Copy/pasted the interview for all you non ZNB'ers.
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I sat down with administrator Jeremy from Zetaboards' largest gaming forum, The Bell Tree. Last November, Jeremy confirmed to the Bell Tree community that the forum would be moving from Zetaboards to vBulletin. With the move coming up, Jeremy and I had a short discussion about what to expect and the progress that has been made.
Why did you guys ultimately decide to make the move? More in-depth, what was the major deciding factor for the relocation?
There is just more we can do and control. For example, I wanted to have an in-depth currency system to work like the game the forum is based on. Also, ad revenue will provide motivation to keep the forum going. A lot of ZB admins quit when they run out of motivation and I didn't want to shut it down. I think the power of vBulletin will also help us complete with some of the bigger Animal Crossing forums. We will have potential to take the #1 spot when the next game of the series comes out (which has been announced by Nintendo). I don't think those administrators really care, but I love competition. Haha. The combination of these benefits, as well as a few others, helped us make the decision to move.
The date of the move seems to have gotten a bit moved around, what is the cause of these minor delays?
Well there have been no real delays because I never made an official date. I probably won't make one until a week or two before. It depends where I am with the creation of the new forum. I have finished a large portion of the theme, which is taking me the longest. I knew it would take me a long time because it's one of my least favorite things to do as an admin. I am a perfectionist and I spend hours on small details. About a month ago I got a minor case of carpal tunnel syndrome from working on it all day. But this should turn out to be a really nice theme. The sky in the background will change depending on the user's time, just like in the game. This is done with PHP and it would probably not be possible with Zetaboards to this extent. Eventually it will also change by season, but only the summer/spring theme will be done in the beginning. Creating the theme is the primary time consumer by far.
About what month/day are you aiming for the transition from Zetaboards to vBulletin to take place?
My current goal is the second week of January. Possibly the end of the first week.
Is it frustrating seeing some of your members get a bit impatient when it comes to the move? If so, why?
Not really because that always happens. Since I am a perfectionist, I spend a long time on everything. And procrastination every now and then doesn't help either. I refrained from making an official announcement until recently because I knew it would take a very long time. I purchased the vBulletin software - I can't believe this myself, but - a year ago. A lot of my forum projects throughout the years were never completed. People whined at me the whole time. That was annoying! This is one will be finished though, haha!
What is your biggest concern/fear regarding the relocation?
I would say losing all of our posts and accounts, but we actually figured that one out! I can't believe it's possible, but it is. It takes almost two full days to crawl and download the posts though. There are a lot. I don't really have any major concerns, but I'm sure something could go wrong, who knows.
What has been the most stressful aspect of this entire situation so far?
Making the theme. It has eight different sky backgrounds. Each one took me hours and hours to perfect the gradients, etc. My eyes start burning just thinking about them. Then there is the PHP-like vBulletin coding that changes the theme based on time, which is also pretty complicated. If I wasn't majoring in Computer Science I would be lost on that one. To go back to question number five, my biggest concern is that some people won't like the theme. I've put so much effort into it, it better be good! But hopefully they'd tell me what's wrong so I can make it even more perfect, lol.
What has been a positive aspect of this entire situation?
For me personally, I have been able to express my creativity while designing it. But hopefully the outcome as a whole will be positive!
Are you worried about potential, for lack of a better word, identity stealers taking usernames from people on the new forum that have been used by others on the ZB forum?
Nope. I should have explained more earlier, but it was a recent thing that we discovered. We will be able to transfer users and posts form ZetaBoards. We have to go to SMF, then to vB. The head admin of NSider2, which is the largest Nintendo forum, registered an account here just to tell me about this method. It's funny because I was an admin there in 2007, but we never knew each other and she had no idea that I was an admin. A crawler goes through each post and makes a sql file out of it. You then upload it to phpBB or SMF. Like I said earlier, it takes a long time to get all of that data. So we will only miss out on the days between crawling the forum and the opening of the vBulletin forum. Some of the very large threads (there's two with about 30,000 posts) might not make it. Only one of them made it when I did a test run.
Will The Bell Tree on vBulletin have expanded forums for gaming discussion outside of Animal Crossing?
We will have new subforums for XBox, Playstation, and PC gamers. We might make them full forums if they are active enough. All of our Nintendo subforums will be joined into one.
Is there anything you want to add about your time on the Zathyus Network or in general?
I've been a part of the Zathyus community for six years and I don't like to think of this as leaving. I will always be around the community on various forums. I started this as an InvisionFree forum when I was fourteen and I have made a lot of friends and have picked up a lot of skills. I'd also like to give a shout out to the other admins and mods at The Bell Tree for all their hard work. Thanks to the members for sticking around. And thanks to the readers for being interested in our forum.</div>
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