Re: IMPORTANT PEASE READ: The Future of Nabble and this Forum

Posted by Darel Leedy on Aug 11, 2021; 8:41pm
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/IMPORTANT-PEASE-READ-The-Future-of-Nabble-and-this-Forum-tp16897p16899.html

Hi Jim,

I've been worried about the whole site just disappearing someday too. Nabble is a labor of love for its developer. He has considered just pulling the plug in the past but really doesn't want to abandon everyone.
I have continuously performed backups, so as long as the new server works it should come back up but with a new address. The problem I see is that all the previous messages (posts) within the forum will still have the old address and may not work anymore. We shall see. But you are right on to start saving anything you want as soon as possible just in case!

Here is a not so encouraging note from the developer a few months back leading up to todays server migration. Keep in mind he is the programmer/developer who wrote all the code for this discussion platform:

"Nabble is not profitable.  Google AdSense is paying less and isn't covering costs. I may just shut down most of Nabble.  But since I personally use Nabble, I will keep one Nabble server.  In this case, anyone who wants to stay on Nabble can have their forum migrated to this server.

Nabble has no future.  I had planned to write new forum software to replace Nabble, but I don't have the time.  If anyone is interested in working with me on new forum software, I am open to this.  I will describe what I have in mind.

Nabble's scripting system is NAML.  I wrote this and I consider it a failure.  It is too complicated.  I realized that a simple high-level scripting language is better, so I wrote one called Luan.  I have been using this language for years to develop various business websites.  This language is a success in the sense it that is very easy to program websites with it.  (It isn't popular, only I use it.  But that is no reflection on quality since humanity generally has extremely poor taste.)

Another weakness of Nabble is it is one program running for everyone.  This means that when I do an update, everyone is updated and this can break people's customizations.  But with a forum written in Luan, each forum could have its own source and control its own updates.

And finally, the future of the web is social.  Nabble isn't social.  Social forums make it much easier for people to find your forum.  So a new forum software should be social.  The obvious social forum today is Reddit.  Besides being a typical intolerant politically correct Silicon Valley tyranny, Reddit is generally a poorly designed forum.  It isn't nearly as customizable as traditional forum software.  So the best of both worlds would be a fully customizable forum that is also social like Reddit.

If anyone is interested in working with me on this, please let me know.  But I won't hold my breath and most likely no one will respond.  In this case, those looking for a forum platform with a future should look elsewhere."