My zetaboards experience.

I've been on zetaboards since moving my group over from a phpbb forum software that decided to quit allowing post sometime in 2014, a good 8 moves from other forums I was on later that is. I've been on the network for a good 4 years & it feels like some one kicked me in the stomach telling me that I can't keep the forum I made 4 years ago.. The first zetaboards forum got hit with the death of photobucket & killed a bunch of forums & I felt it was easier to move us to another forum software, such as forumotion. We were there for all of half a year before moving back to zetaboards. Making a new place, which we called s15.rp version, things went along swimmingly.

Then fast forward 4 years later & one announcement by the developer of zb's changes everything: that iF & zIFBoards would be migrating to tapatalk. I knew then & there that zetaboards would soon be the next to come with the same announcement. I brought this topic up to my members & we all decided about a week before it was announced to begin moving to a new forum host.

The first host I choose was icyboards & it of course didn't last because icyboards was going to close a good week right after. I moved everything over from icyboards to a mybb hosted site that I'm now running. I'm not alone in making the move to a hosted mybb site, but I feel alone since the zetaboards community seems to be all scattering to the winds. Some people who I felt were friends don't seem to be 'friends' anymore, & other people who I felt I knew, all seem to have changed since moving off of zetaboards. It's a weird experience all around for me. I feel like I'm the same, but everyone has changed in some way or another.. And with a few forums that have moved to some place new, I just feel like I don't fit in on those communities anymore. :/

Yea, I understand your feeling. It's weird how one small change can affect just how much you feel you belong on one place or another. I thought maybe it's forum burn out, but there's more to it. Almost like you realize you lost awash in a sea of members & posts.. And nothing you could contribute would help to make you stand out one way or the other.. because you'll always be at the bottom of the totem poll, your the 'little guy'. Your trying to stand out, maybe even be heard, but but by bit you feel like you're just going to get nowhere.

I know the feeling. Forum wise, you have to "scream" in order to be heard. I understand your frustrations. I really don't need a huge community. Just enough to have good debates, good conversations, maybe good friendships (regadless of age). I have had good conversations with @queenzelda and @Amulet1 on the subject of depression and suicide. This is the kind of thing I want to have done on this forum no matter what the topic is.

Bethea's Byte is an outlet for this. We don't need to blow up to be this GIANT of a forum. We just need good people who will sound off on their problems, sound off on their opinions on the happenings in the world.

That's what Bethea's Byte is about.

Personally I think those who chose to just be your friend on one board and another they dont want to be friends are not true friends. Its just like what you wear or hair color or social status. I personally will like someone for who they are. I dont care if your black,white,purple or pink. I have been on numerous boards over the years. I have done things that I am sorry that I did. Im probably not making any sense but I am who I am and am happy to meet new people.

I want to get more members, but you seem like the kind of person I want to staff this board with. Yes, that's a compliment.

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Yea, that's awesome to know. And hey, I get to know people for who they are. Not what color skin they have or if they have money. I've seen a member claiming elietest carp that if your poor you shouldn't be into gaming. Yet there are tons of free mobile games to chose from & play on mobile & facebook.. It's seeing posts like that, where a user says "it's your own fault your poor" that just makes it seem like the staff, just doesn't care that the person posting this crap is coming off like they're flaming/trolling. Oh It's fine cause that person is their favorite member, but I bet you some one else posted the same stuff they'd probably get a ban. It's crazy how much stuff someone can get away wigh if they're popular as a member on a forum.

^Yep. Something else to add to what you said, is that I've seen mods get away with flaming & trolling. Or worse, but it's ok because their a mod. So yea, I've seen mods get treated like they're above the rules & regulations. Which I find ridiculous, but it happens.

@KingofHearts: I know, this forum maybe small but deep down I can feel the heart beat of a wonderful forum that will flourish, if given enough time. ^^

@Almulet1: I'm sorry to hear you had a heart attack, but I'm glad your here with us now. I'm glad to know that your doing better & yea, it sucks being home alone not able to do much. I've been through that myself, I had a moment when I woke up about 5 years ago & couldn't move. It was a nightmare, but after just going back to sleep & getting checked I came to find out that I had a heart murmur. I've been trying to take better care of myself, but it's still something you have to take day by day.

Yeah, I understand: these past couple of months especially have been turbulent for all of us .

But, now, we're getting settled into our new places, which hopefully means the stress levels are about to go down and things will start returning to normal .

