New site

[Ed]

Sorry I haven’t been around much the past few days. First, I’ve had this heavy cold/light flu thing that seems to be going around. It wasn’t too bad TBH but it went through everyone in my household before me so I’ve been looking after them. Second, most of my time is spent building the new version of this site.

I’m hoping to get things moved to the new server in 3-4 weeks and will swap this site for the new one at that point. It makes it more complicated now, but should mean only a few hours of downtime during the transition instead of a few days or more.

Hoping to be able to open the new site for testing in the next week (or so).

MissJD, TheG and Gary like this

[Gary]

Lots of questions…

Will there be a “New Dares”?

Will the old ones carry on?

Will you invite us to have a video call to confirm out age and that we can get naked “on demand”?

Will Patreon Memberships continue ?

[Jesss]

I believe that Ed has said elsewhere that the Patreon link is something he’s keeping. I think people with forum accounts that predated the Patreon, might need to rejoin is I understood what I read correctly?

Gary and Ed like this

[Ed]

Existing Patreon memberships (including free ones) will continue. Just sign into the new site with your patreon login and it should work fine.

The Master Dare List will be carried over but I’m going to have to rebuild the entire table. I’m not sure what to do about people who don’t join the new site. I might only add people as they join (and let me know).

I’ll do video calls on Teams to check people look clearly over 18. If I’m not sure, I’ll asked for photo ID, but I would imagine that will be extremely rare. I won’t be storing any part of the ID. Gender and nudity can be tested at the same time. Most calls will have to be one-sided in terms of video/voice (especially voice) as I’m rarely on my own.

Steve, John and Gary like this

[John]

There are examples you have hinted that you know about, and I’ve seen cases where I’ve wondered myself, where males have female profiles and the reverse.

If they are verified by you, will you then go with their wishes?

I’m obviously not referring to me here, Ed will tell you those dare pics are definitely me 🙂

[TheG]

That’s a really interesting question, especially in the light of current debates about gender. I’ve sometimes wondered how I would experience this site differently if I presented as a woman, and whether I would like what I experienced. I know this isn’t a “whooar – get ‘em off luv” kind of community but there must be subtle differences in the way we approach each other depending on the gender mix. (Don’t worry – I won’t be creating a female account. I’d quickly make mistakes. “As I was saying to my mate Fred in the gents bog last night… oops, I meant the ladies bog obviously.”

John and Ed like this

[Ed]

Someone with a profile which doesn’t match their sex can still be age-verified and naked on camera verified, but there’s no point giving someone a sex-verified badge if it’s misleading those who see it. Very few people have wanted the sex-verified badges anyway.

[Ed]

I’m in the process of copying lots of content across to the new site. Still lots of structural work to do, but I need posts, photos and videos to test out if the systems already set up work properly and look as I want them to. There are SO many details to sort out and fix, but I’m hoping to start some kind of testing at the latter end of this week.

ptHarry and John like this

[Ed]

Wow, this is slow work. If I could just simply copy it would be relatively fast, but I’m forced into converting blog posts to site pages to comply with the age-verification security. That makes it fiddly.

I’ve still got a bunch of test posts/pages/comments which I need to hunt down and remove too.

I’m hoping the Patreon sign in works correctly – that’s yet to be tested too.

SO much work!

TheG likes this

[ptHarry]

@ed ” I’m forced into converting blog posts to site pages to comply with the age-verification security.”

Is there anything some of us could do that would help you to convert them?

On the positive side, site pages that get replies get “bumped” so the thread activity is more obvious. Unlike the blogs where comments to a page 10 blog leave the blog on page 10 where they continue to look like old posts.That could possibly encourage better participation once it is done.

Ed likes this

[Ed]

Sorry, not really. You would need access to my HDD to get the source content and admin access to delete the original posts.

Thank you for offering.

ptHarry likes this

[Ed]

Well, I can now confirm that I won’t be starting testing until after the weekend. Getting closer but there’s been a lot more to set up than I expected.

Steve, John and TheG like this

[Ed]

I’m assuming you’ve all seen this bit of news?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yelvlnzveo

WhatsApp (along with others) have threatened to pull out of the UK too. I doubt that will happen but policing the internet is a problem. There doesn’t seem to be a clear solution.

