Zetaboards is going

R0binHood said:

Ah, so you are successfully logged into the wordpress ACP.

The way they have it set up is that you will be presented with a load of widgets in the main body of the page when first logging in.

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No, the way they have it set up is that you can't even get to the Dashboard, because you are blocked by that page that tells you you can customize your site, if only you could get past that stupid page and have access to the dashboard.

And again, I have gone through tutorial after tutorial, including the one that is provided by WordPress, and nowhere do any of them tell you how to get past that stupid greeting that blocks me from the dashboard they are showing in the tutorials.

They should say in very simple language, "when you first open your admin cp, this is what you will see," showing a picture of that stupid page.

Then they should say, again, in very simple language, "to get past that stupid page to get to the dashboard so you can follow this tutorial, do exactly this and that stupid page will disappear and never come back to block you from access to the dashboard so you can go to step 2 of this tutorial to actually use the dashboard."

But they don't.

So spin round and round and round I go, needlessly, because "simple and straightforward," as was the case in setting up my InvisionFree board no longer suffices.

It seems to be a mindset that if it is that easy, so even a fool can do it, then it must not be any good, so instead, make it as confusing as possible, and people will then think it is the top of the line.

Like the book of instructions for the radio on a new Toyota that is literally almost an inch thick.

R0binHood said:

You can then edit the title and that text yourself to change it.

Then preview it to see if you like those changes, then save the changes.

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Robin Hood, and this is not meant in any kind of derogatory way, so please don't take it that way, I do not "text."

Children text, teenagers text, I don't.

I might be the only person left in America who does not have a "mobile" device or hand-held portable.

So if you have to go through that rigarmarole, then I might as well hang up my hat, kiss my blogging days good bye, dig a big hole in the ground, put a comfortable recliner down there and then stay down there getting used to be surrounded by dirt.

My sole access to the internet is through a desktop.

That is it.

If you have to have a cell phone to use WordPress, then I am done.

By text I mean the written text or copy for your website, which you can edit in the text editor. Like the text you write when composing a forum post in the forum text editor. Nothing to do with texting someone using a mobile phone.

Livyjr said:

So I'm going round and round in circles, always ending up right back where I began.

Maybe when my 3 year old grandaughter gets a little older, she can walk me though this.

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Seems something is missing.
Can you try to access it with another browser?
Has it been installed properly?

doubt said:

Seems something is missing.

Can you try to access it with another browser?

Has it been installed properly?

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I think the emergency is finally over doubt and Robin Hood.

The problem is that WordPress is a high-end luxury Mercedes-Benz that is loaded with EVERYTHING, and what I wanted was the plain-Jane stripped down Volkswagon with crank-up windows, a radio with a knob, and manual transmission.

Thankfully, I got on the phone this morning with my friend down in NYC, and she finally got it figured out, and while I think the process is very clumsy compared to the ease of InvisionFree and Zetaboards, I should be able to post on WordPress now.

I will find out shortly.

I really appreciate the time you people have taken to try and get me straightened out here.

It was a big help, as I was able to then pass your comments of the my friend, which helped to put the issue in their proper context.

I shouldn't need the phpBB it seems.

Again, I will soon find out.

And words don't really serve to express my gratitude to you people.

And hopefully, those other wandering souls from Zetaboards who have been screwed over by Brandon at Zetaboards, who did in fact breach his contract with us, because he could, with impunity, will take some heart here and realize that they too do not need to stay with Tapatalk and they don't need a free board at some Xetaboard wannabe site that will screw them again.

There is another way, as you people have helped to prove in here, big time.

It is like in that Jack Nicholson movie where he is in a restaurant, and all he wants is rye toast, but the restaurant does not serve just rye toast, so after haggling with the waitress, he, orders a Reuben and tells her to hold the corned beef, hold the sauerkraut, hold the Russian dressing and just bring him the toasted rye bread.

There is where the communication problems came in here.

It finally came down to, "oh, is that all you want to do, you don't want to do all that other stuff, well, that is simple," and so in the end it turned out to be.

I can appreciate what WordPress does for people who are trying to set themselves apart from the crowd in the marketplace, where the look of one's website can make all the difference in the world.

But that is not me.

I am probably using WordPress in a really primitive way, but such it is.

mysiteguy said:

If you're interested, contact me via the Conversation feature and we can work something out.

I can do a full scrape, migration into phpBB (or MyBB), and host it for you.

Or someone else here if my bluntness rules me out. Whatever works for you.

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Would you be so kind, mysiteguy, as to initiate that conversation?

And mysiteguy, as said above, your bluntness is one of your many assets.

I'll drop you a detailed message tomorrow, I'm slammed with work until bed time. Seems like half my big clients decided today was the day they needed me to do something, plus I've got a couple of smaller jobs to wrap up for a couple of sites who need some forum migration related stuff completed this evening.

Thank you, mysiteguy.

I'm still getting things sorted out, anyway, to get the new site going.

