Ok, Let's Revive the DaD!

[Jaser]

Thanks to Wolfey and Keiko I've been granted lead admin status of the DigiArtist's Domain. There have been a lot of scattered discussions about reviving the site for a long time but not any conclusive progress, so I thought I would step in and contact them. Wolfey has passed the torch, so to speak, to me to decide where to take the site now and Keiko will continue to host us.

So it's time to get back up and running!

Firstly, I've backed up the whole site and database. I've actually got a copy of it running on my own computer to be sure, so if anything happens I'll be able to restore it if need be.

Next I'm going to contact the rest of the old staff after posting this announcement. I don't intend to remove anyone from their positions and they will be offered to maintain their status if they would like to return. While I'll be in charge and can manage anything needed I'll also try to delegate all duties to specific staff members such that if I end up missing for a while everything should still run the same in my absence. We'll need an updater(s) for art and lemons, a technical admin able to manage the software, a treasurer, and a moderator team. Those who already have these positions are the most likely to fill them.

Once some staff is ready we can begin getting users to return! I'll have to figure out how to send out a mass email to everyone in the database. I'll also resume updates between now and then and already have the first author lined up with his stories already available on FurAffinity. Cross-posting your artwork and stories on other sites like FA with a link here will help us grow our userbase from those already watching you.

It won't be until after that when we'll start discussing changes. Should forum boards be rearranged or new ones created? Should unused user accounts be pruned? Should we get a new design and layout? These questions will get their own discussion topics when the time comes.

Eventually I want to do a major overhaul of the site. Probably change the backend from PHP/MyBB to a Node.js application, but this could be a while from now. I want artists/authors to be able to create their own account and profiles like on popular sites. The history of the forum is important to me and I'll try to transfer it over to anything we move to to the best of my ability.

Will we be hosting a Booru-style gallery (like e621 or paheal) or hosting scanned doujinshi? I don't think so. We're an artist-centered community and I want to stay focused on the artwork created by us and to support the content creators. There already are sites that provide these features and we can share them in the Links section. Hosting those things would also cause a lot more strain on the server, so it's better this way.

I also plan on raising donations for ordering commissions for members to decide on! It'll be fun for everyone plus sharing the resulting artwork through tumblr, e621, etc. is a great way to get our name out there. If Keiko needs any assistance with hosting I'll ask for help in that regard as well - even small amounts would make a difference. There's a method of creating a PayPal account that's anonymous to the people you send money to if that's important to you and I'll help you figure it out.

Alright, I think that's everything! Make a reply here to show your support, let us know you're here, and share any thoughts on the plan. You can also join the nsfw #Digimon chatroom on the FurNet IRC server where myself and a number of Digimon fans talk regularly. I recommend any of the IRC clients from this list here. (IRC can be quiet at times but start talking and others will join you!)

I'm proud to have this opportunity to help out this community I've been watching for so long. From Togashi founding the DaD and Sonimon's Digimon Hentai Zone, the adult Digimon fandom has such a great history and has always been a great place. Digimon Adventure Tri is 6 months away from premiering the first of 6 movies and I'll be right here to keep us running in good shape as Digimon gets even more popular in the future.

Thanks everyone.

[UnknownH]

Hey. It worked.

Anyway, I'd almost like to pune any accounts not needed. I'm thinking anything from 0 to maybe 2 posts. Depending on how many members there are. 24 pages of people with at least 1 post. And over 1K pages of members. First, erase all banned members. Also any posts made in the Spam forums shouldn't count. Or if not needed, if could be erased. That and maybe a few others.

And this is most important, we must keep the old posts. Because. Plus since I'm one of the biggest who hasn't stopped coming here, (because I have nothing else to do) this should be done if we can get it to work. Please.

But glad to see this. I'm a bit surprised it's happening.

[Sophiel]

Good to see a plan coming together; I agree with with most of what's been said. Discussing it a bit with my wife, it seems like moving over to node.js is going to be a rather large task for you - like building it from scratch. However it should perform better and faster than any/most of the popular art sites (in theory). I definitely think user self-posting is definitely the way to go, however this also should go hand in hand with beefing up staff for moderation and other admin duties. With that in mind it's nice to see you reaching out to old staff.

