UtaForum 4.0 Kickstarter!

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Hey everyone, we have some big news tonight. To be honest, the staff and I hadn't entirely planned to work through this for a little while longer, but the recent troubles with MyBB and the crash helped us to make our final decision on what direction we want to take UtaForum.

Hentai's explanation below is far more detailed than mine and describes the chain events that led to this decision, but in light of MyBB's troubles, we the staff have decided it's time for a change... and that change this time will be to a more stable and secure commercial forum software: Xenforo.

But in truth, we need YOUR help in order to do this!

We have started a Kickstarter project in order to raise the needed funds for the switch. The final goal is $200, which will cover the Xenforo software license, an important upgrade, as well as any excess fees Kickstarter will withhold at the end.

Full details can be found on the project page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2019000933/utaforum-40

Any amount helps! We truly appreciate it.

 

[Hentai]

RE:

This will be a bit of a wall of text but I figured it was best to give some background that lead us to this point.

I am sorry to have kept you all in the dark but seeing as it has come to this I figured we may as well start from the beginning. Back in late March/early April UtaForum suffered a fit of downtime. You may remember this being back when we lost the AJAX Chat for a week and it came back without all our fancy styling.

This was the first of many signs that our MyBB install was less than stable. Part of the reason was because it had been hacked extensively to add new features, part of it was our bloated MySQL database +500mb big, and the last of it being our version was 3 revisions out of date because all of the above made our forum unwieldy and hard to update.

It is at this point that the staff and I started looking into MyBB alternatives. In past we tried almost every free forum script out there. We did phpBB trials back when we were powered by ZetaBoards, UtaForum 3.0 was powered by SMF, and our current iteration was MyBB before it recently failed. With free options exhausted or having poor support the staff began looking toward commercial forum software.

We did trials on all the major scripts before finally deciding that XenForo was the proper choice. There wasn't a real sense of urgency, I had figured that MyBB could hold out for a while yet and with XenForo of course being a commercial script none of the staff had the cash to front the money we needed to go ahead with the project.

Needless to say the recent loss of our mybb_posts table accelerated our plans a little. When it became clear that our downtime would be more than just a short intermission and I wasn't sure what I might be able to recover the UtaForum 4.0 was taken off the back burner and the staff immidately began thinking of what our options were and if we were going to use a commercial script how we would raise the money.

Ultimately Kickstarter was what was decided. IndieGoGo simply didn't allow funding goals as small as ours and other crowdfunding sites didn't have the same "all or nothing" style crowdfunding that Kickstarter/IndieGoGo had. This all or nothing style of crowdfunding was important because we did not want to collect any money unless we were sure we had enough to licence everything we need.

Ultimately the result of our deliberations was the Kickstarter Myst posted. This wasn't the ideal solution, but it was the best option we had available. I hope you will support our crowd-funding efforts and make UtaForum 4.0 a reality.

Sincerely,
- Hentai

 

[Fawkesy]

RE:

I'll try to donate some money next time I get paid~

 

[Hentai]

RE:

Even if you can not donate money. For example have gotten several inquiries about how Kickstarter doesn't support PayPal.

Just because you can't back us doesn't mean you can't help! Share it with you friends, your family, your Skype groups, on Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram whatever. Post it to all the social media and share it with anyone who you think might be interested.

Every little bit helps, $1, $5, or beyond, the sooner we get fully funded the sooner action can be taken. If we can get to the $200 minimum and lock in the Kickstarter's success a lot more options open to us in the future.

 

[shinami]

RE:

I'll probably throw $25-50 at it tomorrow or something. Actually maybe just throw in $5 every few days so it builds up. While I'm very lazy with UTAU, never complete projects, run from social media commitment (my YouTube email is bloated, my Deviantart is tens of thousands of messages…), and don't finish my tutorials, it's a hobby I always have up in the background. Utaforum is awesome and important for the community, especially those running from their huge inboxes and years of site neglect. Gosh I really just need to make a new Deviantart altogether.

Really cool to see you guys in IRL video, very different from the pictures put waaaay back in the Your Real Face thread!

(And ahahah I can determine several themes with such a donation, such power, who shall I choose…?)

