Forum Migration

Absolutely love this idea! And I agree- I like the forum layout more than the socials too (I do use them, but not as much as DoA).

 

I agree it would be great if the current owner can't be reached and another solution can't be found. Unfortunately, my experience over the last 10 or so years with forums other than DoA has been with platforms that have suddenly closed or had issues with their codes, so the other forums I've been on were shut down and inaccessible suddenly. I'm not really sure of what platforms would be a good hosting option. Tumblr and pillowfort have communities but it's not quite the same. I would be more than willing to donate some to help keep DoA alive if that were possible. I know pillowfort has a donation-run sort of system, but that is a lot to feasibly sort out to set up a new forum and all that.

 

I mean, as you can see in the footer, DoA uses XenForo for hosting/software, which presumably is pretty stable? My experience is that the longevity of a forum depends 100% on the commitment of the admins. Ideally someone—or a small group of someones—would step up, who's a long-time user of DoA, who has the finances to cover the up-front costs until advertisers etc. can be arranged, and is prepared to sink much time/energy into the project over the course of many years. I'm not sure if there is such a person!

EDIT: Pixel Joint has also been around forever, if we're looking for a forum model to copy.

 

My plan at the moment is to return to the big BJD Discord. I stayed only for a short time. The community over there is great, but I was in a time I didn't want to be tempted/enabled from all the doll news and discussion - DOA is slower and I can be more selective - as well as the fact I just don't like Discord as a platform. Real-time chat is not for me. I detest social media like Instagram as the sterile corporate environment makes me feel depressed, so that's not an option.

If DOA goes down in the end, and a new traditional forum comes up, I'd definitely move over there.

 

I've had some experience being a member of forums run off Discourse - one of them was the official NaNoWriMo forums before it all went down. I think Discourse is a modern alternative to older-style forums like XenForo, phpBB and IPBoard (Invision Power Board).

For XenForo and Discourse, you either pay for their hosted solutions, or buy a licence and then self-host the forum. The pricing schedules are on both sites. Pretty sure that IPBoard and phpBB are similar. Not sure if the one-off licence for self-hosting also entitles you to updates for the forum software, whereas the hosted solutions will take care of that for you as part of the monthly subscription.

Cost for hosting is going to be the kicker - either self-hosting the forum, which means paying for the domain and the webhost, or a hosted solution with one of those forum providers. I have my own hosted personal website (the home of my BJD blog) - a couple of domain names and the smallest quota of webhosting costs me AUD $275/year (equivalent USD $190/year). I don't have experience with hosting organizational websites, but I think DoA would cost an order of magnitude more to run than my personal site, so let's say minimum USD $1500-2000/year. For example, hosting a Pro plan on Discourse, or a Standard plan on XenForo, costs USD $1200/year ($100/mo).

I understand that DoA has been partially funded by member donations for a long time, and they're probably how it's still going despite the missing owner. The donations funnel into an account which then automatically pays the bills.

Aside - I believe that DoA is under some sort of company structure? I've donated a few times, and the PayPal invoices come out as "Den of Angels, LLC". I'm guessing that this is where the problems of DoA ownership come in: someone has to take over the LLC before they can take over the keys of the forum, which means the owner (Dezarii) or a representative has to be legally involved in this process. I don't know much about business structures so someone else can chime in here.

So to build a new DoA-like forum, you'd have to find a suitable forum platform, sort out hosting and how to pay for it, sort out administration (the people to run the show), and then have a plan to scale up to handle increasing membership. And, uh, for the love of all ball-jointed Tenshi, have succession planning measures in place so this kind of succession crisis doesn't happen...

 

My first preference would of course still be that the owner is reached, can pass on access and DoA remains here. Slim chance but still. The traditional forum format is perfect for hobby discussion, and I think many of us are just dead tired of how social media and etc alternatives function. A new forum would be amazing, too, of course, but...

