*crawls out from under the damp sysadmin rock*

First of all, thank you all for your patience and support during this forum move.
Your staff has spent an enormous amount of time and effort getting things up and running again!

As you might know, the phpBB3 forum was using up a lot of resources, requiring us to pay for a really expensive server.
The myBB forum allows for easier upgrades, more stable plugins and a lot more performance.
Now we are running the system in something the equivalent of an eighties calculator and it's still fast.

Briefly scanning through your questions I have compiled this FAQ-type list.
Feel free to ask if something is not on the list, I will edit this post as more stuff gets fixed (or broken, for that matter)

Forum availability
- We have opened up the search, which was completely unusable in phpBB3 (it basically blocked forum access for everyone while a search was done)
- We have enough resources to open the forum read-only for non-members

General
- Your password might not work. Resetting your password should fix this
- Mail from the forum might end up in the spam folder, as we now use a gmail account
- The forum redirects to 188.166.126.212, as we are having some issues getting our domain name pointing to the right place. Within a few weeks this will be back to neoarkcradle.net
- Avatars are a different size, I tried converting them, but they get all skewed
- If you have some heirloom avatar that has been in the family for centuries and can't be found anymore, let me know and I'll try to dig it up from the backups
- I am really disappointed the downtime was not used to sleep or go outside

Posts
- [spoiler] and [url] BBCodes have been fixed
- [strike] is still not fixed everywhere, but is on my TODO-list
- Postlinks and smileys look like poop. This needs to be fixed in the database and requires an extensive amount of testing to make sure none of your prose gets zapped in the process.

Tapatalk
- Tapatalk is upgraded to work with the new forum
- A pretty picture is still missing (as it was with the old forum)
- If tapatalk does not work, log in again, your old credentials are linked to the old forum

  Shadow

Hi everyone!

As I noted earlier, users may have problem logging in to the forum. Some can just fine with their old passwords, others can't login even after a password reset.

The cause behind this is a plugin converting your old phpBB password into MyBB's format, but it seems the plugin dun goofed for some reason and convert when it doesn't have to.

Shadowfang has looked into the matter. If your login stops working/doesn't work, please request a new password via Log In -> Forgot Your Password. If you don't see your password reset email, check your Spam folder. That should do it now and you'll be able to log in.

If anyone is still experiencing an issue, shoot us an email using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of the forum page.

Hello everyone!

No, this is not the forum going Sawatari on you.

This thread is technically made way before the forum going back up, I'm just preparing in advance.

Welcome to the new -and hopefully more enjoyable- version of Neo Ark Cradle! This is us running on a different host as well a different forum software, MyBB. I have spent most of the downtime setting up the base forum as well as manually carrying over settings such as forum bans which did not carry over via migration.

This is just a bare bones setup, we went for stability first to ensure everything is up and running. Now that is done. Adjustments and additions (such as themes and bug fixes) are coming up later on. For now, just look around, check out the User CP and stuff.

To start with the bad:

• Avatars have to be reuploaded. The new requirements are maximum 150x150 pixels, maximum size 100 KB.
  
• Subscriptions are gone. So you'll have to resub to your favorite threads.
  
• BBCode are broken, such as spoiler tags. Shadowfang is already working on a fix, but has stated it's not happening this week. You can choose to fix the formatting in your posts, or wait for Shadowfang's fix.
  
• Smileys are gone, leaving only the default MyBB smileys. Certain smileys will come back for usage, certain ones will not (looking at you, rage meme faces). I'm going to look into a smiley set or two and see which one you guys'd like to use. I was thinking we could use more modern ones or something.
  
• I have unfortunately nuked half of the forum rules. I don't know how it happened, my post was intact and fine before editing... may have been a last minute accidental select all + deleting due to being nigh-asleep while pulling this all-nighter. I don't have the willpower and energy to fix this, so I am leaving this to the rest of the staff to clean up. Sorry, guys. Well, sorry everyone, really. We'll get it back ASAP.
  

