Yesterday evening, Cristiano Midnight, the owner of the SLUniverse (SLU) discussion forum (the largest and longest-running community site dedicated to Second Life), posted the following message:
So a lot has happened in the past 24 hours. I nearly lost 2.4 million posts and obliterated SLU, got them back, perhaps may have cried a little, then made some decisions about what to do about SLU.
I detailed what I was going through my mind in this post, so I won’t repeat it. However, since writing that, I made some rapid decisions that are already in motion.
First of all, I am launching a new site – VirtualVerse, which expands the scope of SLU to all things related to virtual worlds, whether it is Second Life, Sansar, other VR worlds that are gaining in popularity, or game related worlds like MMOs and open world games. I’ve wanted to become less SL centric, but it has been hard to do that with SL as part of the name.
The SLU forums will be closing within the next few weeks, depending on how long the transition takes. These forums will be archived – they may be unavailable for little while but will come back as a read only forum.
The new site domain is VirtualVerse.one – http://www.virtualverse.one
Why .one? There has been a significant number of new top level domains added, and I considered .cloud, .site and even .ninja, but .one appealed to me the most, since this also is starting over in many ways.
The new forums use Xenforo, not vBulletin. It is much more modern forum software, and fully supports mobile without needing an app. I purchased two gorgeous themes for it, one light and one dark, and have already installed an add on that allows me to add unlimited reaction buttons.
I’m looking into whether or not I can migrate user accounts from VB. If not, I will assist anyone in securing their name on the new site. I’ll have more information soon about all of this.
In the meantime, if you would like to help test out the new forums as I am getting them setup, they are already live.
I’m sure you will have lots of questions, and I still have some things to figure out and a lot of work to do, but SLU is going to live on, just in a different format.
I have been a fairly active member of SLUniverse since Sept. 18th, 2007 (just over eleven years), posting a total of 1,689 posts to various discussion threads in that time. It has always been a fun, free-wheeling place where anything and everything could happen. Some of the discussion threads have achieved legendary status!
I am looking forward to Cristiano’s new venture, VirtualVerse. You can visit it already.
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