...having seen such moves before - most of those spaces never survived long after unfortunately. You really need a very close and trustworthy core group to do this, ideally most of them having experience with forums and the software to set up a functioning infrastructure, who would also be willing to be actively hands on for years to come to keep this thing running... that is a big task and commitment. I just want to add that from my experience, the enthusiasm often wanes fast unless there is someone (usually 1 person) really managing and driving the thing, which is not always... fun For context, I've moderated/adminned smaller hobby forums before (a very very long time ago) and I'm currently moderating a medium-to-big discord server - I love doing those things but it comes with responsibilities attached, and takes significant online-time on the side of dayjobs, family etc.

I don't want to be super doom and gloom about it, I just want to add a warning that doing stuff like this has to realistically run on more than pure enthusiasm to work out + is very much also a financial commitment for something the size of DoA. We still have this forum because it's been a system built over 20 years but it's much harder to start this from scratch. I would love to know I can still be on a doll forum years from now, but yeah, unfortunately those are also the thoughts I can't help but immediately think about

 

I didn't realize they currently have a way for members to make donations :/ It feels like a bummer to find that out now, but it's good to know for if we do get lucky and they are able to get ownership transferred.

 

Having been on Internet forums and messageboards since the days they were called "BBSes", I've seen the same things as cobaltconduct and agree with their assessment. Communities like DoA aren't made overnight, they're grown over years. I use the word "grow" intentionally - communities takes time to grow, which is totally the opposite of social media tech pace - but isn't slower pace and sustainable growth what we value?

So, I think the most sustainable way to grow an online forum like DoA is to start small and start "local", ie. with a few friends you know, whether offline or online. You can start right away! - Discourse has a free forum plan for small communities. For the self-hosted route, phpBB is free and open source. But take it slowly and start small with a small group, and expand at a pace that's sustainable for the leader(s) of the forum. Once upon a time, DoA had restricted invitation-only membership -- that is not just a way to screen new members, but to prevent flooding the membership base.

Slow growth and expansion also allows the forum leadership to figure out rules, figure out how to on-board new mods and hand off leadership (succession planning!!), and promote a certain culture and ethos for the community. Like cobaltconduct said, stuff like that doesn't happen overnight but requires ongoing investment from a leader or leadership team -- and yes, if you're starting a forum you are already a leader.

It's really hidden away and not that obvious, but it's under this menu: About > Account upgrades. Direct link here. You get some forum perks in exchange for donating.

 

Do you have a discord invite for this?

 

Also for market place we could use this:
https://bjd.circlly.com/

The EGL community uses this as well. It's pretty nice imo.

 

Yes, I think creating a new forum could be a good alternative if nothing can be done in the current situation. I’d definitely join.

(If something like that does happen, it might help if moderators could eventually post a notice to guide people there.)

 

Ah, no, but it's a public server. Just search for BJD, it's the largest one.

 

i wouldn't mind a new forum, but i have helped moderate (long dead now) forums and i do agree that the task of Admin is a complex and thankless job that takes up a lot more time than people realize, especially for something the size of DoA, and especially since DoA also has long-term financial involvements. if another forum is made i think it would be prudent to split adminship between a few people not just one person with a line of succession.

i also think that we should wait a bit to see if there's any response from the owner, as unlikely as it seems. honestly i think most of us in the community kind of don't care about what bull may or may not have happened behind the scenes at this point and just want the forum to continue and would be willing to set aside any ill feelings towards mismanagement if it just gets handed over. i understand there's a degree of legal work involved in that, but with how large the community is, i do wonder if there's anyone out there willing to work pro bono to keep this thing afloat.

and my other suggestion is that if another forum is to be started, we first have some sort of election process for administration and moderation conducted here first (and not on any discord or offsite avenue-- i know i and some other old/old-ish users have trouble navigating Newfangled Chat Programs etc. and tangentially to this discussion, imo the forum format is superior as, well, a forum for discussing things anyway as it's a lot easier to stay on topic, search, and to find old information presented in an understandable format. better for archiving, if you will, and in a hobby that relies on information, especially visual information the way this one does i think that's an important avenue to have. forum threads can be cordoned off into easily searchable subforums and have relevant titling enforced and the number of responses easily visible. discords threads function is extremely clunky in that regard).

