Forum Migration

Absolutely love this idea! And I agree- I like the forum layout more than the socials too (I do use them, but not as much as DoA).

 

I agree it would be great if the current owner can't be reached and another solution can't be found. Unfortunately, my experience over the last 10 or so years with forums other than DoA has been with platforms that have suddenly closed or had issues with their codes, so the other forums I've been on were shut down and inaccessible suddenly. I'm not really sure of what platforms would be a good hosting option. Tumblr and pillowfort have communities but it's not quite the same. I would be more than willing to donate some to help keep DoA alive if that were possible. I know pillowfort has a donation-run sort of system, but that is a lot to feasibly sort out to set up a new forum and all that.

 

I mean, as you can see in the footer, DoA uses XenForo for hosting/software, which presumably is pretty stable? My experience is that the longevity of a forum depends 100% on the commitment of the admins. Ideally someone—or a small group of someones—would step up, who's a long-time user of DoA, who has the finances to cover the up-front costs until advertisers etc. can be arranged, and is prepared to sink much time/energy into the project over the course of many years. I'm not sure if there is such a person!

EDIT: Pixel Joint has also been around forever, if we're looking for a forum model to copy.

 

My plan at the moment is to return to the big BJD Discord. I stayed only for a short time. The community over there is great, but I was in a time I didn't want to be tempted/enabled from all the doll news and discussion - DOA is slower and I can be more selective - as well as the fact I just don't like Discord as a platform. Real-time chat is not for me. I detest social media like Instagram as the sterile corporate environment makes me feel depressed, so that's not an option.

If DOA goes down in the end, and a new traditional forum comes up, I'd definitely move over there.

 

I've had some experience being a member of forums run off Discourse - one of them was the official NaNoWriMo forums before it all went down. I think Discourse is a modern alternative to older-style forums like XenForo, phpBB and IPBoard (Invision Power Board).

For XenForo and Discourse, you either pay for their hosted solutions, or buy a licence and then self-host the forum. The pricing schedules are on both sites. Pretty sure that IPBoard and phpBB are similar. Not sure if the one-off licence for self-hosting also entitles you to updates for the forum software, whereas the hosted solutions will take care of that for you as part of the monthly subscription.

Cost for hosting is going to be the kicker - either self-hosting the forum, which means paying for the domain and the webhost, or a hosted solution with one of those forum providers. I have my own hosted personal website (the home of my BJD blog) - a couple of domain names and the smallest quota of webhosting costs me AUD $275/year (equivalent USD $190/year). I don't have experience with hosting organizational websites, but I think DoA would cost an order of magnitude more to run than my personal site, so let's say minimum USD $1500-2000/year. For example, hosting a Pro plan on Discourse, or a Standard plan on XenForo, costs USD $1200/year ($100/mo).

I understand that DoA has been partially funded by member donations for a long time, and they're probably how it's still going despite the missing owner. The donations funnel into an account which then automatically pays the bills.

Aside - I believe that DoA is under some sort of company structure? I've donated a few times, and the PayPal invoices come out as "Den of Angels, LLC". I'm guessing that this is where the problems of DoA ownership come in: someone has to take over the LLC before they can take over the keys of the forum, which means the owner (Dezarii) or a representative has to be legally involved in this process. I don't know much about business structures so someone else can chime in here.

So to build a new DoA-like forum, you'd have to find a suitable forum platform, sort out hosting and how to pay for it, sort out administration (the people to run the show), and then have a plan to scale up to handle increasing membership. And, uh, for the love of all ball-jointed Tenshi, have succession planning measures in place so this kind of succession crisis doesn't happen...

 

My first preference would of course still be that the owner is reached, can pass on access and DoA remains here. Slim chance but still. The traditional forum format is perfect for hobby discussion, and I think many of us are just dead tired of how social media and etc alternatives function. A new forum would be amazing, too, of course, but...

...having seen such moves before - most of those spaces never survived long after unfortunately. You really need a very close and trustworthy core group to do this, ideally most of them having experience with forums and the software to set up a functioning infrastructure, who would also be willing to be actively hands on for years to come to keep this thing running... that is a big task and commitment. I just want to add that from my experience, the enthusiasm often wanes fast unless there is someone (usually 1 person) really managing and driving the thing, which is not always... fun For context, I've moderated/adminned smaller hobby forums before (a very very long time ago) and I'm currently moderating a medium-to-big discord server - I love doing those things but it comes with responsibilities attached, and takes significant online-time on the side of dayjobs, family etc.

I don't want to be super doom and gloom about it, I just want to add a warning that doing stuff like this has to realistically run on more than pure enthusiasm to work out + is very much also a financial commitment for something the size of DoA. We still have this forum because it's been a system built over 20 years but it's much harder to start this from scratch. I would love to know I can still be on a doll forum years from now, but yeah, unfortunately those are also the thoughts I can't help but immediately think about

 

I didn't realize they currently have a way for members to make donations :/ It feels like a bummer to find that out now, but it's good to know for if we do get lucky and they are able to get ownership transferred.