The Ultimate Superheroines Forum

Hey all,

Pretty soon I will be upgrading the forum software to the next major release. I've held off because I know things were unstable while we connected the front page to the forum and some users are still adjusting to the change. But I would say for 90% of you, the site has been stable.
I have been monitoring the discussions from other webmasters about this new upgrade and it looks like it's working with no major issues, so I am going to move ahead.

The problem is that I am pretty sure chat will no longer be working with the new version. Here is the reason why, or skip down to the last paragraph to see what we can do about it.

I originally bought a site license for the chat software from another forum owner who was shutting down. I got that license at a discount (of course!) and when I went to the software company for an upgrade they basically told me I would have to buy a new license or I couldn't upgrade. Fair enough. We got a few years out of this one.

A new chat license that allows mobile chat with your phones/tablets is $250. I am thinking about starting up a GoFundMe for the license. I'll chip in a bit to get it started and I guess we'll see if it's that important to users to keep it. I'm thinking if everyone who used it chipped in $5 then we'd be good to go for a couple of years. So let me know your thoughts. If it's not that important, we can let it go. I like having it so I would contribute.

perhaps starting a poll to see how many of the registered users actually use chat and also how many of those would freak out if it went away? if the majority dont use it/ dont care if it goes away maybe the best bet would be to just let it die? i mean you're going to get die hards who will freak out and want to gather a crowd of angry villagers with torches and pitchforks but if 99% of the forum doesn't care would it really matter?

I use it because it's there, but cant we work out a free option of some sort?

Maybe start a mIRC room somewhere and just link to it?

Kitten wrote:I use it because it's there, but cant we work out a free option of some sort?

Maybe start a mIRC room somewhere and just link to it?

That's a possibilty, it's what twitch uses, actually.

Does private messaging rely on the same system, or is it separate? I personally prefer that kind of setup to the chat anyway.

I am a huge fan of the chat function but if you can arrange a workaround I can live with that. Would that workaround allow a chatroom with multple people conversing?

Kitten wrote:I use it because it's there, but cant we work out a free option of some sort?

Maybe start a mIRC room somewhere and just link to it?

that's a good a idea. uff! it's been a while that i haven't use mirc.

I've seen some forums set up a Chat Room, using mirc, and not require visitors to download the client.

I admit i dont understand the finer points of how it was done, but i have seen it done.

Kitten wrote:I've seen some forums set up a Chat Room, using mirc, and not require visitors to download the client.

I admit i dont understand the finer points of how it was done, but i have seen it done.

exactly.