You guys haven't heard much from the PA front lately (if at all), so here's what happened.  I might be a little fuzzy on the time frames.

Pixel Academy/Pixelerate's hosting went down unexpectedly.  After about a week we finally got hold of Bjorn and he told us that they'd made a server switch.  In his own words "everyone just forgot" to tell us.  Crap.

Another two weeks go by.  Bjorn gets hold of Mori and tells him that they "lost" our files.  Now, I'm not sure what kind of setup they've got there, but in my experience if you're going about a server backup/switch the simple way, then the only way to "lose" files during a switch is to intentionally leave them out, no?  Oh well, at least they warned us that they were switching servers so that we had a chance to back up.  Oh wait, they didn't.

We sent them a month-old backup and crossed our fingers, hoping that we'd be back in business soon.  That was about two or three weeks ago.  Forgive me if I sound a tiny bit irritated.

"So what now?" rebirth of the forum by any means necessary, optimally not dependent on a completely disinterested party.  If anybody still cares, that is ;p

I know a lot of people were already active here, but I just wanted to thank everyone here for taking up the slack, as between our other obligations and the present situation us PA admins have been woefully absent.  I'm also pleased to say that Pixelation has finally worked out most of the kinks that cropped up early in the development process and that a new forum is forthcoming, although between 40 hour weeks at work by day and then 40 hour weeks of school/study by night I've hardly had the time to even touch base with Pep or the others, let alone help them :\ Pep's really got the S on his chest, here... he's been the face, brain, and beating heart of the operation and against staggering odds it's moving forward :p

And now you know.

Good to hear a report on what went down. 

I hope I don't come off a jerk by saying this, but couldn't some form of the forum just be thrown up right now? As I remember the old pixelation forum didn't really have anything special -- just three forum categories and a standard PHP board. Obviously the pixelerate and pixel academy forums were very carefully designed, but the pixelation forum was just plain jane.

If Pep (peppermint pig I assume) needs a stable server he can certainly contact me. 99.9% uptime for over four years.

therye trying to get rid of the standard php. if i recall correct, theyre making an whole own thing. im for that idea, since you know what happened when there was this gay hacking scriptkid that ruined Pixelation.

I suggested this, but the idea was shot down as general sentiment was that it shouldn't be rushed.  I still think a temporary solution would be a good idea, but it's not up to me ;p

Pep has secured some hosting, but big thanks for the offer.  If you still feel that way after our current plan expires, well, I'll point him in your direction ;)

@snader:

We are modifying existing forum software, not writing one from scratch, but we're simply choosing a less popular/more secure package than phpbb.  Some of the functionality we agreed on can be accomplished with existing forum mods for that package, others we will be writing ourselves, so you don't have to wait for the coders to reinvent the wheel and rewrite something that's been written a dozen times before :P

Another reason it's taking so long is that the "new Pixelation" won't be limited to just a forum, albeit a slick, feature-rich forum.  Pep hopes (and I think we all agree) that it should be acomplete pixel art resource, not only offering community and feedback but also reference (pixipedia woo!) and marketing materials, erecting a home port for the pixel art scene that it so desperately lacks and yet so wholly deserves.  A lot of work, yeah ;P

Well, hopefully all the pixel forums will find reliable hosts and security and all that. And I hope pixelation gets an easy to remember domain name this time instead of that long ass web1.t43.abcdefg.blahblahblah domain name.

Yeah, same here, and make of THAT what you will :P there's just no replacement for Pixelation.

It's still a long ways off, although if it's half as cool as we want it to be, then yeah, it'll rock :P and be ALMOST worth the downtime, as Wolvie said.

Well, I can't speak for either PixelJoint or Pixelation, so I dunno :P a mag would be badass though, no matter who sponsored it... even if it was just a website formatted into pages like a magazine... pixel pushers plying their craft on covers and centerfolds, printed pixel works bringing forth a physical manifestation of our so beloved and yet so elusively intangible digital medium, making it accessible to an entirely different, and yet all-inclusive world.  That makes me so hard I could club a seal.

Yay, compliment :P Well, now that we know people still have an interest in PA/Pixelerate, we at least have even more motivation to get it back up and running.  We had some big plans and high hopes, and kind of got cut off right in the middle of a transitional period.  We'll probably use the opportunity to put things back the way they were when what was there worked and what didn't work wasn't there.  Or something.  Used up all the brain-juice on that last monologue, so good night for now :x

I think pixelation is special to all of us because it was visited by such amazing pixellers and I think the moderating staff did a good job of enforcing posting rules.  It was also around long enough to get a long list of "regulars". 

Pixel Joint forum was initially around just for collaboration sake and that is still the ultimate goal.  Not sure what Pixelerate's main difference from Pixelation is, but pixel Academy's focus is obviously very clear.

Regarding the pixel mag... we've been slowly putting it together and will start cooking on it real soon hopefully... pixelblink and iSTVAN have already put forth some great ideas and I think it'll be a wonderful collab project between the forums once we get the content and layout defined a little bit more. 

Err, are you saying you actually have time to do something about it now? Sarcasm doesn't become you, dear.  Trust me, you didn't miss anything in any case.

Don't play nice... Fight! Fight! Fight!

j/k.

Hence this thread.

Late is better than never though.

So let's end it here and be happy that they'll be back up soon. YAAAAY biscuits for everybody!

Er...those ones you put in your mouth and you think of what you want it to taste like and it does.

Busciuts aside, I'm just glad Pixelation is coming back. Ever since it left, I just haven't felt motivated to be particularly active in the community. Pixelerate just didn't feel right. Academy, Joint, I just couldn't bring myself to sign up for some reason. I'll be all happy once Pixelation is back. ^_^