(Also known by its other name: Tenchiforum in Love 2)
Hey there everyone, it’s been almost 3 years since our last big website update, partially because I had every intention of making the “Forever After” update, just that.
But what happens after…forever? Or more importantly, what happens when the “happily ever after” doesn’t happen?
That makes it sound pretty doom and gloom (and it is!) but actually this update is the next evolution of Tenchiforum with a major update.
- Phpbb3 is dead
(to me). The forum is now completely integrated onto the “universe” side of Tenchiforum, complete with all users and topics. The “universe” side of things is now the main site and vice-versa, with a nice, fresh, mobile-ready coat of paint.
There’s an often used anecdote that every 10 years or so, your body has completely shed the cells it had 10 years prior, effectively making you a completely different person (for better or for worse).
Just shy of 10 years ago, Tenchiforum started on old, janky, forum software. Once the “Original” era started, Tenchiforum was proudly built upon phpbb3 for its ease of use, its widely documented community troubleshooting, and yes, it’s customization.
But that was 10 years ago, and while phpbb3 still continues to push into the future, it’s vibrant community has not. In this day and age, with places like Reddit and Discord largely replacing the old forum mindset, the need for a dedicated forum as a social hub has largely declined.
And Tenchiforum is no different, our Discord community just by design has more active members than the stand alone forum ever had. But that’s not the sole reason I made the switch.
In reality, phpbb3 has become an incredible hassle to update and maintain on even the smallest level. The beautiful skin that the universe-side skin was based on simply did not work anymore in 2020, and after going through a meticulous and rigorous troubleshooting process of hours and hours, it finally gave me one last middle finger and I was back at square one. At that point, I decided that I was going about the process wrong.
The only winning move, as the saying goes, is sometimes not to play at all.
Then, when it was announced that Discord was playing around with the idea of NFTs, I realized that if Discord went away and all we had with it, that the forum as it was could not facilitate people moving back to it.
If anything, this is Tenchiforum at its “purest”. The whole process is easier for everyone involved, it works on mobile out of the gate, and while their are still some adjustments to be made, it’s light years ahead of where it was.
Goodbye phpbb3, the future is now.
Some quick notes for those returning.
You will need to reupload an avatar to your profile.
A small number of users will need to change their email address due to the merger of old phpbb3 accounts, I’ll be messaging you personally.
Among the many new features, users who can verify your account with me via Discord will get a checkmark next to your name on the forum.
The 7th chapter in the Book of Tenchiforum begins.