Bumped for visibility, as somebody famous once said.

Hi Anne, I see you found my post on FB. This seems to me to be a more sophisticated version of the old DT forum. Alfred keeps tinkering with it and it’s becoming very easy to use and navigate. 

It’s nice to know that FB/Meta is actually useful for something.

Alfred, my amigo... thank you for doing this.

This thing very closely resembles a forum I once ran using phpBB.  Do you know if the two platforms are related or are the similarities purely coincidental?

Again, thank you.  I well know these things require effort.  As an aside, with the forum I ran I had a significant problem with spambots.  I finally took to vetting every post from a new poster myself, since the bots had ways of evading the platform's vetting process.  I did not want to set the filters to automatically reject posts from unregistered posters since I had a significant inflow from newbies.

Anyway, thanks again.

Thank you, Alfred.  I am pleased you recognize the balance a moderator/administrator must struggle to maintain between the bad guys and the good guys who post.

Actually, I had little doubt.  You clearly are not a dumb guy and have knowledge of this world.  I think this place to be in good hands, and you deserve kudos.

When I still maintained my board, my daily routine consisted of logging in and looking at all new posts.  The spambots typically logged in using whackjob IDs, so I would look at each such post.  When I spotted something clearly bogus, I would then delete the offending post and permanently remove the source ID from future inclusion.  I like to think I did a pretty good job of keeping the crap off that board, but it did require my intervention every day.

Alas, that board over time drew less and less activity, and after a number of years of running it I shut it down.  It had ceased providing any useful information to any but a VERY small number of people.  It was rewarding while it lasted.

I wish you the best of luck with this.  There are clearly good people who can benefit from your efforts.  Whether anybody tells you so or not, your efforts will be appreciated.

Peace.

Thank you for setting this up Alfred.

The amount of information I got from the CommunityPlus forums was invaluable. More often than not I found solution without posting a question.  When I did ask, I nearly always got a prompt pleasant informative reply.  Hopefully this will continue.

Serif software I heavily use MoviePlus X5, PagePlus X9, AlbumPlus X4, PanoramaPlus X4 and less often PhotoPlus X5.

Thanks Stevieg

I am so glad to have found this forum. Thanks for setting it up and thanks for letting me in, Alfred

I would like to hear of issues relating to Photostack

Alfred, many, many thanks for setting this forum up, and for letting me join.

I've been out of the loop for the past couple of years due to eye cataracts keeping me from using the computer, reading, indeed pretty much everything. I was effectively blind. But both eyes are now fixed, thanks to the wonderful NHS. I recently had the second eye done, after the first one several months before. So now I'm back online, looking to get back back into the swing of things. It seems that there have been some changes in the couple of years that I've been gone, mostly not good.

I joined the Affinity forums a couple of days ago, and from there, I've now come here. The biggest shock that I've had is finding out that Serif has closed down the CommunityPlus forums!! When and why did they do that??? Did they not do enough damage with the atrocious way that they abandoned their loyal long-term Plus customers?? CommunityPlus was the one vital support mechanism left for Plus users. The very least they could have done was leave it there and running under the administration of a few select regulars, if they believed that they couldn't spare Patrick or any of the other Serif staff to run it.

What was Serif's reasoning for closing CommunityPlus down? Was it sudden, or did you guys get plenty of warning? The way they have treated their long-term loyal customers has been absolutely disgraceful, despicable, just abandoning the software and users without a care and then then closing down the support forum for the Plus software. I swear, it makes me regret ever supporting them by buying the Affinity suite, instead of going down the alternative route that I was seriously considering (and still am) with open source software like GIMP/Inkscape/Scribus, which I would've used for new projects alongside the Plus software (for the older stuff), and then move over to the open source software completely once a future version of Windows no longer supports the Plus software. At least there's no disgusting corporate back-stabbing with open source.

I used to hang out on CommunityPlus a lot, mostly as a lurker. There was so much incredibly useful information there. Is it completely gone or has the forum been archived as read-only? If it's completely gone, then all that invaluable information and support has been lost, and that makes it an even greater disgrace, greatly compounding what Serif had already done to their loyal userbase of Plus customers.

After years of being part of a fantastic Serif community (one of the main reasons I stuck with them instead of looking elsewhere), it's so sad to see Serif turn out to be just as mean and unscrupulous as the likes of Adobe, Corel or Microsoft. Serif was a tiny start-up company back in the 90s, brought up from nothing by their loyal Plus user base, who they have now abandoned. Now they've become just another rat in the corporate rat race. They don't deserve to be supported. I guess none of us ever thought that Serif would behave like this. But this always happens with any company when they get too big for their boots.

I went through almost exactly the same thing with Corel many years ago. I've never bought a Corel product in all the years since then. They bought up a small company (Softquad) that produced a lovely piece of web design software (Hotmetal Pro) that had long been an important part of my workflow. They immediately erased the software from existence and soon afterwards did the same to the online support forums, where frantic users were begging for help and information. Disgusting. I was so angry, absolutely livid. Now history repeats itself on an even larger scale with Serif. Except it's even worse, as Serif did it to their own software and customers, whereas Corel had zero loyalty to the software and customers that they had "acquired" from another company. This kind of vile corporate behaviour really makes my blood boil.

That's an awful pity. The CommunityPlus forums were a fantastic repository of help and knowledge for the Serif Plus range of software. If none of the Serif staff could be spared to run the forums, I'm sure that some of the more experienced and knowledgeable of the forum members would've been only too happy to step up and take over as admins or moderators. At the very least, the forums could've been archived and made read-only. Nobody would've been able to post, but at least all that knowledge would've been preserved for any Plus users to read. But to just scrub them like that, to wipe them from existence, was an act of pure vandalism.

I understand that completely. It was very sad that development on all of the Plus range ceased prematurely, before the Affinity software was ready for purpose (it's still years behind the Plus software re: functionality), but we could've taken that on the chin if they'd been more sympathetic and supportive of long-standing customers. But the way that they treated the loyal, long term Plus users who had helped make the company in the first place really sticks in the gut. Serif's attitude was disgusting. Former customers were cast adrift, cut off completely and treated like lepers or pariahs. It was as though Serif tried to erase them, pretend that they didn't exist. What a lousy way to treat the customers who had helped make your company successful. But Serif aren't making any money from them anymore, so they don't give a toss about them.

You'd think Serif would have at least left CommunityPlus up there as a support forum, to show a bit of thanks to previous customers for their loyalty. But no, they couldn't even do that. Considering the fact that the moderators on the Affinity forums always advise people who use Plus software to continue using those programs if the Affinity programs don't suit their needs, I find the fact that Serif have erased the only Plus software support forum to be highly ironic.