In the meantime, I am wondering if Winter Wong's bidness model isn't going to blow up on him, in his face.

Like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, Winter Wong of Tapatalk has nothing of intrinsic value outside of a computer program that in his case is a primitive piece of crap.

We know from a RECODE article entitled "Having Successfully Made Forums Mobile, Tapatalk Raises $5.8 Million Seed Round" by Liz Gannes, June 16, 2014 that after making its app free, Tapatalk was starting to pursue an advertising strategy, which is one of the only ways it has to raise money.

It does that by SPAMMING.

I know that because my e-mail inbox gets a message of someone responds to my site, and that message carries advertising that I don't want or need, so I am going to put Tapatalk into the SPAM bucket.

Thankfully, my site was not intended for "chat," so I only had few comments.

If I was on a site where a lot of people were commenting, each time one of them commented, my e-mil would get another message with more advertising on it, to the point of where people will find themselves barraged with advertising from Tapatalk.

We know from googling "Tapatalk complaints" that EEVblog Electronics Community Forum on February 15, 2017 did as follows:

Tapatalk has been removed

Sorry to people who use Tapatalk, but over time I've gotten too many reports about Tapatalk having annoying popups etc, so have uninstalled it.

end quotes

Now that might be a small site, just a drop in the bucket, but when that site uninstalled Tapatalk, the cash flow to Tapatalk ceased.

With this take-over of Zetaboards, if we believe the advertising of Zetaboards, millions of people were affected, and not just a mere handful.

When those millions of people start finding themselves barraged with Tapatalk advertising, like they found at the EEVblog site, and their e-mail is filled chock-a-bloc with nothing by Tapatalk SPAM, I think there is going to be a huge rebellion.

Consider that many of us, or perhaps most of us, did not have a clue as to what "Tapatalk is coming" really meant in terms of being SPAMMED, which I personally resent as an unauthorized intrusion into my life, itself, until 20 August 2018 in my case.

It is bad enough that Winter Wong took a functioning board away from us and imposed restrictive rules on posting, but he took us to a new level of outrage with this spamming, which would be constant and endless if you were on a site with many users who were active posters, because each time one of them said something new, there would be another advertisement in your e-mail in-basket.

People who have phones that ping when they get an e-mail will be driven crazy by that, I would think, anyway.

Winter Wong of Tapatalk is a fool if he thinks people want to be barraged with advertising.

So something brand-new has happened here.

The world for millions of former Zetaboard site owners has been drastically altered.

Will the rebellion happen?

Will it adversely impact on the only real way Winter Wong has to make money, which is through selling advertising by being a SPAMMER?

I for one certainly hope so.

doubt said:

As salem said:

You have to become familiar with both scripts' control panels to do that.

Don't rush, take it easy.

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I scrapped the WordPress this morning, and have now got phpBB up and running:

http://thelivyjrfiles.com/

The WordPress was just to cumbersome and bulky for my simple purposes.

And again, thank you for all your valuable guidance in here.

It is very much appreciated.

Wes of StarArmy said:

Tapatalk basically using a neutered version of phpBB3.

One where you can't export or backup your database.

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As this thread has demonstrated and proven, we site owners and site administrators got screwed big time by Brandon Kopetzky.

Such it is.

With the help of this site, between the time I made my first post in here on 22 August 2018 and today, 31 August 2018, I have been able to get a domain name, a new server and a new site that is like my Zetaboard site was http://thelivyjrfiles.com/index.php where I am now back in charge, as opposed to Tapatalk, which dared to tell me what I could post where and when.

I became a "site owner" (an empty, meaningless term) with InvisionFree in 2010, which site was then transferred to Zetaboards.

So I am going to potentially lose a lot of what I invested time in creating, but I will be damned if I will spend another moment on the cheap CRAPATALK board, and I will not pay extortion to Winter Wong for the privilege of getting what I have for free with the phpBB software download.

TT has no technical support that I am aware of because its business model is based on telling advertisers that their advertisements can reach millions of viewers if they sign on with Tapatalk.

That is it.

We were no more than mules for TT in that regard.

While I am here, does anyone know how to activate new users on the phpBB software.

There is supposed to be a drop-down tool that says activate user but if it is there, I am not seeing it.

IntoxNitram said:

They've announced that Zetaboards as a platform will be no more, merging existing forums into Tapatalk.

See here: http://support.zathyus.com/topic/7021172/1/

Many people are angry about this, especially after being given a choice between merging from InvisionFree to Tapatalk or Zeta and being promised future updates to Zeta's code.

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Tapatalk sends out a notice to our e-mail boxes each time a new comment is made on a thread we are part of, telling us a new comment has been made.

Those notices, which are SPAM, are vehicles to carry advertising into our e-mail boxes.

Having gotten my new site up and running, today I went back to CRAPATALK and locked all my forums, so no more comments, which means no more SPAM from CRAPATALK, which means one less person getting SPAMMED by advertising from CRAPATALK, and hopefully, that impacts back on Tapatalk's bottom line.

