Farewell...

[LI4M]

I've spent over £500 on making this forum work, that's money I won't be getting back in a hurry. It was a necessity to ensure that the site stayed online. If somebody wants to replicate TVLF or even TVF, having a forum hosted by Wix or Proboards is NOT the way to go about it I'm afraid. You'll have to spend some money to do what Asa and I have done.

I await Clean Feed's announcement with interest, as right now, in my honest opinion, it's the best option out there. It's an established brand, and I'm confident that their design team will produce a site that is absolutely amazing to use.

Fully agreed. As a mostly lurker, the Wix site is - I'm sorry - very poor compared to both TV Forum and this site. The design is cheap, it's hosted on a freebie web host, it doesn't have its own domain and it smells of "quick, get something up as quickly and cheaply with as little effort as possible to grab users from TVLF". The Discourse site linked earlier looks a lot nicer, and I don't mind Discourse myself, but I understand if others have reservations about it. 

The eventual successor forum will be run by someone who has experience in developing and operating websites (including knowing what to do when things inevitably go t*ts up) as well as skills in community management and the ability to put together a trusted team to run the thing with them. It won't be run by the first person who sees the opportunity to be the all-powerful "Forum Owner", chucks a free forum on a free webhost and goes "hey, come over to my place!". Please stop making forums on freehosts.

I am sure that everyone who has tried to create something has done so with the best intensions - I certainly have as I have enjoyed the discussion both over at TVForum and now here. I'm sorry this place is closing and am actually really annoyed that Rob has been pushed into this position.

For my part, I am a lifelong pres geek, I even used to draw out TV idents when I was a kid - which is weird, when you think about it!

These days, I have an IT background and should be capable of keeping a community vaguely functioning... and picking up the pieces as/when mishaps occur. The forum software I have chosen is discourse and is installed on its own virtual server. Discourse is modern community software that's not just a bunch of php scripts or a free host provider.

My intention is to quickly build a team of willing moderators who want to help build a community of people who have an (unhealthy) obsession with TV presentation, but who will discuss and debate with good humour.

If you want to participate, I'd love to see you over there.