 

I love the idea of migrating to a new forum. Instagram still feels chaotic and stressful much of the time, having ads thrown at me and random real life issues that bring me down when I'm just trying to enjoy dolls. DoA has felt like a safe haven to me where, when I need to escape the real world and just focus on something that makes me happy for a bit, I can. Not to mention the wealth of information here. I'd hate to lose a community like this.

 

I was going to mention Circlly! I've been using it for EGL for years, and it's a shame the other marketplaces on the platform don't have a bigger userbase. Propaganda:

Spoiler

There's the ability to set up search parameters, functionality for auctions, visually simple feedback ratings, one account can be used across all the marketplaces on the platform, multiple currency options, all sales are peer-to-peer and not processed through the platform. The main downside is there's no WTB option

Frankly, I don't see there being a good alternative to DoA right now. I'm in a few FB groups and I don't like how disconnected they feel. Most social media really don't lend themselves well to community-building, and I'm not the kind of person who's into the clout-chasing culture. I'm a long-time tumblr user and that site does have more of a community feel, but there's far fewer active users and the tags are constantly clogged with irrelevant girlblogger stuff. I suppose this is the push I need to finally set up my sewing blog and transfer my project journals over to that.

 

i'm humbly asking, as a product designer, do we even want another forum? with discord, facebook, reddit, etc, the communication channels are there already. yes we need to maintain the wealth of information that's been accumulated over the past 20 years, but it doesn't necessarily have to be in a forum or wiki format. and as far as the marketplace goes, there needs to be something secure that serves this unique community that not hosted on other platforms. it needs to be internal. maybe i'm just a cynic, but sometimes a cynic can still bring new ideas. i love DoA, it's how i got into BJD back in 2013. but it's 2026 and we need a site/tool that serves us with all the capabilities of today. if we wanted something to replace DoA, don't think of migrating. think of "what would we build if we could start from scratch?"

my job on the daily is to build digital products - there has to be other UXers, UI designers, product people, and devs in this community. with our powers combined, what could we create?

 

I'm very much in favor of migrating forums, should worst come to worst-nothing stores information and makes it easily accessible like a forum, and I think the conversations that happened regarding Discord's policy changes a month or so ago show how fragile that particular fandom space can be (and that's before getting into all the problems with storing information and making it available.)

The DollDreaming forum is still alive and moderated, and while it seems to be even slower paced than DOA, it does have a resin section. It may be a place to fall back to, even just as a stopgap while a dedicated forum is figured out.

 

this feels a little like reinventing the wheel; the forum format works because it's tried and true and comparatively slow paced when put up against social media; it's just not the most welcoming to those who didn't really experience web 1.0/2.0 who don't understand what external file hosting is or why it would be needed. but reinventing the wheel may be what's needed sometimes, i suppose.

a forum that comes inlaid with an easy to understand tutorial for external image hosting (or like a bottleneck forum where users introduce themselves and prove they know how to do external hosting before they're allowed on the main forum), or even one with on-site hosting (though that could be heavy server-side and cost-wise) would be good, and especially something that is mobile-app friendly (which things that require off-site hosting tend not to be, to some degree). on-site hosting would also prevent any future wipeouts of information like DoA had with the photobucket fiasco and with how flickr can be finicky sometimes. something else that would be useful is something that also allows users and maybe even community members to tag individual images per post so images themselves are searchable even within threads via standard search. honestly, since this a more adult-oriented hobby, something that's pay-to-play isn't beyond the pale. if there was a forum that allowed users to host images but the users themselves paid for the image hosting or was effectively a pay-to-join forum that could be an idea, though i think the intro price would need to come with lifetime membership and uploading images on-site could come in tiers or something of that sort. thinking about it, perhaps one could set up a system of image upload points, where a user buys a certain amount of images/data they're allowed to host on-site, and members can transfer these points between each other, so if someone has a project they'd like to see hosted on-site, you can gift them those points for hosting or whatever. it seems kind of archaic, but it would help with hosting costs + incentivize high quality uploads and keeping on topic.

