When looking for a forum RPG, is the host important for your choice?

Curses to peoples DIY sites that became known as personal home pages. Because of those, the great script PHP that once stood for freedom and just... oops sorry, got off track, Personal Home Page had to be changed to a recursive acronym: PHP: HyperText Preprocessor. Quite the mouthful, all because of DIY websites back in the day.

 

I think I tend to think of proboards as sort of antiquated and jcink/invisionfree as "newer and cleaner" with jcink being my favorite of the free sites... All that being said, I also tend to feel like a snob for feeling that way, and I try to check out all sites. But I have found that proboards site often don't have as many options for sub accounts, pretty boards, etc. I have really bad eyes, so having a readable board is important to me.

 

For myself, I always use SMF boards that I host on my own site ( I run my own web hosting). I answer to no one, and therefore have the ability to offer what I want to our members. I've found SMF boards are the best, all round, and have many perks to add on, most of them free!

As far as the hosting .. for years I went the invisionfree route, and did boards on their servers. Never again!

 

I'm afraid I've been made bitter against jCink and IF due to the... snobbery towards proboards. Maybe it might sound daft but I sometimes feel like I shouldn't give jCink chance when so many jCink people refuse to offer the same courtesy towards proboards. I'm being honest here, though I don't often admit it. I also tend to find jCink rps more easily falling into 'clique'-ey behaviour.

 

Honestly, the first thing I look at on a website is the ease of readability and format of the forum. If these two things aren't up to par then the whole thing is off. As long as I can rp with some good mechanics that's fine. But I have found that many proboard sites are a bit to my disliking and I often try to find faults in them sometimes.

 

It's definitely important to me. Most forums I can handle, but Jcink is definitely my favorite.

 

Site design is one of the most important elements for me. I like clean, easy to navigate sites that aren't saturated in a lot of disrupting images and whose fonts and colors are easy to read. I've never been a host snob per se, but I grew up on Ezboard, Invisionfree and IPB, and now MyBB. Jcink doesn't look too bad most times but I am turned off when I see small avatars and default postbits.

 

It's important that's for sure, some boards have strict TOS. But I like jcink. Price is right.

 

Jcink is definitely my go-to because I prefer the interface over everything else out there. Still, the RP itself, as well as its design, are the most important things to me, so I wouldn't necessarily look away from a site I was interested in if it was hosted somewhere else~

 

I'm more concerned with the boards content, activity and the kind of members who are on it than the host. If I see interaction on the boards I don't like, or if most of the members are interested in writing smut than other kinds of rp, then I won't feel comfortable there. I think how the community functions is more important than the host. (As for commitment, I think the maturity of the admin and staff regarding their behaviour is an indication of that.)

Having been on Jcink, though, I probably won't bother with joining them as a player unless the site really catches my interest because I find editing posts to be a problem. I don't know if others have experienced it, but I find if I edit a post, the bbcode in it is broken and I do not want to spend a long time correcting it so it displays properly.

 

Doesn't matter what the forum's host is, what matters is the story and canon. Canon's gotta be true to the genre the story is based in.

 

Bingo! Best darn forum host out there if you can pay for it and it isn't that costly either. I've been on Jcink and Nova, neither of them are up to scratch these days. Icyboards and MyBB are reasonable, but in the end as ^ Dragonwriter said, its the content that matters most.

 

I'm generally not bothered between jcink, proboards, and mybb - they're all fine. I steer clear from phpBB just because I always see those boards absolutely flooded with spambots. I haven't had a lot of experience with SMF so I can't say.

I don't really need a lot of bells and whistles. I don't use doHTML or anything. Account switcher and alerts are nice, but that's about it really.

 

when hosting, only JCINK will do. Even with the DDoS attacks.

 

I have never seen a proboards site that aesthetically pleased me. In fact, the only time I have is jcink. Also, the fact jcink offers sub accounts, which is something proboards has NEVER offered, is a plus in my column.

 

I'd honestly say no. The biggest and most immediate deciding factor when looking to join a new site is usually the rules for me. If there are rules that prevent me from doing the things I want or rub me the wrong way that's going to be what turns me away immediately.

For example, if I thought I could play a character I was passionate about and then realized it wasn't going to work--or if the rules hint at an environment that's going to be hostile towards me. For example: As much as I enjoy the idea of characters being able to die, a rule stating "Don't complain if you die" tells me a lot more about the environment than just "You might die." Or if I see rules excluding specific fandoms for no specific reason. "Yo here's a list of all the fandoms I think are trash."

After the rules though, it's all about my ability to integrate with the community. And after that, it's the actual mechanics of joining and playing along.

As for Proboards vs JCink vs whatever else, I honestly couldn't care less. Proboards is a nicer experience as an end-user in my experience, but really as long as the layout doesn't get me lost and strain my eyes I'm cool with whatever.

 

As a writer, I don't have a preference, but the vast majority of sites I've joined have been on Jcink. I really do love the sub-account feature and the alert system there works well for me. Plus I find that most aesthetically-pleasing boards are on Jcink. But that's not a dealbreaker if I particularly like a game.

As a game owner, I only use Jcink just because I'm so familiar with that system already. I don't have to put much effort into coding a new site and working with all the features. If I was building a game with someone and they wanted to use a different platform, I wouldn't be opposed, but I would be hesitant.

 

I personally tend to find that Jcink sites have layouts with bad colour design and small fonts - but I think that is largely because Jcink is around in higher quantities than other sites, so the shitty layouts are more likely to crop up.

I used SMF for years, and love seeing sites that make the most of it, but I recently migrated to MyBB and couldn't be happier! I would honestly join any forum if it was right -- no tiny text, and uses sub-accounts primarily. The rest is things I can usually work without, but prefer not to.

 

I like playing on what I'm familiar with and that's JCINK. So when I look for a site, I always choose one that's on JCINK.

 

I've stuck mostly to enjin forums for gaming related things, but jcink for roleplaying. I'm more comfortable with it's layout and I've not seen any sites I like that are on other types of hosts. Jcink has everything, I'm content with so far!