Originally published at: Community Forums to be archived - QuickBox.IO
Quick summary, TLDR;
The Community Forums, also coined as our Community Plaza, are scheduled for archiving. We will be signaling a close to the Forums as of Wednesday, March 3, 2021.
A little history
The QuickBox Community Plaza was first launched in early May of 2016. The Plaza acted as a means for community gathering, support, information in regards releases, feature requesting, and so much more! They were the dynamic presence behind what was at the time a static website for the QuickBox Community Edition.
During the time of launch till now they served a great purpose and offered a wealth of information to those looking for answers on various software as well as general Linux tips and tricks and best practices. They have been filled with some goldmine topics and have been a bridge in the community and loads of long lasting friendships were forged within their pages.
So why close them down?
After all these years it has been more and more evident that they are not nearly as active as they used to be, nor are they are as crucial to the initial purposes that they were first set forth to address.
As we edge closer and closer to QuickBox Pro v3 we are going to be in high gear to get our Knowledge Base more primed by publishing many more articles on the ins and outs of various software supported and operations performed within the scope of the QuickBox Pro Software. To keep information relevant and things less confusing (as a great deal of the info found relates to the Community Edition), we have decided to archive the Plaza to be a read-only source of information.
Our Discord is especially active and currently has taken the torch in regards to the purpose of a place for the community to come together and discuss common practices, getting live support, just having general chit chat, and getting updates on current developments. With that said, Discord has become the de facto for the members of our community and as such, the forums have gone a bit stagnant. It is mainly in this respect we have decided to close them down.
Since we also have an onsite Priority Ticket system in place our members with active subscriptions or Lifetime keys as well as the various services we offer, the forums have long since taken a back seat to the more preferred and recommended way of getting prompt, timely, world-class support!
As you can see, there are a lot of reasons why we have come to decide that the Forums are no longer an essential part of our daily routine. By archiving the forums it gives staff the ability to put all focus in areas that are currently preferred and less time worrying about moderating a forum. This will allow more time to work on areas of interest within the website itself (think Knowledge Base and Priority Support).
Are they going away for good?
The Community Forums are not going to be erased from the wilds of the internet as they do still have some solid information in regards to the Community Edition (to which we’ll talk about that more another day). However, there will no longer be options to login to the forums and create new posts and content. They are simply being archived into a read-only state.
Should there ever be an interest from the community to have such a thing brought back, we will certainly consider it.
What about content relating to Pro?
Though there are some topics that are still relevant to the current iteration of QuickBox Pro, a great majority of the information found is solution based to older versions of QuickBox Pro, to which a lot of the commands and functions have completely changed and are no longer valid.
With the information that is still valid for the current iteration of QuickBox Pro as well as the next v3, we’ll be working hard well after the launch of v3 to port that data into our Knowledge Base. This will better serve our Pro members by giving a dedicated and verified source of information without giving conflicting details that could either potentially break and/or just simply not work in our current releases. Again, it’s for the best!
Wrapping it up
We have loved the forums and they have through all these years served their purpose with great effectiveness. They have been a source of knowledge and friendship, but as time moves on and technologies evolve we tend to follow the trend of our users. We strive to make things easier and though we love the option (we’re all about options!), it’s another resource that we’ve had to manage and invest a lot of time into when that time can be better served elsewhere.