Would you want Facebook or this Forum as the main forum for discussions?

**erikals** · 02-05-2020, 12:56 PM

i'm not a too big fan of moving to another forum, unless the forum, technically, is Great.
(read; that's Great with a Big "G")

so, i'm so-so about it. NT has to be the one i think, most probably.

**OnlineRender** · 02-05-2020, 01:16 PM

nice design ...

Facebook should never be used to replace an official source, for several reasons but mainly because it's never fully in your control, the same can be echoed regarding discord servers.
it was setup by a fanboy ( I still prefer facebook-god ) and grew exponentially partly due to the neglect of this board and it's community simultaneously.

it's slowing down in terms of members, it's near critical mass and with no direct interaction and marketing from NT(or whomever) it's bottle necked and hitting the wall.
for the people saying it's no good for referencing, it's certainly came along way since it was setup, you can easily create units, save / bookmark posts and the group options are on par with VBulletin (facebook have done a lot of backend stuff)

it has many advantages compared to a forum, interaction, response times, media, viral potential, I could go on... oh search works!

but anybody and their granny could setup a facebook group, that's the easy part!

would you like to know what separated LWiki from the rest... apart from an awesome community and ridiculously talented bunch of people!

it had a community manager, someone constantly monitoring, pushing content, creating content, interacting with it's user on a professional & personal level.
don't get me wrong it certainly had its ups and down, in fact it became the unofficial forum and easily dominated these boards in terms of traffic, content and help (still does)

perhaps that could be its achilles heel.

personally I grew tired of it, it turned into something that I never intended it to be and it became a mental and physical drain, so I gave it back to the community and also made NT in charge.
and two guesses what NT done with! , now this could be down to changes in management, red-tape, or just plain ignorance, who really knows?

what I do know however is I put seven years worth of time and investment and built a solid foundation, which is more than I can say for some people, I could also tell you how one could easily remedy this whole situation in fact i have several times so i am not going to repeat myself any longer, it's a waste of time.

ignorance breeds contempt

**erikals** · 02-05-2020, 01:29 PM

yes, AbandonWare is what i'm afraid of, be it FaceBook or a Forum.

like i said, it has to be controlled by NT, or a large group, like CGsociety, to make sure it stays "Online".

i am not going to repeat myself any longer, it's a waste of time.

yeah, well, at least the limited marketing is "predictable".

**prometheus** · 02-05-2020, 01:54 PM

Originally Posted by erikals

i'm not a too big fan of moving to another forum, unless the forum, technically, is Great.
(read; that's Great with a Big "G")

so, i'm so-so about it. NT has to be the one i think, most probably.

I can understand the reluctance to moving to another forum, the question must then be asked..why?
Is it that you need or want the information regarding the other productline, or basic Newtek/vizrt general information?
Or is if fear of the site going offline? I mean if it still is under vizrt wings ..then I see now reason for that fear.

As for moving the site, as long as all data can be migrateted with search functioning intact, and it being better in UI experience and functionality..why wouldn´t you migrate it, as it is now we already have another site under newtek/vizrt..which is the lightwave3d page, and it sort of makes in more unlocigal to split that software and those resources from a discussion forum related to the very same software.

For the migration if technicly possible with searching intact, we would have the resources more closer gathered, and at the same time it would make it easier for us Lightwave users to deal with the information based under the assumption that Lightwave is what we generally use most.
I reckon there are a few who uses tricaster as well, or more products within the newtek line, together with Lightwave..that could of course pose an issue for them.

Newtek and Vizrt will still be in charge of the whole thing, unless any recent plans show they will sell Lightwave off, it´s just that they will split the sections.

I could se another alternative, that is doing the reverse..and simply migrate the lightwave3d page to be under the domain of newtek forums...But, it just can NOT be in the way it is today..
I think they in such case should think about spliting the forums in a main menu, tricaster forum, lightwave forum..and once entered, the only thing you will see is Lightwave sections, or the other product lines depending on
and not the full product line as it is now, it would be soo much cleaner and will not distract you with bulletin news or post about tricaster or other productlines..and it will work the same from the tricaster members point of view.

This means you can simply bookmark whatever productline forum you mostly visit, and you are there without any other distracting information.

To note, a second thought...the lightwave3d page would probably need to keep it´s domain name for the sake of sales and marketing.

**OnlineRender** · 02-05-2020, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by erikals

yeah, well, at least the limited marketing is "predictable".

there's an element of truth to this, you don't know what game they are playing, could be a long hold and waiting for the market to flag or just taking small gains...
maybe they are happy with their position, marketing is always more than a social media presence

**prometheus** · 02-05-2020, 03:29 PM

Changed main language to English, it seemingly adapted the Global site Swedish settings..even though the template is English from scratch .
Changed setting to show posts instead of categories (just testing) the categories can then be switched within a drop downlist (see the second image) there are sorting options for recent activity,newest most views, most commented, most liked...and there some minor filtering options, it doesn´t provide sorting like days, months etc..but I guess you can´t expect to get it all from a free template or site such as wix, I haven´t looked in to the commercial ones yet.

To note, I added a vimeo video, which hasn´t been working on these forums for quite some time, so let´s test it..as you can see on image 1, my added video from vimeo can be added and played nicely in the post as oppose to these forums, I think it works in blender forum also..but not here for some reason, only youtube vids, would be nice if also images could be displayed directly with higher size than thumb style.
Will look at changing main color to a bit darker next time.

Testing...and Nope...Direct playing of videos from vimeo is still broken...ON THESE NEWTEK FORUMS.

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**ianr** · 02-06-2020, 11:00 AM

Ref: Qexit

meh! Wrong these Days .... behind the curve re-member.

Use up your empty days & help- not quibble!

**prometheus** · 02-06-2020, 11:03 AM

Originally Posted by ianr

Ref: Qexit

meh! Wrong these Days .... behind the curve re-member.

Use up your empty days & help not quibble!

**ianr** · 02-06-2020, 11:29 AM

Prom , luv the work you are doing here with mock-ups, well done!

Maybe send it in to Virzt get a job.

Build a small coding team around you?

Maybe some members could do an across forum help

But should it happen, all should be paid these days.

**Qexit** · 02-06-2020, 11:32 AM

Originally Posted by prometheus

Ian and I don't get along these days since I made a remark about a purchase he made a couple of years ago. Not something you need to worry/think about

**prometheus** · 02-06-2020, 12:10 PM

Originally Posted by Qexit

Ian and I don't get along these days since I made a remark about a purchase he made a couple of years ago. Not something you need to worry/think about

Since I do not know what that is about, I choose to not worry and think about it

makes me think though?.. what use you had for commenting it though..if I as you say should disregard it anyway

**prometheus** · 02-06-2020, 12:13 PM

Originally Posted by ianr

Prom , luv the work you are doing here with mock-ups, well done!

Maybe send it in to Virzt get a job.

Build a small coding team around you?

Maybe some members could do an across forum help

But should it happen, all should be paid these days.

Perhaps...I am yet though only in my diapers regarding web construction, and it´s just pure feeling (and having a good sense of things and getting along with already made page building plugins for the CMS and no coding...often there is a bit more requirements than that, will see..I may start educate myself more on that side, but pure webmaster design isn´t where I want to spend All of the time..will see.

There is also a matter of beleiving in the future for a product and the community...and since there isn´t much communication around it...the only thing that may reveal something of that is the next Lightwave release, and it may be a waste of time and effort to work to hard on all this before I know where it all is heading.