• We have potential for nicer themes that helps us look more attractive than an unsightly 90's website. I'll be honest, our selection on the previous forum was pretty shitty due to mods being too based on the themes rather than being more or less separate. I'm glad to be able to move on to something better without being limited in options.
  
• Reputation is back! You can now give reputation to those informative or hilarious posts you wanted to thank, but didn't want to just post "Thanks". To avoid drama and complications, the reputation system is strictly positive reps only (no neutral or negative) and you can give out 15 reputation per day (i.e., rep 15 posts). The amount of reputation given doesn't stack with amount of reputation one has - everyone gives 1 reputation point regardless of their own.
  
• Double posting should be no longer an issue as the forum auto merges posts made after each other.
  
• Working email. The previous forum webmail was extremely difficult if not impossible to manage and get around. There were probably emails and inquiries that have been missed - but it shouldn't be that issue anymore.
  
• PM inboxes can hold way more PMs now as they have been set up properly now.
  
• The reply editor is way better than the basic one we had on phpBB.
  
• BBCode will have to be worked on and such, but we have a way better video tag that can import videos not just from Youtube.
  
• Our search function actually WORKS. Go ahead and try it out!
  

Hi everyone!

The forum migration to MyBB and our new host will start from Saturday 7:00 PM CET (Central European Time). During this time, the forum will be unavailable and you will not be able to browse or post. We will aspire to set up the forum in its new place ASAP, but at latest the forum will be online by 7:00 AM CET on Sunday.

For converting this time into the timezone of your choice, please check here: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html">http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html</a><!-- m -->

To summarize, expect the following to happen after the forum is back up:

- Everyone's posts will stay intact. No posts will be deleted.
- Private Message Inbox categories will be lost (e.g., "Inbox 1" "Inbox 2") but the PMs themselves will remain intact. You will be able to find them all in your inbox as normal, albeit piled together.
- BBCode will be most likely broken. Please back up any code sensitive posts and edit them manually after the forum is back to fix breakage. Shadowfang suggested the possibility of using a script to fix the broken BBCode in retrospect, but we'll have to see.
- Post timestamps might be out of sync. This is harmless and should sort itself out.

About Warnings

Due to the changes in the infraction/warning system, everyone's current warnings will be reset to zero and will be able to start fresh. However, Temporary and Permanent Bans will not be erased and will be set accordingly in the new forum as well.

Hi everyone!

This post serves as a summary, clarification and continuation of this announcement, more or less:
<!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://neoarkcradle.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4319">viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4319</a><!-- l -->

After roughly 4 years, it came to that NAC can no longer function with its current hosting, which costs Shadowfang roughly 60+ euros (~$68+). Starting next month, in order to reduce such costs, we are moving to another service. Furthermore, we're ditching phpBB as a forum software and going to migrate MyBB. Not only it has more and better tools for us staff members, but we also feel the software would be more user friendly to members as well. Some of the changes to expect, good and bad:

- Avatar sizes will be scaled back to 150 x 150.
- Custom usertitles are once again available!
- Better themes. PhpBB's themes intervene with mods, which made proper theme and mod choice a pain in the ass. We are hoping the theme we picked for MyBB will be more for your liking!
- Better moddability.
- BBCode will break horribly, including video tags and signatures, especially links. I advise everyone to redo their signature and back up their link heavy posts and redo those as well once the code is sorted out.
- A better infraction system which should allow us to dish out offenses more fairly (i.e., offenses have different levels of severity now) instead of every offense being equal on a strike based system.
- The current banner will unfortunately not be on the MyBB themes, because we've yet to figure out where we could insert the banner. I'm the only staff who's more technically minded barring Shadowfang, but unfortunately I'm not too good with CSS.


For us staff, the benefits are the following, for the sake of transparency:

- More settings in the ACP to customize the forum and permissions better.
- The aforementioned warning system.
- Modding with MyBB seems to be better and not as pain in the ass as phpBB. While we still don't want to go mod-happy for the sake of stability, we do have a little leeway now on what we can do and do not.

