Alright.
Since you and chukklehed are experiencing issues with the format of the Yuku, I'll try to explain it.
First, the inspiration for making an Athalia forum website came from
this forum, which I frequent. Have a look around the various subforums, and notice that there's basically no other way all that information and discussion could be organized. Of course, the important difference between them and us is they have almost 250,000 members, almost 300,000 threads, and almost 10
million posts. Compare that to our 12 members and 350 posts and you could be forgiven for wondering why on Earth we need one.
Well, think about it. 350 posts alone is 17 and a half OOC pages on here. For me, I'd
much rather have all that information categorized and easily accessible than be buried in the quick moving post train that is this thread. To me, one thread for ALL of our discussion just isn't enough, and having forums and subforums is far more civilized. As of now the value of the site seems questionable, but as we add more and more content it will make more and more sense.
There are other advantages to using Yuku, of course, which I'll list here for completeness:
1) Post features.
Way more than here. Are they necessary? Of course not, but they sure are nice.
2) Stability. This is the big one. RPG is a site run by one guy on one server, and as we all now (as of recently) it is definitely not stable. A second Guildfall is possible at any moment, and what then? We'd lose
everything. Meanwhile, Yuku is run by an entire company with 30+ servers running each forum.
3) State of mind. It's an entire website
just for us. I think that's cool.
I will admit that Yuku is not the least cumbersome forum architecture out there. Compared to GTPlanet, it feels pretty unwieldy and convoluted to use, and the profile pages
really suck. But GTPlanet is run using a forum architecture (
Xenforo) that costs over a hundred dollars a year and requires a dedicated server. Yuku is free. Unless you all want to chip in, we most likely can't get a forum software that's as nice as GTPlanet's. And I will submit that (due to reasons listed above) it is still clearly a large improvement over the unstable Guild.
I may search for a better free forum architecture, but I seriously doubt I will find anything. To be honest, the amount of features and customization Yuku offers for free is pretty astounding. But until then, I'll provide a basic guide for forum-ing and specifically Yuku-ing.
The main layout of the site is based on subforums that are grouped into forums. What this means without using only the word "forum" is that there are specific areas of discussion that are grouped into categories. These subcategories (and the forum as a whole) only make sense and don't become ruinously complicated if people
actually follow them and don't post things that belong in a different category, which I'm afraid has already happened. Certain members, presumably without forum experience, haven't grasped that each thread isn't like this OOC where you can just take the discussion anywhere you want. A thread is a
topic, and is supposed to stay on that topic. It sounds complicated and needlessly regulated, but when the system is actually followed it suddenly makes a lot of sense.
I'm guessing the most confusing part about the whole thing for you is when you get to the home page and see all the post information next to every subforum and wonder how to keep track of everything. Well, in a forum like GTPlanet there are Alerts and subscribed threads, like on the Guild. Yuku doesn't have either of those things (which it really should), but it has an "Active Topics" button on the top right of the home page that sorts topics by the most recent post, so you can see what you haven't read yet. And you
don't have to read everything. A forum is an active community with plenty of small discussions going on all over the place. Nobody reads everything, or even close to it. I usually stick to one or two subforums on it.
Once you get into a thread, it basically works the same as RPG. Edit or delete your posts, quote other posts, etc. The other main thing is
everyone, not just me or Rose, can and does create threads. Say you have a new awesome idea for a Crash arc and want to share it. You'd go to the "Think Tank" (idea) forum and make a new thread about it. Then people would respond to the thread saying what they think of it.
That's basically all there is to it...I hope that helps. Feel free to ask any questions you have.
