This is an open invitation to all that wish to participate in the open beta testing of a new Club/Social Group Project.

A brief explanation of the project: the social group format that currently exists as a separate group where members can create threads and post freely will be recreated within the Club Forums through the use of Sub Forums individualized for each Club or Social Group.

That is the short of it, here is the longer version please read everything before making your decision so you understand what it going to happen.

What we’re going to be doing is running a base model of the final fully feature product that we have envisioned. It will have all of the basic functionality we want, but it will lack all of the bells and whistles that we want to add to make things more robust. The beta test will be a way for us to get things started to see how people like it and where we can make improvements. Even without the bells and whistles it can still functional fully as intended, as a Club or Social Group. Everyone that participates will be able to provide feedback and suggestions on additional features to add to make it something that everyone can enjoy.

The base model is pretty simple for now, but as we have the time available to make the mods needed to it things will grow and you’ll be able to test out the new stuff we add. What the base model will be is a sub forum located in the Clubs Forum of the main forum. There the sub forum will be given whatever name the group that participates wants along with a brief description. With the sub forum you’ll be able to continue discussions and talk as you have previously in the social groups. This will mean that the clubs rules from before will be relaxed significantly more than they ever have to accommodate the posting environment of the social groups.

The club forums will become a “Main Club Forum” which will be the hub for all of the groups. The main club forum will be used as a “front desk” for the groups or as I like to call it a job fair. Each group will have a thread where forum members wishing to join will sign up and you’ll be able to look at your applicants. All requests for giving forum members access will go through me first and I’ll handle the work.

So that is how things will work for the beta after the setup. The creation of a sub-forum for your group will be very similar to how clubs are made. You will make a post in the registration thread of the club forum requesting a sub-forum for your group. Do note that if your social group or club already exists it will be automatically approved all you’ll be doing is giving me the necessary information to fill out to personalize your sub-forum to your group. If anyone wants to make a new group in the sub-forum that doesn’t already exist then it will go through an approval process that you see happen in the thread currently. You’ll want to read the main post to see the form that you’ll need to fill out since it’ll be different from the norm as well as necessary so you can have your sub-forum read the way you want it.

Now to answer why you would want to do this if it is going to be mirroring the social groups. With this move to the club forums as a sub forum you’re threads and post will appear in the main forum providing greater visibility to your group as a whole (such as the “new posts” and “posts in the last 24 hours”). This can help to promote and increase your own group’s interest and activity in the forum. Your social group will no longer be hidden in a specialized area that does not even provide updates or notices to its members. All of the features you use in the forums will be available for you to use such thanks, new posts in your User CP and forum subscriptions.

I want to take a little time to explain what we want to eventually make the final product of this to look like. The plan will be to allow the sub-forums to be customized with icons and images that represent the groups. They will also be available to be listed in your own profile like inventory items are so you can show off and advertise for your own groups. You’ll be able to select which ones you want to display just like items. Some of these features will require us to create our own mods to have it happen as they don’t exist. So it should be understandable why they won’t be available at the start.

As said before, any additional features can come from the suggestions and ideas you give us. We won’t be able to promise to do everything, but it will never hurt to give every idea you have. We’ll let you know if it is possible and if we will try it out. Anything new we do will be run through the beta testing groups until we hit an end point that we feel it is finished.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact me through PM or responding to this in here. I’ll answer everything that I am able to do.

This does open immediately and there will be no limit on how many groups we accept into beta testing. There will also be no time limit on joining the testing. It will always be open unless we deem it unsustainable or the project fails. Please check the Club Forums for further updates and work for the beta testing.

Thank you for your time and sorry for the intrusion.