 

hmmm, i see your points. i'm all about what's going to be best for the users/what the users need - if y'all say forum = good, i can get behind forum. on-site image hosting, i would hate to make people pay for usage, but would a subscription model for the entire platform be a reasonable ask? like a premium/pro version?

 

Best case scenario is if the current owner passes it over to another person, or another group of trusted (and trusting) people who can continue it on.

I have lived through a lot of Forums closing down, and there is never any way to fully replace/replicate/migrate a forum from one location to another. The people don't migrate. They just don't. That's one of the reasons why outside of DoA the hobby is split among Facebook, Instagram, Discord, etc. At one point if you were on DoA you were on Flickr and Flickr was the back-up. Well, Flickr changed and the communities that had found a second home there no longer exist either.

Especially since a large subsection of still active users on DoA are older hobbiests who aren't on any SM nor are they interested in SM. I'd hate to lose their unique and very different perspective on the hobby.

I don't say this to disuade anyone from trying, just know that losing DoA is going to further splinter the hobby across the internet and you won't have the same institutional knowledge of the hobby as you do here.

 

I'm new here and the truth is that this forum took me back in time. But it seems well organized here. If this could be done elsewhere, it would be really cool. I've been in the BJD hobby since 2011, but I only registered on DoA now. Would Discord be suitable? Or a FB group? I can't imagine it at all.

 

The thing that sets forums and forum-like structures apart, in my opinion, is that they are not nearly as fast-paced as other social media platforms and are friendly to long-form discussion. Reddit comes close in terms of being structured similarly to forums, but is missing some key features that I like in forums, namely the dedicated headings/subsections under the overarching forum. I know many subreddits have dedicated weekly posts for specific topics and discussions, but in my experience, they tend to turn into perpetual newbies threads rehashing the same questions forever or drive-by update threads. Further, in order for a subreddit to function similarly to DoA in terms of archival information, it would still require the development of a wiki or wiki-like information hub.

Discord, due to being a fast-paced real-time application, makes long-form discussion difficult in active servers for anyone offline or away from their phones, even if that time is only a matter of hours. While it's good for casual discussion and even sales, it often falls short as an information hub. Instagram decimated the hashtag system and is also short-form, so while it's good for photo hosting, it's not a great information or connection tool. Facebook is also good for photo hosting, connection, and slower long-form discussions, but is difficult to organize and meaningfully search. That's not even getting into the data mining/corporate advertising/addictive UI design/AI issues that various social media applications have come under fire for, both socially and in litigation, in recent years.

TL;DR Forums are liked specifically for the clear organization, dedicated discussion, and the ability for people to log off without majorly missing out on anything. DoA gets bonus points for using their advertising space to platform companies and artists within the community, rather than data mining algorithm-driven Amazon/Temu/Shein/etc slop ads. If we could get a website that preserves the parts of the forum structure people like while modernizing it to a more socmed-savvy digital landscape, I'm sure many would be open to seeing it. That said, it feels like doing so would just reinvent the wheel and end up back where we started -- a wiki with a dedicated forum/chatroom space.

 

We already have a discord group. It's a problem with the medium (fast chatbox style interactions) vs forum posts (slower, methodial and more pen-pal type interactions). And Facebook isn't much different than discord in some ways, especially because you can't organize topics in FB.

 

Agreed with what others have said above. I am very pro-forum format, but I also think the added features like the marketplace, Wiki and Doll Profiles have really differentiated Den of Angels as a centralized information hub for the hobby. To others' points, forums are slower paced and I would still expect day-to-day conversations to happen off platform, but those added benefits anchor the hobby IMO.

I fully support forum migration, but would hope we could recreate or migrate similar aspects.

