If it's the Social Groups plug-in I think it is, it was the worst version to ever be made. The implementation of it created the very problem of moving threads between social groups, so when I had to move threads from one group to another because two groups served the same purpose and I wanted to merge them, the social forums were grayed out. I have no reservations in saying I'm glad that garbage is being dumped if it doesn't get along with a XenForo update, especially when the current "rights holder" of the source code of the social groups add-on refuses to update it anytime soon so those communities running the add-on can still keep their forum secure.Why are we doing this, and why now?
Our primary reason for moving away from this feature is to ensure the continued stability and security of this forum and its users.
TCF is built on the Xenforo platform, enhanced with custom graphics (the Terraria styles) and a few third-party add-ons, one of which is for the Social Groups. Re-Logic purchases the licenses for these packages, and relies on official updates to them from the providers to keep the forum running smoothly.
In March 2016, we attempted to perform a fairly routine, recommended upgrade to the base Xenforo package. After several hours of work, we discovered that the Social Group feature no longer functioned at all, the author of the Social Group add-on had sold his "business" to another add-on provider, and the new owners had promptly put the add-on into "Unmaintained" status with no indication that they would ever work on it again. In the interest of getting the forum back up after an already extended outage, we rolled back to the previous version. Social Groups were the only feature that would not update properly.
Fast forward nearly three years later to now, and we are still running on a very outdated version of the forum software, and unable to update because of Social Groups still not being maintained by the provider. It has become crucial that we find a way to move forward with essential upgrades. Failure to do so means that basic features may start to malfunction and break (and some have recently begun to), and that known security holes cannot be patched and may well be exploited. We feel that we must "bite the bullet" now and remove our dependence on this particular feature as soon as possible.
This is where XenForo itself has really failed miserably. Back in the day before XenForo, forums used to have password protection that administrators could use as a quick and simple solution to "opt-in" into viewing content not meant for some people.NON-TERRARIA DISCUSSION GROUPS
Adult Swim - will likely reappear as a sub-forum under Off-Topic, and may be named differently. We will be judicious about what is moved, since there is a significant portion of threads dealing with current events that have since passed. It will remain restricted to serious, possibly volatile topics, and the rules of discussion there will remain pretty much the same. We will investigate an opt in/out system for it, but it likely won't happen right from the start.
I had to manipulate the database to move a hefty amount of threads from one social group to another because on the front-end, it was impossible because of the horrible way the author(s) coded the social groups add-on.Everything that gets 'moved' out of Social Groups will involve a lot of manual, thread-by-thread work by forum staff. There will be some hard choices to be made as to how much gets moved and what gets left behind. Those choices would still have been hard a year ago, fwiw.
If it's the Social Groups plug-in I think it is, it was the worst version to ever be made. The implementation of it created the very problem of moving threads between social groups, so when I had to move threads from one group to another because two groups served the same purpose and I wanted to merge them, the social forums were grayed out. I have no reservations in saying I'm glad that garbage is being dumped if it doesn't get along with a XenForo update, especially when the current "rights holder" of the source code of the social groups add-on refuses to update it anytime soon so those communities running the add-on can still keep their forum secure.
This is where XenForo itself has really failed miserably. Back in the day before XenForo, forums used to have password protection that administrators could use as a quick and simple solution to "opt-in" into viewing content not meant for some people.
The next best idea I can offer (which you may have already thought of) is Usergroup permissions. This too is something XenForo has failed administrators on in 1.x. In the forum software "MyBB," you could set up a group that users can freely join ("public group"), new requests be moderated (but must be a public group), and/or users must be invited (but must be a public group). I believe Woltlab Burning Board 1 and 2 both had this similar feature, I'd have to install them on a private web server and check to make sure. I believe vBulletin 3.x had this feature (haven't checked 4.x or 5.x yet to see if the feature carried over). One of them actually had a team leader, which could handle the "moderation" part of accepting/rejecting users that joined the group.
I had to manipulate the database to move a hefty amount of threads from one social group to another because on the front-end, it was impossible because of the horrible way the author(s) coded the social groups add-on.
As a forum administrator myself, I can relate to the nightmare of trying to find replacement solutions and getting it implemented for your community as painless as possible. It's no easy feat and I wish the entire forum team good luck in the transition of this monstrous task.
hey i wanna join this fourm even tho im on mobile can u plz let me in or tell me how to join my newest project prehard mode goblin invasion farm
Hi there @Oofeee, welcome to the forums.um would it be considered advertising if i put a link to a vid on my YouTube chanal
ripGood day Terrarians,
When Terraria Community Forums (TCF) launched in September of 2014, we debuted a feature called Social Groups.
In the 4 1/2 years since then, Social Groups have been a mixture of success and confusion. Some social groups have been very successful: T-MEC, Adult Swim, and several non-trivial roleplay groups are examples. In other cases, people have seemed to not understand how to use them, the feature has complex privacy/membership rules, and some people just treated them as ordinary threads without making any use of the special features. There is also the annoying quirk that threads cannot be reliably moved into and out of Social Groups.
There are other reasons why we will not be supporting Social Groups moving forward, but before we get into those, we want to make a few things clear.
- Social Groups that are active as of today will continue to work normally for the time being. The date of this post will be the determining date for SG activity.
- The forum staff will be working to transition existing Social Groups to existing sections of the forum, and will create new sections as needed.
- Effective immediately, creation of new Social Groups in all four existing SG sections is suspended.
Why are we doing this, and why now?
Our primary reason for moving away from this feature is to ensure the continued stability and security of this forum and its users.
TCF is built on the Xenforo platform, enhanced with custom graphics (the Terraria styles) and a few third-party add-ons, one of which is for the Social Groups. Re-Logic purchases the licenses for these packages, and relies on official updates to them from the providers to keep the forum running smoothly.
In March 2016, we attempted to perform a fairly routine, recommended upgrade to the base Xenforo package. After several hours of work, we discovered that the Social Group feature no longer functioned at all, the author of the Social Group add-on had sold his "business" to another add-on provider, and the new owners had promptly put the add-on into "Unmaintained" status with no indication that they would ever work on it again. In the interest of getting the forum back up after an already extended outage, we rolled back to the previous version. Social Groups were the only feature that would not update properly.
Fast forward nearly three years later to now, and we are still running on a very outdated version of the forum software, and unable to update because of Social Groups still not being maintained by the provider. It has become crucial that we find a way to move forward with essential upgrades. Failure to do so means that basic features may start to malfunction and break (and some have recently begun to), and that known security holes cannot be patched and may well be exploited. We feel that we must "bite the bullet" now and remove our dependence on this particular feature as soon as possible.
We will have details of the transition plan very soon in the next posts.
its a default! Quick, follow it and shoot your "wanna play terraria w/ me" Ar at it!
Those have now been archived to the Wayback Machine.What will happen to the RP archives?
oh yeah discord is a thingdiscord exists