The problem with NDim has been taking considerably longer to sort out than I envisioned. I know many of you have been getting frustrated at the lack of updates and progress on this, but I've been doing the best I can in the circumstances.
The reason for all the changes is that there was an incident regarding a specific NDim forum that had to be resolved. I'm not going to go into the specifics but the offshoot was that the stability and status of NDim as a whole came under threat. In order to keep the site running as best I could, I had to take a lot of forums offline, do some work behind the scenes and slowly restore each and every one. It took ages, because NDim is no longer a small site and is hosting somewhere in the region of 100+ forums. Not all of them are active, but enough are that it caused a headache to several people and communities, something I wanted to always avoid at all costs.
On top of this, the problem started on a weeknight. As some of you know, I've started working full time at a place I need to commute in to each day. The commute isn't small, it takes about an hour and a half each way on the bus and to top that off, the job is 9-6 instead of the fairly typical 9-5 which means I'm already finishing late. I don't get home until around 8 PM on a night, at which point I'm fairly exhausted and don't have a considerable amount of energy to look into the forum stuff. It's not like it was when I was attempting to do this full time, and it won't be for the foreseeable future.
So to have this happen on a weeknight, after a particularly stressful work day was extremely exhausting. The site had to be pulled offline for 24 hours because I didn't have the capacity to resolve it all in a single evening. I know that day was by far the most frustrating for many of you (when you all had to relocate to PDim on Zetaboards). I resolved it for a couple of core forums the next night, but the ongoing process would take many, many more days and is still not completely over.
I felt completely drained by the incident, and had to consider what I was going to do moving forward. I always knew there was going to come a time when I'd have to deal with stuff like this, but I was prepared for it when I wasn't working a full time job. Now I have very little time to handle these incidents, and leaving the forum in the fate of the unknown all working day is just too much. I can't guarantee there won't be more problems, and as the site continues to grow, it's only going to get worse. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to continue running NDim as a whole.
Moreover, I had to put NDim 2.0 development on hold. I was quite enjoying it, because even though I'm working development all day, it was exciting to sharpen my skills and do something different on a night. At the end of the day it's a hobby, and facing the prospect of losing it was extremely hard-hitting. Facing the prospect of losing all of this that I've poured so much time and energy into was more hard-hitting than I can say.
Thankfully, I have a very capable and understanding community here in which I've made some very, very good friends. I opened up about the situation to a few and we had a discussion about what could be done to keep the site going. Originally I was going to give up development, close off board registration and just hand over the stationary unchanging site to somebody to maintain, so that none of the forums would go offline. At no point did I want that to happen.
However as the discussion escalated, a mutual decision was made which will only serve to improve and better the site as a whole. Instead of there being no more NDim, the site will grow and become even better than it is today. I've considered this project my pet and my baby and kept it very, very, close to me. But it's no longer at a point where I can do this alone, particularly given my change of circumstances. For the first time, NDim is going to have a fully fledged staff.
Curtis is now going to be the site administrator. He is going to be in charge of the day to day running of the site. In addition to him, Drr and Boc are also going to be site admins. By handing over administrative duties to those three, I will no longer have to deal with these problems when they arrive. I can advise, but that's something I can do during the day. I don't need to be sat at my desk and when problems do occur, I'll be confident that the site is in good hands.
This will be a very good thing for the website and our community as a whole. They are already hard at work making plans for how to expand and improve the administrative side of things. The support board will be re-opened and properly staffed again, allowing for important site updates to reach the majority instead of just limiting them to FE. They are already handling a vast portion of the communication, as many NDim users go to them for answers on site problems and they relay the messages to me as things are.
They've also done amazing work already when it comes to site promotion, advertising and supporting the site by advising people to come and use it. I have them to thank for the continued success of NDim, and with them taking on a more proactive role in the site development it can only serve to get better and better.
Boc has been a tremendously helpful force in relaying problems to me too. Along with Curtis, they've both done wonderful things with this community. I've not had the time to take an active role in overseeing and arranging games, events and other nice forum things in a long, long time. They've taken it upon themselves to see to it that the community is always alive and buzzing with interesting threads, fun games and challenges and their ideas never cease to impress me.
As well as this, Boc has a pretty decent knowledge of development and can help out with code related problems once I show him how things work behind the scenes. Drr and Curtis are extremely talented artists. Curtis has already developed a new set of default smilies for NDim and is hard at work in creating new default skins to replace the current Next Dimension one (we'll eventually allow users to choose their base skin on board registration). Drr has helped in design areas in the past, and is responsible for some page layouts. I have her to thank for the profile page, which was horrendous before she stepped in and drew me a better design to follow, amongst other page-specific design templates.
All in all, this is a great team and they're going to do wonderful things with the site. Each person brings something unique to the table, and by having them take care of the design and admin side of NDim, I can focus what little time I have to development. At the end of the day, it's the part I love the most and I'll be all too happy to get back to it. Today is the first time since this happened that NDim 2.0 development has continued. I've missed it!
Here's to a better, brighter and more productive future for NDim!
I just wanna let you all know, this is gonna go to my head
curtislost23 @ 9/3/2014 17:20
Bow to me.
Too late ;)
A lesson without pain is meaningless. That's because no one can gain without sacrificing something. But by enduring that pain and overcoming it, he shall obtain a powerful, unmatched heart. A fullmetal heart.
Sorry it's been such a stress for you, I hope all the changes bring only positive things for you as well as the site.
A lesson without pain is meaningless. That's because no one can gain without sacrificing something. But by enduring that pain and overcoming it, he shall obtain a powerful, unmatched heart. A fullmetal heart.