Furthermore, the forum will be running only on donations from this point (unless someone offers to be a sugar daddy/mommy), which makes everyone's help important and valuable. Our estimated hosting cost won't be too high for starting out (~$15), so that goal hopefully won't be that hard to reach. Without money to pay the hosting, NAC will shut down and we won't be able to provide you information or grounds for discussion. If we end up with excess money, we will use that for future hosting costs, as well as paying back to Shadowfang, as he's done a lot for us by paying out of his pocket to keep the site up.

This should not affect the download forum, it will be available as before.

If anyone has any questions or concerns about the move, MyBB, the hosting or any other changes please don't hesitate to post here. We're willing to hear out everyone.

As a note: If you're expecting any sort of April Fool's gags from the Staff, uh.

Ary's been busy and never planned anything.

Mako's made no mention of it.

And I personally abhor April Fool's like a massive wet blanket, so...

There seems to be confusion of why TerrorKing was ultimately banned. Contrary to some people's beliefs, he was not ultimately banned for his criticism of Arc-V. What happened was:

• One of our members reported the post for basically being inflammatory/trolling/trying to stir up trouble.

• MystikX took the report sent to us via the member and examined the post.

• Having noticed behavior in previous threads, TerrorKing was warned for what was judged by him (Mystik) to be inflammatory behavior (yes he was criticizing but he was judged on past behavior to be doing it specifically to give everyone else on the forum a hard time and a less enjoyable experience, rather than to engage in civil conversation with his fellow peers.)

• Because TerrorKing had accumulated two prior warnings within the last two months, he reached his third warning.

• Our forum has a six strikes system. Here's how it works:
* The First Two Warnings are basically to ask you guys to reflect on behavior. We will try to PM members civilly first to clear up the air, but if behavior repeats, we give out warnings.

* Upon the third warning, a member will be denied access (i.e. banned) to the forum for one day.

* If they accumulate a fourth warning, said member gets a week off from being allowed to join.

* If they get a fifth, we remove the member from access for a month.

* If a member is unlucky enough to accumulate 6 warnings in one year (i.e. 365 days), they will be permanently denied access to Neo Ark Cradle as a member under current policy.

• As a note to the above, if you use an alternate account/VIP/etc. to get around your ban, our policy is to ban the offending alternate account for allowing the member evasion of their bans, and permanently ban the original account. This is true even for the one day ban.

So ultimately, TerrorKing was basically told to sit out for a day. If he wishes to return and contribute positively to the forum, he is more than welcome. If he does not, that is his choice.

Any questions?

Hello everyone!

Unfortunately our hosting has come to a point where our Site Owner can no longer keep up the site by himself, and has to look into options for free hosting. On the flip side, that means NAC has gotten quite big, so there's that to feel good about!

We have approximately a month to go until we have to make a decision.

The crutch of the decision, however, are the Download Forums.

We cannot have donations and/or ads with such a section, as that would mean we'd be profiting from such material (regardless of the reason for our money making), making us a bright, hot target for C&D. On the other hand, free hosting may come with its own issues and it may not be enough to hold our capacity. (Meaning possible slow load times, downtimes, etc.)

We felt it would be best to ask our memberbase on the matter, and what is more important to the people of NAC. There's a poll you can vote on, so please help us with our decision to see which option would be the most preferable!

If you have any comments or concerns, please don't hesitate to post in the thread.

Thanks for your help in advance, as well as your understanding.

Hey everyone!

So after a long long time, we've finally gotten our Tapatalk plugin to the most recent version! (4.5.1.) It was fairly out of date for one thing, and the previous version we had contained a massive exploit that had to be fixed, so downgrading is not an option. Also, now that I've been instructed on the procedure, I will be regularly updating Tapatalk for all you Tapatalk users from now on!

If any complications came up as a result of the update, please report it here: <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://neoarkcradle.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1476">viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1476</a><!-- l -->

If anyone discovers a bug that should not be discussed in public, please report it to us Admins via a Private Message.

Happy Tapatalking!

Yes we were down.

Why?

Maintenance for the servers. No hacking or DDoS, so don't worry guys.