 

[stormylullaby]

Just backed! I can't give too much, but I'm supporting this as much as I can!

 

[orahi_shiro]

You all already need a trophy for this Kickstarter video! X'D

I'm also trying to share this initiative via everything ('cause I still don't have any credit card) to make people know and back it. Good luck! >u</

 

[Hentai]

With the Kickstarter progressing well thanks to many of your generous contributions one of the things we will have to decide is when we move to XenForo what data we want to take with us.

I went ahead and made a poll/thread and would appreciate your feedback on the matter. Should we rollback to April and take everything? Should we take only the current usersnames/logins? Or should we damn it all and start anew?

Vote and share your thoughts on the poll thread.

 

[Hentai]

RE:

For those of you that can't make monetary contributions beyond sharing us now why not lend us your voice on ThunderClapIt?

<iframe frameborder='0' height='540px' src='https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/13243-utaforum-4-0-feat-xenforo/embed' width='250px' style="margin: 0 auto"></iframe>

ThunderclapIt lets you back a project, cause, or idea using your Twitter, Facebook, & Tumblr followers. After approving their app it makes it so everyone shares the article and tags all at once, so you get greater outreach for your message.

https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/13243-utaforum-4-0-feat-xenforo

 

[samth1815]

RE:

I think I'm gonna donate $25, just a bit over half of what I have saved up for a new VOCALOID. I am still quite new to UTAForum, but it has been a wonderful community to be a part of so far and I am really looking forward to the new version, I think it's gonna be great!

---

Wow, only 3 of us have done the Thunderclap and we already have a social reach of 2,000! This is AMAZING!!!

 

[Scottei]

RE:

I donated! Really excited for 4.0.

 

[Xuu]

RE:

I'll see if I can donate... *counts money*

 

[Dorel]

RE:

I can't believe it was all a DDOS attack fault, I really don't understand why attacking on a peaceful community like this x.x
I'll try my best to spread the word around! Hope this helps! I'll try to donate too something!

 

[shinami]

RE:

Starting my slow money build up, will donate $5 every now and then until I build up $40-50. Excited for those stretch goals uhu~

And whoo! We hit over $200 with fifteen people so far! but stretch goals yes

 

[MystSaphyr]

RE:

Thanks everyone! Our campaign has already hit its goal within a day!! Thank you so much oh my goodness;;

But yes, as shinami said, now it's onto the stretch goals! It'd be great to improve upon UtaForum with the transition and there's a lot of cool plugins Hentai and I have our eyes on to do just that~

 

[samth1815]

RE:

I haven't even donated yet omg

It's amazing that you raised $200 in just one day! That's a lot of money!


I am certainly gonna donate even though the goal has been hit, some of these stretch goals seem awful nice!

 

[shinami]

RE:

Dang and we're already creeping close to the stretch goals!

Maybe I won't invest more since it looks like everyone else is participating actually! Yay community support!
plus i need to save up for lolita skirts and renaissance festivals upcoming
I'm wondering what you guys are going to do when we blow past the stretch goals. XD

 

[na4a4a]

RE:

I believe may not be able to fund the campaign in time before it's end, would it be possible to donate in any way afterwards?

 

[Agatechlo]

I can't believe it was all a DDOS attack fault, I really don't understand why attacking on a peaceful community like this x.x
I'll try my best to spread the word around! Hope this helps! I'll try to donate too something!

I've witnessed in real-time a DoS attack on my mail server. A mail server w/only 3 accounts & 1 actual user!!! Some people just don't have anything better to do than simply be indiscriminately hateful & destructive.

 

[Hentai]

I can't believe it was all a DDOS attack fault, I really don't understand why attacking on a peaceful community like this x.x

DDOS wasn't actually on UtaForum, it was one of my clients, one of several that help subsidize the VPS's $500/yr hosting bill.

Said client was a member of a major international trade union who is having an election this summer. Opposing campaign is less than ethical and of course they will do what they can to suppress my clients message, including but not limited to spreading lies and DDOSing their site so they couldn't immediately respond.

I have since hardened the server to such action implementing new firewall rules and passing the election website through Cloudflare which between their DNS filters and our new firewall settings should be enough to prevent most casual DDOS attacks.