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| Are Zetaboards in trouble? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 27 2014, 10:12 PM (1,083 Views) | |
| badvok | Jan 27 2014, 10:12 PM Post #1 |
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Development seems to have stopped, the last News item on the homepage was posted in 2011. Support Tickets go unanswered. Support questions on this forum go unanswered despite support staff logging in several times during the day. There have been quite a few server problems lately. Is any one else worried about Zetaboards? |
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| Moonface | Jan 27 2014, 10:48 PM Post #2 |
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It's best to just ignore the home page, because like the Admin CP, news doesn't often get posted onto it. You'd be better off looking here for news and updates: http://if.invisionfree.com/forum/2/ Tickets do get answered, but the issue is that tickets have piled up over the recent holiday season, and as such there are dozens upon dozens to go through, meaning it can take a while before we get around to certain tickets. In case it isn't a fact you are aware of, everyone except Brian and Brandon are volunteers, so we answer tickets when we have time to do so, rather than say, answering them during work hours like a paid help service might. Topics as such also have the issue of being overlooked by staff, because our primary focus is tickets. This is because only staff can answer tickets, whereas topics can be answered by anyone, and as such unless a topic is about a subject only we can answer, we will generally deal with a ticket before dealing with that topic, because anyone is able to handle topics. When it comes down to server downtime issues or whatever though, the most we can say is Brandon is working on it for most cases that require his intervention, and after that we don't contribute because usually, Brandon does the work he needs to do and during that time rarely, if ever, comes on here to give an overall update to the staff on the situation or progress, unless the issue is a significant one, such as the S6/S10 server crash that lasted a few days and wiped data. This isn't because he doesn't want to inform us, but because while he's here posting about the problem, he isn't fixing the problem. Normally, Brian will find out what the problem is and then share that information, but it can take time as he has to get this from Brandon while Brandon is trying to fix things. The server issues are due to a DNS issue, and not something like ZetaBoards is dying and can't keep their servers running or something. I understand things can sometimes seem a bit wary or even outright neglected, but hopefully this gives some insight for why some things have been slow lately or that while some areas might show there are no updates, actually there have been. I've been trying to answer as many tickets as I'm able to every day I come on (I won't speak for anyone else because I don't stalk everyone else on the staff team to tell how much they do), and if you're waiting for a response to your ticket, apologies for that. We're trying to get through every ticket we can, but as I mentioned we've got a significant backlog that we need to get through so it can make things seem slow on your end. If you have any further concerns, feel free to ask. So long as it's just a question, and not an insult or rude remark that could break board rules, we'll be happy to answer and try and make things clearer for you to try and put your mind at ease.
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| Nicolas | Jan 27 2014, 10:50 PM Post #3 |
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"PLES RING IF AN RNSER IS REQIRD."
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It appears Moonface and I were posting at the same time. I will leave both of our replies for you. Hi there, I wouldn't use the ZetaBoards website as a sign of whether or not development has stopped - it should certainly be updated more frequently, but only one person can do that and I'd rather he spend his time doing other things than updating the webpage (though a tool to let staff update the news box there would be great). In fact, ZetaBoards received an update in November which came after a long period of behind the scenes work. More updates are presently in the works, but we don't have an expected release date for anything (and, having learned from InvisionFree and the constant cries that InvisionFree 2.0, what you now know as ZetaBoards, would never come - we have learned it is best not to make up deadlines and miss them, as well). Support tickets get answered, our team of volunteers doing that answering, though, is unfortunately dwindling and many have just entered another new semester in school: which always requires readjustment. In addition to that, there are many types of open tickets right now that only management can answer (for example, the s6/10 data loss), but management isn't a huge team. It's a couple of people. Support questions on the forum are open to the community to answer, the support staff's number one priority is the tickets. We encourage members to support members because the "staff" are just members who have volunteered for a higher level of responsibility and who have been proven as knowledgeable, often by years of answering open support topics on this community. One way you can help is to help your fellow users, as well. Many of us on the team are on the team because we were so helped by others that we wanted to help people, as well, once we knew a little more. And the more we helped the more we learned until we could offer support in the best possible ways. Unfortunately, so many people join this community now demanding immediate replies and answers from volunteers and then are quite content to head off until their next problem arises. In itself, there's nothing wrong with that - but when the whole community takes to that it makes it very difficult to sustain the level of support that is required. Server problems have cropped up again in the last week, but they are by no means the worst we've seen. I recall daily outages, even in the last year, caused by persistent DDoS attacks - most of which have been mitigated by Brandon's tireless work. Unfortunately, constantly fending off malicious denial of service attacks prevents him from spending as much time developing as we'd all like. Edited by Nicolas, Jan 27 2014, 10:52 PM.
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| badvok | Jan 27 2014, 11:25 PM Post #4 |
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Thank you Moonface and Nicolas, your replies make matters more clear. I knew that some of the support staff were volunteers but thought there were more full time staff. It is reassuring to know that development is ongoing and that tickets are being looked at I have answered a couple of questions on here over the last week or so but you are right in what you say, I wouldn't have been here if I had not been having problems with my forum. I've been using your software since before Zetaboards was released and have enjoyed tinkering with it's settings so will try to pop in more often to help out. RE updating the Home Page, also there are links and mentions on there to the old resource forum. Thanks again for explaining things
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| Moonface | Jan 27 2014, 11:29 PM Post #5 |
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Brian and Brandon are the only two who aren't volunteers. Everybody else on the staff team is. Unless somebody is secretly bribing Brandon for cookie payments.
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