 

What if..a forum with maybe a companion Discord, and a dedicated offline-first app? Agree, I really wish Insta hadn't updated the hashtag system, it was a simple but effective way to see info and participate in buy/sell/trade. Personally speaking, as an 80's baby Discord is too fast for me, but as a tech person DoA is too slow for me. Need to hit the Goldilocks zone of engagement. I love hearing everyone's feedback and ideas, it's clear people genuinely value what DoA has brought to their lives. And I definitely don't want to negate that.

 

Is there a way for people to join you on Discord? Or is it like DoA where it's invite only?

 

As others have said, forums are slower paced. There's another issue with places like reddit and discord though and that is anonymity. Facebook not so much but many people prefer not to use Facebook at all. (Which is understandable)

In addition to the forum DoA also has the bjd wiki and doll profiles. DoA isn't just a place to be social, it's a database of information and in a way it's an archive of the hobby.

 

No secret (I don't think)
Join the BJD Discord Server!

 

I kind of like this idea. Maybe post photos in the Discord like companion- keep the encyclopedic stuff and doll profiles on the forum. Discussions can be on both. I notice for pictures- I go on IG/ Discord since it’s faster to view everything. For discussion, I’m on forums ( Reddit/ DoA) since I like a trail to follow along better.

 

Perfect! Thank you so much!

 

I won't pretend to know all the thankless work that goes into being an admin for a forum like this, and I think the admins have been stretched thin for too long.

Social media really changed the BJD landscape online, but as we are seeing the decay of social media, my observation is that the decentralization of the online BJD community has ultimately had a negative effect. The forum has never been perfect, but for years, I no longer know where to go for up-to-date, relevant information on companies, sculpts, releases, hobby trends, sales, etc. There is also something to be said about an easily tracked, transparent history of transactions, communication with buyers and sellers, etc, especially when dealing with such valuable items like our dolls. Instagram became unsearchable. Reddit, Tumblr, Discord... I don't know. It's overwhelming. I know it is impossible to go backwards ten years, but I do miss when I knew I could go to DOA and find 80-90% of what I needed related to the hobby, here.

I also won't pretend to know what the solution is, but I feel that the loss of this forum is devastating for the community because of its legacy and the trove of history and information it holds about the hobby. As has already been said, the slower pace and archival functions of the forum serve an important purpose, and I do think as the internet/social media continues to rapidly change, there is value is preserving something like this. Adapting it, updating it, but preserving what makes it valuable.

 

I think it isn't a problem of "if" another forum could be started, it certainly could. But like was already pointed out, most people simply won't migrate, and it won't be DoA, no matter what it is. I would personally be interested in another forum, but it would be a heavy lift and certainly not have all of the history DoA has. I know some folks are trying to archive the forum as best they can, but where that will end up and in what form... Who knows. Other attempts to make alternatives to DoA haven't lasted very long, but that was with DoA still around. It is entirely possible something might stick better now if it's New Forum or No Forum.

I DO think that there is still a niche, especially in very narrow-focused hobby spaces, for a forum. So while I can't pretend I'm chomping at the bit to start one myself, I think it's an idea with some merit if August comes and Dezarii is still nowhere to be found. I'd happily contribute in whatever way I was able to, although I also help moderate what is usually called The Big Discord (I just discovered today that we have more users than DoA, which is absolutely wild to me) so... A grain of salt must be taken here.

 

I would be incredibly heartbroken to see this site go down. I’ve been here since 2007 (officially. Lurking since 2005) and have grown up on these boards. My hope is that an agreement can be reached and a new team can come in to assist with the day to day need.

In the interim, I found people on Instagram and I know Reddit is also an option for something a bit more forum based.

 

There have been forums that run on a subscription model, yes. In all the cases I can think of, the forum started out free and introduced paid memberships after they got (too) big. I don't see people paying for a completely new forum, where they have no idea if they'll like it/it'll last or not. Frankly the leadership issue, as many have pointed out, seems like a bigger hurdle!