The State Of Play

[Moo]

What happened to TBDL.org?

The server it was hosted on was mistakenly reformatted by an incompetent ISP technician.
We lost everything during the format, including all our member databases, our forum post, gallery uploads... everything.
Over US$20,000's worth of software was deployed on attempting to recover the old database, and 3 different technicians have examined the drive.
However, despite great effort, we were not able to recover anything from the drive.



So, what happens now?

We've changed our name to ADISC.org (AB/DL/IC Support Community), and...
we're rebuilding the community, bigger and better than ever!

At our current rate of growth, we will have replaced everything we lost with new, fresh content within 10 months.
Yes, we really will be able to replace 4 year's worth of data in 10 months. We're just that awesome

Within a year and a half, we will be at double the size we were before the crash.

Within two years... who knows?



Why the change to ADISC.org?

Many reasons.
Long story short : we had to change the domain name, and this sounded like the best option.


What can I do to help out?
Check out the administrative stuff forum. I'll be posting there about ways the community can help me rebuild the website.

 

[Moo]

Thank you all for your shows of support. I have had to split the thank you posts out of this thread to keep it short.

I've added about 10 different upgrades to the forum today, including:
* blogs (you can create your own blog now, via your UserCP or the Blogs link)
* a wiki (so that the community can band together and write up answers for all those freqently asked questions)
* a links section (so that you the community can add links to other high quality sites... you can even add your own categories and then put links in them)
* many other, smaller modifications that make this place unique, such privacy options that let you stop guests viewing your profile if you wish.

The next upgrades on my list are :
* fully featured galleries for your image uploads
* graphical updates, such as a new ADISC logo for the site, as well as installing the dark_vb theme so you have a choice of how the site is displayed
* community building projects, such as mods to make the blogging features more customizable, instructions on how to port content to the wiki, setting up the gallery so that it is easy to upload a ton of stuff there, etc.
* installing the dozens of little modifications that the old site used
* moving the IRC channel to #adisc

After those, I will turn to things like :
* coming up with a lurker/newbie/regular/VIP system, and a way of recognizing people who make special contributions to the site (like writing wiki articles, submitting many links, or donating). People won't be able to buy VIP status by donating, but they will be able to get a badge or something on their profile which says "Donor".
* setting up documentation for all the features above, so that they are easier to use
* encouraging the community to make sure that ADISC.org is linked to from all the other AB/DL/etc websites they use, to get us more traffic
* sorting out how google indexes ADISC's content in a privacy-protecting way that doesn't cause us huge load
* sorting out a more user-driven moderation system and re-doing the vb/vbb/pp/ldm/etc options, storage, permissions and indexing settings

Good things are coming - but, I will be depending on you to make use of the tools I give you

 

[Moo]

At this point the old database is almost certain not to be recovered, and I am focussing on rebuilding this version of the site...
but bigger and better than ever before!

Thank you for your huge shows of support, in posts, thanks, donations and encouragement. It means a lot to me

Recent updates to the site include :
* Cosmetic upgrades : Drew and others have been contributing a ton of logo designs to the site. With their help, we have got logos, banners, and almost 600 new smileys.
* Core feature upgrades : Thanks to many requests, the galleries, [URL="http://www.adisc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=308"]wiki[/URL] and blogs, are now fully integrated into the site. For example, edits of the answers wiki are conveniently linked to your forum account, and you can even setup a private blog by limiting access to people on your forum buddy list... all from your UserCP.
* Behind-the-scenes upgrades : Flashchat is back, and now faster than ever. Due to upgrades, it should no longer slow down the rest of the website either! In fact, the site as a whole should appear faster and more powerful now than ever before.
* Ripple-effect upgrades : There are some upgrades which seem really small, but which will have a big impact on the site in the long term. One of these is that each post and profile now shows how many uploads its owner has made to the gallery, and how many forum threads they have posted. This provides an incentive to create new interesting threads... which does a lot to help the forum grow. So does the "Referrals" count, which provides an incentive for people to refer their friends to sign up here. Another example is that the reputation system is now back and set-up very similarly to how it was on the old site. Even now, we're starting to get our first VIPs, who of course have their own forum and gallery waiting for them. The VIP system, unique to us, allows people to build trust in the community by the quality of what they post, and is a major building block for our open and friendly community.

There are more good things to come. I have a plan in motion to grow the community and build on the great success we have had.

But, I hear you ask... what can I do to help?

Well, there are three things you can do that would really make a difference.

(1) Encourage other sites to link to us.
If you could encourage any other AB/DL/TB/babyfur sites you visit to link to us, that would be very helpful in growing our community here.

(2) Contribute your knowledge to the wiki.
The ADISC Answers Wiki is up and fully working - ready to serve as a vault for your knowledge. Already, members are creating new articles and tutorials, both to help teach the next generation of TBDLers, and to create documentation such as diaper reviews and answers to frequently asked questions.