^Yea, here's hoping. So far I feel like I've been on hiatus since the move from zb. I still keep up with the news on the support community for when tt will takeover, but I'm not sure if I plan to do so after the acquisition hits. I honestly haven't thought about it yet.. Maybe I should make that call, but really I feel it might be a hard call to make. I have a lot of good memories associated with zb due to meeting so many people. So seeing it go down the crapper will be a hard pill to swallow.

Yami Yugi wrote:^Yea, here's hoping. So far I feel like I've been on hiatus since the move from zb. I still keep up with the news on the support community for when tt will takeover, but I'm not sure if I plan to do so after the acquisition hits. I honestly haven't thought about it yet.. Maybe I should make that call, but really I feel it might be a hard call to make. I have a lot of good memories associated with zb due to meeting so many people. So seeing it go down the crapper will be a hard pill to swallow.

No pressure on you, Yami, but remember, ZB put the pressure on us when they made this announcement... Correction, when Brandon made the announcement and left the rest of his staff to pick up the pieces in regard to getting the message out, and answering any questions we may have, as well as where we could go and what resources that would allow us to import data from ZB to our prospective new homes. We were literally left hanging to fend for ourselves on this. This is on BRANDON, not ZB staff, but BRANDON himself.

Just saying.

I was surprised how it was handled, but Brandon was never one to handle pressure very well. But whats done s done and most have moved on

Yes, that's very true. Most seemed to have moved on.. I'm in the process of grieving a halfway decent forum software that didn't ask for much & if I needed to take a break over the summer I could instead of deleting the forum for being inactive for insert ammount of days here. *rolls eyes*

Still, I have noticed that the admin of dynamik seems to be trying to benefit from the loss of zetaboards & is asking for all support forum members/admins to join their forum. I'm not, as I seem to have a curse of where what ever Xenfro forum I join, it ends up dying a good year after opening. *laughs awkwardly*

queenzelda wrote:Yes, that's very true. Most seemed to have moved on.. I'm in the process of grieving a halfway decent forum software that didn't ask for much & if I needed to take a break over the summer I could instead of deleting the forum for being inactive for insert ammount of days here. *rolls eyes*

Still, I have noticed that the admin of dynamik seems to be trying to benefit from the loss of zetaboards & is asking for all support forum members/admins to join their forum. I'm not, as I seem to have a curse of where what ever Xenfro forum I join, it ends up dying a good year after opening. *laughs awkwardly*

Then come home. Bethea's Byte is more than happy to have you here.

Sold! One young american. lol

Well, the time for taptatlk to convert zetaboards is slowly arriving &with it will soon be the support forum, & most of the other zetaboards communities I came to know. In a way it's sad, but also.. I feel that in the end maybe it's a good thing. For a time a lot of the community seemed to be high on it's own horse towards anyone who was either starting out on how to learn to code zb's or didn't know how to. I did learn a lot over time, but it felt to me that a lot of people acted that I was beneath them (or it came off this way) & tbh I'll be glad to at least see one particular place get tapatalked, but....-_- *awkward laugh again* that's just me. ^^" The end of zetaboards is neigh & soon, it will be but a memory. I will miss what was once was, & can never be again but yet a hallowed portion of my heart left to fly in the wind.

Yeah, as sad is it is, I expect some good will come out of it. Now that I'm settled into my new home on MyBB, I'm really enjoying the new software and could never imagine going back to ZB.

ZetaBoards was great in its day; however, "its day" was 2008, and it's fallen behind the times ever since. With the serious lack of development on Brandon's part, staying on ZB was always going to be a slow death for any community in the long term.

It worked for what my little group needed it for. Just a place for us to bullsh*t around & roleplay together. Everything else was just window dressing. We've been on a forum soft ware with much less the what zetaboards delivered.

Mybb gives you the cake recepie, the icing & tosses in the sprinkles too. Which is nice but a bit overwhelming coming from hardly given anything when I first started out as an admin.

Yeah, it was pretty overwhelming for me at first, but I'm pretty much used to it now .

(That's one of the reasons why I didn't choose XenForo. When I tried it out, I found that it had thousands of settings: there's no way I need *that* many!)

Honestly I never understood the hype surrounding xenfro. From how it seems, xenfro is just a paid version of mybb since you can take the data base from mybb to xenfro pretty easily. Yea, one maybe paid but it's not like it's better then the other IMPO.

There are plenty of differences. Most importantly, XenForo works very well on mobiles out of the box, whereas MyBB doesn't even have a responsive default theme (MyBB 1.9 will have this).

Also, XenForo seems to offer an overall more streamlined user experience (with fewer clicks, for example).