💬 Platform Discussion Zetaboards

[Aaron]

I ran a semi-successful zetaboards promotion forum with a custom theme and really enjoyed using it. I then sold the forum because of some life stuff going on.

I miss their software

 

[Cory]

ZetaBoards was my home away from home, that's where my coding journey really started taking effect. I had a large resource forum that had a pretty good run that started on InvisionFree and later on converted to ZetaBoards. I was one of the top posters on the official board where I mainly offered support and codes. I had a few mishaps there from time to time when I was young and immature, but in the end, I did my best to rectify all of those wrongdoings. I even helped the staff behind the scenes with a lot of coding projects. I was never a staff member of the network, but my contributions showed how dedicated I was to the forum software. I too miss the days of ZetaBoards and the many people I met there along the way.

 

[kolakube]

Who could forget that lovely orange and purple? ZB was pretty much the end of free forums for me after a long time spent on InvisionFree.

 

[Kale]

I ran a semi successful Harvest Moon forum on ZetaBoards, but sadly ended up closing down due to IRL stuff at the time. Both myself and my co-admin decided it was for the best as she also was busy with her own IRL. I miss that forum so much and wished I kept it around longer, or at the very least remade it down the line.

I have one member from back then on my Discord currently, but they seem to also be a bit busy these days and not as active online.

ZetaBoards was my home away from home

I honestly felt this way a bit with joining so many ZB forums. I never got into any of the drama going on or anything, but loved the software. I wished it went open source or something so people could host their own ZB site/forum.

 

[Moonface]

I loved ZB, and even became a member of the Support Team just because I enjoyed spending time answering questions in the public areas and thus was seen as a good fit for dealing with tickets. It definitely had its flaws and shortcomings but there was a sense of overall community on that whole network which I've never found since it ended because that sort of thing just doesn't really happen with self-hosting.

 

[Kyng]

Yeah, I thought ZetaBoards was lovely too. I was on InvisionFree from 2004 onwards, and on ZetaBoards for the entire duration of its existence.

For me, the best thing was how easy it made foruming. It was customisable; it looked pretty; it had good features (for a free hosted forum); and it could be run without any prior experience of being a webmaster. Sadly, it did begin to fall behind the times in its later years, but I still miss it!

 

[Cedric]

Who could forget that lovely orange and purple? ZB was pretty much the end of free forums for me after a long time spent on InvisionFree.

http://web.archive.org/web/20150206004852/http://support.zathyus.com/index/

I too started my forum journey on IF around '03 or something. I loved IF & ZB. Brandon never realized how lucky he was backing up his software and the community it had. Everyone knew everyone. So sad he sold us out. I use the archive frequently to visit old forums to get a glimpse of how it once was.

 

[Kale]

http://web.archive.org/web/20150206004852/http://support.zathyus.com/index/

I too started my forum journey on IF around '03 or something. I loved IF & ZB. Brandon never realized how lucky he was backing up his software and the community it had. Everyone knew everyone. So sad he sold us out. I use the archive frequently to visit old forums to get a glimpse of how it once was.

Indeed, miss those days... I don't think I got involved with IF till maybe 2005-2006 or so. Stuck with ZB since it first started, though.

 

[Cory]

I never got into any of the drama going on or anything

I know we're talking about ZetaBoards here, but the InvisionFree Skin Zone was nothing but drama. I don't remember what it was like after it converted to ZetaBoards, only down the line it eventually became the official resource board.

 

[Kale]

I know we're talking about ZetaBoards here, but the InvisionFree Skin Zone was nothing but drama. I don't remember what it was like after it converted to ZetaBoards, only down the line it eventually became the official resource board.

Still a part of the network I thought, so it counts IMO. I do recall hearing of some drama on the IF Skin Zone, but never took part or followed it. I was never a coder, skin maker, or whatever.

 

[Cory]

I do recall hearing of some drama on the IF Skin Zone, but never took part or followed it.

I think Nicola was the primary cause of it all, but there were multiple people that contributed. I and Nicola bashed heads in the past a few times.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I miss Zetaboards! It was my second favorite forum host and it's a shame that it was sold to Tapatalk and taken offline... Tapatalk sucks compared to Zetaboards, and well many other forum hosts.

 

[Aaron]

Tapatalk sucks compared to Zetaboards, and well many other forum hosts.

Definitely agree with you there.

 

[Kale]

I miss Zetaboards! It was my second favorite forum host and it's a shame that it was sold to Tapatalk and taken offline... Tapatalk sucks compared to Zetaboards, and well many other forum hosts.

Yep, agreed. ZetaBoards was the best thing ever. Tapatalk sucks ass, and I'd never bother using it. My old site I did convert to Tapatalk just so I could view it out of nostalgia.

 

[Cory]

The only thing I liked about Tapatalk when I used it sparingly was their smartphone app. I like how everything was organized and set up. I wish more forum software would have smartphone apps.

 

[Cedric]

The only thing I like about Tapatalk is being able to send a mass email from an old forum.

Sorrynotsorry.

 

[Cory]

The only thing I like about Tapatalk is being able to send a mass email from an old forum.

 

[Aaron]

The only thing I liked about Tapatalk when I used it sparingly was their smartphone app. I like how everything was organized and set up. I wish more forum software would have smartphone apps.

Most forum software have a plugin or whatever for Tapatalk.

 

[Arantor]

I wish more forum software would have smartphone apps.

There's a lot of sentiment like that, but actually... it doesn't work that way, unfortunately.

If you go down the Tapatalk route, you're pretty much necessitating that you cater to something akin to the lowest-common denominator of all the things supported by all the platforms, mostly because the more you do support, the increasing cost of building + support vs number of users, it very quickly gets into diminishing returns.

On the other hand, you could go first party, like IPS tried, with an IPS app that supported a good number of IPS sites, but again you're still fighting with some amount of lowest-common denominator; you don't get support for all the add-ons/custom features which for some sites can make or break.

Then there's the ForumRunner route a la vBulletin - this means you get the skeleton of an app for your forum, compile it yourself. Now you're looking at a potential minimum of $124 just to publish to the two big app stores, more if you don't have a Mac handy. And that's before we talk about customisation.

The ultimate of course is building your own app for a forum. If you have an app developer on hand, this is only 3-6 months work... for a general minimum product.

All of this means your users get an experience that is not the same as your site, it's your site's content shoved into someone else's format. Now... this is a tradeoff priced in with social media; your content is *always* in the format Facebook decides. But also see Reddit, this is the entire schism of the old vs new interface, and why so many people cling to the old one to get it in the format they want - not what Reddit wants.

And we're getting to the point where the only real holdout for a native app on a per-site basis is iOS/iPhone with notifications, which is rumoured to be out this year. Which means one "app" per forum you go to.

So on the one hand you end up with 'I want one app for all the forums' but 'I also want an app that lets me retain the personality of my site for my users'/'I want an app that lets me feel like I'm on the right site' style thinking. And this is irreconcilable in any way that makes sense unless someone can afford to sit and implement and spend vastly more time or effort on the implementation than they'd *ever* make back.

 

[Cory]

And we're getting to the point where the only real holdout for a native app on a per-site basis is iOS/iPhone with notifications, which is rumoured to be out this year. Which means one "app" per forum you go to.

That would be awesome and one of the other primary reasons I wanted to see an app for forum software, for push notifications.