We know from a RECODE article "Having Successfully Made Forums Mobile, Tapatalk Raises $5.8 Million Seed Round" by Liz Gannes on June 16, 2014 that then-five-year-old Tapatalk originated in Shanghai and moved to Los Angeles recently as part of MuckerLab and after making its app free, it started pursuit of an advertising strategy so that it then was able to raise $5.8 million in seed funding from Floodgate and IDG-Accel.

That money was not for site development, or site improvement or site support, and after seeing how crappy Tapatalk is, somebody would have to be a prime candidate to buy the Brooklyn Bridge and most of Queens for $5 down and $5 per month to think that Tapatalk is going to put a dime into further developing that piece of crap site.

So strike a blow for freedom and move.

Livyjr said:

While I am here, does anyone know how to activate new users on the phpBB software.

There is supposed to be a drop-down tool that says activate user but if it is there, I am not seeing it.

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Cancel this.

I finally found the key to solving it.

For whatever reason, the person was listed as inactive.

I finally found a site that gave clear enough instructions so I was able to track the problem down and solve it.

I feel so sorry for all those former ZB customers who are now disappointed. No offense intended to anyone involved, but I believe this is a great example of why we should always have a back up of our own data. Especially with free forum hosting where many providers do not allow you to take back ups for free. These latest actions of Tapatalk and those who sell their free forum hosts to these guys really insecured the business imho. They are acquiring anything moving or crawling, at one time or another. Weird.

But is that really what we were, RosenCruz, "customers?"

As I understand it, a "customer" is either "a person or organization that buys goods or services from a store or business," or "a person that one has to deal with."

I was actually what was known as a "site owner" on Zetaboards, having been a site owner on InvisionFree before Brandon Kopetzky moved it with my permission over to Zetaboards, so yes, since I was a person Brandon Kopetzky, whose word is worthless, had to deal with as a site owner, perhaps I was a customer.

But that was then, and this is now, and for the rest of my life, I will treat Brandon Kopetzky like a worthless piece of crap, because he has no integrity, and his word is worthless.

As a web-hosting company, he failed to keep faith, which is really the lesson learned here, for me.

Yes, in retrospect, I suppose I should have known his word would be worthless, but I was a trusting soul, and in the end, it was my faith and trust in someone unworthy of either that was my undoing.

Such it is, RosenCruz.

I have looked at it as one of life's lessons learned, and I have grown from it, now having my own site that neither the cheap sell-out Brandon Kopetzky, nor Tapatalk, which offers a piece of garbage to the unwitting who are still out there for Brandon Kopetzky and Tapatalk to exploit, can interfere with.

All of my forum on Tapatalk is locked.

Anything that I receive from them by e-mail goes straight to SPAM.

So I have ceased to be a revenue source for them, and I hope that hurts them financially, to be truthful, especially if others emulate me, as I would hope they would.

And to close, I took no offense from anything you said.

Yes, I should have known.

Livyjr


I can see how disappointed and frustrated you are. Back in around 2004/2005, I also had a forum which had around 1000 active members and 340000 posts on a free forum host. Back then, phpBB2 was very popular and free forum hosting was really a business. No ad blocking, no bulls-it, real revenue. And regular shared hosting was kind of expensive so it was really attracting people. You could see many free forum hosting services around, most of them featuring phpBB2. My free forum host was also sold to a greater company and that was my first disappointment and that is when I gave up on free forum hosting. I mean my forum was still there and alive after the buyout but some themes, some codes and some features were missing.

I do not know the terms of service of ZetaBoards nor the details of it in a law perspective. I just used the word "customer" as is since they are providing a service, although it is free. On world wide web, if something is for free, probably you are the "product" itself. I am really sorry to put it that way many people know it is the truth itself.

I have just visited your new phpBB installation. It looks very fast and tidy. Now it is time to attract those old members and posters back to your new forum. Your very own domain name and files and database. Hope you will be succesfful. I wish you the best in your special zone at the cyberspace.

And a warning to all FREE FORUM OWNERS: I believe this Tapatalk guys are trying to buy all those other free forum hosting services out there. Make sure you have your own back ups or emergency scraper scripts, in case your free forum host is sold to Tapatalk too. They are paying nice I suppose so get ready. Many free forum hosting services are already to sold CrowdGather or Tapatalk. May be switch to premium services for a short time and gather a back up if you can.

I was approached for createaforum.com but said no. Crowdgather was leased the properties to tapatalk who imported them into their system.

vbgamer45 said:

I was approached for createaforum.com but said no. Crowdgather was leased the properties to tapatalk who imported them into their system.

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You are the mastermind behind smfforfree and smfhacks right? You are doing a great work and I am glad you rejected their offer. Free forum hosting is a nice niche to all those who want to start a community without the hassle for looking for hosting and setting up everything. And I believe there must be competition and variability in the market. SMF, phpBB, proprietary software like Proboards etc.