(3) Post your requests.
Can you think of a way that the site could be better? Post a new thread about it in the administrative stuff forum! I'm proud of the fact that we have such a good record of implementing the features and changes that you the community want. However, to keep doing this, we need you to send in your requests. They can be about pretty much anything related to the site, and I make sure to reply to each and every one. If you don't want the request to be public, that's ok too - you can post it in the requests forum (seen only by moderators), or send it to me via forum private message.

The future's bright, the future's ADISC

 

[Moo]

So... how are we doing, one month after starting again?

Well, to put it mildly, we're kicking ass.

The crash hasn't slowed us down any...
in fact we're growing faster than ever before!

In the space of less than a month, we have got:

* 708 Threads (between 15 and 37 new threads per day)
* 12,086 Posts (between 200 and 600 new posts per day)
* 387 Active Members (up to 20 new signups per day)
* 104 Gallery Uploads (around 3 uploads per day)
* 42 Wiki articles (over one new article per day)
* 23 links (approaching one per day)
* 115 blog entries (almost 4 per day)

If things continue growing at their present rate, by the end of 2008, we will have :
* 8,496 Threads
* 145,032 Posts
* 1,248 Gallery Uploads
* 4,644 Active Members
* 504 Wiki Articles
* 276 Links
* 1,380 Blog Entries

And that's in only 11 months, without assuming (as the past has demonstrated) that our rate of growth continues to speed up!

Personally, I'd like to see ADISC have the following, before the end of 2008:
* 100,000 to 150,000 posts... (putting us at half a million posts within just over 3 years)
* 6,000 to 9,000 Threads
* 1,000 Gallery uploads
* 1,000 Active Members
* 100 Referrals
* 200 Wiki Articles
* 150 Links
* 1,000 Blog Entries

To cut a long story short: we are most definitely "kicking ass", and 2008 looks to be an amazing year for us.

To be sure, there are still things that need to be done.
My personal to-do list for the next month or two is :
(1) Ensure more sites link to ADISC.org, resulting in more people joining our community.
(2) Help develop the articles on the ADISC Wiki, rebuilding our knowledge base.
(3) Search for a way to integrate the IRC and FlashChat.
(4) Keep the community happy by responding to requests quickly.

The beauty of this site is that the content is really in your hands!
In addition to posting on the forums and gallery, you can also :
* Create or edit articles on the Wiki!
* Add new links to the links pages!
* Post blog entries - and share them with your friends!
* Refer your AB/TB/DL friends to sign up for ADISC, using your personal referral link shown on this page.

All of the above actions will give you credit, shown in your profile and on every post you make.

Contributing to making ADISC even better has never been so rewarding
In addition to making friends, helping others, and expanding our great community, you can get direct credit for the things you do which help us grow.

Our mission: to be the best supportive community out there for ABs, TBs, DLs, babyfurs, and incontinent people.

Thank you all for your support thus far, as we reach even greater heights in 2008

 

[Moo]

To clarify a point: the above is not an complete list of all the features I have added to ADISC.org in the past few weeks. Writing such a list would consume a great deal of time that, I feel, is better spent on implementing even more new, helpful stuff for the good of our community. I also want to avoid distracting the community with shiny new features, when everyone knows that our focus is really on the supportive chat and good discussions we have.

There have been many small additions, such as the panic button, the statistics on the forum homepage, support for displaying videos (e.g. youtube videos) in posts, upgrades to the requests forum and PM system, and many more, which are not included in the above changelog for these reasons, and thus may go relatively unannounced.

There are a few big changes in the works that might well transform this site. I'll announce those when they start becoming more visible.

Once the rate at which I'm improving the technical foundations of this community slows down a bit, I will start posting a more regular log of changes. At the moment though, I feel the community is better off focussing on the discussion

For your viewing pleasure, here are some averages as to how fast we are growing...
New Posts : 399 per day
New Threads : 22 per day
New Blog Entries : 3.3 per day
New Gallery Uploads : 3 per day
New Wiki Articles : 1 per day

 

[Moo]

Time for an update!

ADISC has continued going from strength to strength.

We have almost around 92,000 posts as of writing. That's around 12,200 posts a month, 3065 posts a week, or 438 posts per day. Last time I checked our daily average, we were just making 400. As always, we continue to grow

At our current rate of growth:
* In one month, we will hit 104,000 posts
* In two months, we will hit 116,000 posts
* In three months, we will hit 128,000 posts
* By the end of the year, we will have over 140,000 posts

140,000 posts in less than a year. Not bad, eh?

In less than 9 months, we have rebuilt as much content as the previous few years combined.

As always, ADISC leads the way