None of your other threads have been deleted, neither will this one.
This website offers all the support anyone needs and in addition developers themselves hang around.
Nitpicky point: isn’t the logo part of the project and therefore covered by the GPL? Wouldn’t that make it free for anyone to use as long as they in turn made it freely available?
I’m actually more curious how Josh thinks this will work. How will his goals be realized by moving somewhere else.
You can make as many forums as you want. The developers are rather limited, though. 😉
Anonymous
Many softwares have unofficial sites and offshoots that complement and grow the community. InvisionBoard and Movabletype are examples but the unofficial sites weren’t started in frustration.
An unofficial forum is not a bad or even novel idea but it will stand on its merits or fall by the wayside. I’d love to see something more like the Movabletype homepage that shows ‘latest updated blogs’ or better links to other WordPress resources, skins etc….
If WordPress doesn’t do it someone else will. Complementary sites made with goodwill can grow the community. The last thing WP needs is attitudes or sites that split the community. Choice of forum software is not an issue to get your knickers in wad over.
I can’t wait to see the great WP related support sites that are to come.
My own gut feeling is the WordPress community, while having outgrown the capacities of this forum tool, is not big enough to sustain an entire other board and probably never will be. Where does this assumption that our aim is ‘growing the community’ come from? WordPress is about quality, not quantity.
WillM : The requirements clearly state a link back to WP as one of the requirements. But then again, thats mentioned as being applicable to using the blogging tool.
The new forum is not exactly a WP installation. So the creators of WP still have some ethical rights over the brand, and the symbols, I guess. The least one can do is to honor their feelings 🙂
I think if Joshua was really trying to pass off his board as the offical one he wouldn’t have put ‘Unofficial’ in the title of this thread. A user would have to be quite stupid to mistake the new board for the official site.
Lots of us have buttons on our sites with the WP logo on it, or have our weblogs in a /wordpress directory meaning that wordpress is in our URL. Should we change them too to honour the ‘ethical rights’ of this site?
There is no harm intended to the creators of wordpress, or to this forum. What I aim to do is to complement this site, not replace it. By the way, the title of the site is unofficial wordpress forums. I just haven’t changed it in all the locations yet. And the graphic will change. The one I am using now is only temporary. In the meantime, I’ll go ahead and create one that makes it more obvious that the forum is unofficial.
The reason I didn’t have a link to wordpress.org is because I didn’t want to make it sound like wordpress.org was MY homepage. I have added a link on the forum page now.
I am also adding links to important wordpress resources on this site.
Joshua,
I wish you good luck in your forums. No harm in offering people choices. I’m of the opinion that while I don’t care for miniBB per se, I’d rather be where the devs are. That’s not to say that your forums won’t be a valuable asset in and of themselves.
WillM,
As far as the GPL and such goes, while the software is free, and anyone can use, alter, or add to the code, there are still rights to an original code that is called “WordPress.” The GPL doesn’t surrender all rights. You can’t alter the code totally and then distribute it calling it “WordPress” as well. You would have to assert that your software was “based upon WordPress.
Regardless, Joshua or anybody else has the right to go ahead and create whatever forums they wish — and as Joshua mentioned, the users will decide for themselves where the best information is to be found.
This forum is not stagnant. It has evolved, and will continue to do so over time. Some people are simply not prepared to wait for it to happen, though, so this is why unofficial sites are set up.
As I said before, I wish you good luck in your endeavor, Joshua.
To clarify an unrelated point and let it rest, the code that makes up WordPress the product is licensed under the GPL. The HTML, CSS, graphics, etc of wordpress.org are not licensed under the GPL.
I think miniBB serves its purpose as needed. With all the different categories… everything is nicely organised already. And with search… you have everything that you need.
And what more… you have the developers.
Some anonymous person above posted about unofficial sites. And I totally agree. If you want to help out…. there are certain sections on THIS site that can and should be developed. Somebody who can help 100% devoted on the documentation… and especially LINK TO HACKS.
if admin doesn’t agree when u want to help… then I guess sure… go ahead and develop and unofficial fan site or something. 😉
mage111 – user style sheets. Allows you to overwrite a site’s style sheet with one from your browser. The trick is to get it to target just this site.
mage111,
As Stevarino says, using your own user style sheet may be the way to go. The Web Developer Toolbar and Firefox browser allow the easy use of just this thing. Just a suggestion!
Thanks for the support, to those of you that offered it. Once again, I would like to state that I just started this out of my own obsession of WP. It’s an awesome program. The developers just spend the bulk of their time working on WP rather than develping the forums, which is a good thing. But I think a lot of us would want them to spend at least a little bit of time making the forum easier to use, and more feature rich. It’s become clear that they are not going to do this, hence the need for a 3rd party to create a better community. Just to let you know, you should be able to access the site via it’s new URL very soon.
http://www.wp-forums.org
