But, like you said, we'll get thru this.

3 hours ago, lew said:

Well that sux! More work for you, for sure. But, like you said, we'll get thru this.

Lew, it would be more work if we proceeded down this path, but we are not.

I'm here, thick or thin, fancy or plain vanilla. It's all the great people that keeps me here. I'll stumble, bumble and maybe even a little grumble, but I'll figure it out.

What worries me the most is when the big change comes about and I don't notice any difference. 

9 hours ago, Grandpadave52 said:

What worries me the most is when the big change comes about and I don't notice any difference. 

HA! I hope that's the case Gramps!

So after much contemplation on this issue, I have 2 thoughts/questions. 1-John your need a raise, get TPF to pay you more, 25% raise should do it. (I know, bad joke. Seriously I don’t know how to thank you for all the work you do here!) 2-Do I have to get any smarter to keep coming here? Cause I kinda think that ship sailed some time last century.   

On 8/20/2023 at 9:17 AM, Artie said:

I have to get any smarter to keep coming here?

Heck no! And thank you Artie