As for the forums themselves, I think Unknown has a good idea. Accounts with very few to no posts should be scrubbed, any banned account should go with them. I think the Spam forum should go too, forum games and similar should be fine in the General Discussion forum. Outright spam just shouldn't be encouraged - that's just my opinion though. The old posts though? Archive them, put them up to be peruse by anyone who wishes, keeping the community's history alive while promoting the formation of a budding community identity for a new site.

[Jaser]

Of the 21,272 registered users 17,546 of them have equal registration and last visit dates, meaning they never signed in again after creating their account. Obviously almost all of them are bots. I'll prune them at the right time but first maybe we should send out an email to all of them, as there are real people behind some of those unused accounts that might still be interested. I held onto this account since 2008 without a post until 2014, and I'm glad it hadn't been pruned. I might've had an older one that was pruned.

Meanwhile I added a security question plugin to the registration page with simple Digimon trivia. We'll see if that stops the bots that are still signing up.

When we transition to totally new server code I'll either import the current data and/or make a mirror/torrent of the old site like the DHZ one. Will the new site perform better than other popular art sites? That depends on more factors than what it's coded in - mainly that they have more and better hardware than we will likely ever have, haha.

Oh and I might as well just ask here: If anyone has access to old accounts related to the DaD please get in contact with me. I don't yet have access to the submission emails like digiartistsdomain @ live.com or older ones, or anything else related like analytics or those banner ads I keep forgetting about. I'm not sure who does anymore, if anyone.

[Lord Patamon]

Well, then time to revive DaD to its former glory :D

[Sophiel]

So yeah, you're right, I should have said the site would perform better on comparative hardware. Regardless, you're still looking at a lot of work. :P

Also, is there not an email address associated with the DaD domain? Seems strange to be using a third party for that. Maybe it was only of submissions though? If not I would suggest in the future that an email address for support/contact be hosted on the domain. Or at the very least using the DaD domain and have it pointed at google or something.

[UnknownH]

As long as the post number stays the same. That's what I care about most. I think I said it up there. Much like Ron Swanson with a Government Hearing, I'd kind of want to get rid of the accounts if we need to get rid of them.
Also I could be bumped up to higher admin status but that's just me messing with you.

[Jaser]

Also, is there not an email address associated with the DaD domain? Seems strange to be using a third party for that. Maybe it was only of submissions though? If not I would suggest in the future that an email address for support/contact be hosted on the domain. Or at the very least using the DaD domain and have it pointed at google or something.

Before the old .com domain was lost they had an email address setup on it, but I guess when they switched to the .org they didn't switch it over. Maybe we could set up through gmail.

Right now I'm considering how we should have lemons look. Reading apps tend to be plain looking to not distract from the text, so here's a test with some controls. The text itself is how its formatted when exported from Google Docs which is why it's on the left instead of centered, but I kinda like that. I don't trust my opinion though, haha. Here's what it looks like when just put into the current layout. I haven't gotten any ideas for a new layout if we want to replace it but stories would look better in a new one probably. What do you guys think of the tests, should lemons be in a separate reader like the first link?

[Jaser]

To-do list:

• Contact staff
  • Who's willing to officially fill each position?
    
• Setup email
  • Seriously, who has access to digiartistsdomain@live.com? Are there old emails there?
    
  • Should we serve from our own host or setup our domain with a third party like gmail?
    
• Design (in the short-term, anyway)
  • Should we stick with the current main site layout or switch it?
    
  • If switching, a new Banner will be needed.
    
  • Should we have a logo and/or icon? I currently just threw the forum's favicon in the header of the lemon viewer.
    
  • I did make a Bootstrap theme with the site/forum's colors to see how that might turn out.
    
• Update the site's pages with new info
  
• Start updating art and lemons again
  • I've added Lazuli's lemons with the new lemon viewer, need more opinions on whether or not the viewer is the way we should go.
    
  • Update all the old stories to the new lemon viewer?
    
  • Are there old emails sitting around we can still update with?
    
  
  
• Mass-email users
  
• Forum changes
  • Prune users (after emailing)
    
  • Rearrange boards if desired
    
• Setup donations for any expenses or community commissions ^.^
  

[Sophiel]

What do you guys think of the tests, should lemons be in a separate reader like the first link?

I think I prefer the separate reader, or at the very least a white background.

The to-do list seems pretty good, I do wish there was something I could something more productive to help than just discuss things.