Someone suggested that biometric ID on every Internet-capable device could solve this (by verifying the user is over 18 every time anyone goes online and then have the sites able to check a flag in the browser), but that would only work with a global agreement, it would take years to implement and what about existing devices?

It feels to me that a law has been brought in before there is a technological solution for this. We’ve got a mess of reactions and some of the “solutions” will put many, if not most, users off. I won’t be surprised if the UK adult industry is mostly wiped out by this.

It’s fundamentally flawed anyway. Think of speed limits. Our in town speed limit (here in Wales) was 30mph, but some people drove around at 40+ and occasionally caused unacceptable accidents. The government reduced the speed limit to 20mph. Most people have slowed down and the average speed has reduced (obviously pollution has gone up too) but the people who weren’t complying with the law, still aren’t complying with the law. The day-to-day limitation is suffered by the law-abiding majority. The law-breaking minority still drive too fast and probably get caught about as often.

New website laws are usually followed by sites that followed the previous legal framework anyway. The sites which are problematic won’t comply with the new law anyway. Ofcom will try to block them, but rolling IP addresses, non-geographic cloud housing, VPNs etc., will get around it anyway. In the meantime, the costs and restrictions will cause many sites which are not the real target, to close down.

Sorry, rant over.

Gary and TheG like this

[TheG]

Is it essentially a knee-jerk reaction to under-age kids posting nude selfies online? I can see that’s a serious problem, especially where (a) they are tricked/coerced (which if course can be scarily subtle) or (b) they are cutting themselves off from their desired future careers. That means it would make sense to age-check young-looking people submitting images, much as shops age-check cigarette and alcohol purchasers. That doesn’t explain a need to age-check all members of the community. Maybe it’s simpler to age-check everyone up-front and then not need to spend even more time keeping track of who is posting what.

Re-reading that, I’ve used a lot of hyphens. If the hyphen-forfeit is to take something off for each one, I’m relieved it’s relatively warm here.

Ed likes this

[Ed]

Forums where you can post more than text must be age-checked. That’s why attachments will only be allowed in the age-checked forums.

I won’t be age-checking all members of the community, BUT if you want to see (or post) full nudity, you’ll have to be checked.

Steve and TheG like this

[Gary]

Sad but true about the websites that caused this change versus those that will try and comply.

WhatsApp did threaten to leave the UK when HMG insisted on a backdoor to the end to end encryption.   I thought it had gone ahead, but the recent WhatsApp advert suggests otherwise

[Ed]

My understanding is the backdoor idea isn’t an option. First, it would mean completely replacing their encryption worldwide. Second. It would cause major legal issues with messages sent between the UK and elsewhere. Would WhatsApp have to notify an American messaging a British person that their message could be intercepted en route? If they caved in to the UK, would that mean other governments would insist on the same overreach?

UK just isn’t a big enough market to be worth damaging their business model worldwide.

[Ed]

I can’t believe how many small, but important, details there are to add, set up and test. I keep finding things I set up years ago which need to be installed on the new site.

The hope was to keep the number of plugins way lower than the current site. Plugins can interact with each other in unexpected ways, causing glitches and failures. Less plugins means fewer things to update and maintain, but also less likelihood of clashes in future. This current site has 40 plugins (WAY too many!) so I’ve been hoping to drop that by about half.

Users are going to notice some features missing. The most glaring omission so far is the “Block” button. I desperately want to keep this, but it turned out to be causing several critical glitches in a variety of systems. It’s a really old plugin which hasn’t been updated in years. Essentially it’s no longer compatible with WordPress so it’s been removed from their library.

[STRIP ME NUDE_V2]

@ed
When the site is launched (and well done for persevering with all the recent trials and tribulations with the current site….to be honest, I’d have given up), will there be a way to force current users/new users to populate their profile?

ptHarry and Ed like this

[Ed]

That’s another annoying thing. Patreon bypasses all the signup forms and directly creates a user account. I’m wondering about making it a rule to fill in the profile (at least some of it) and if you haven’t after 28 days, I delete your account. Too harsh? Too much work – I have to check new accounts.

ptHarry and STRIP ME NUDE_V2 like this

[ptHarry]

Maybe it’s not obvious to first time users that a profile exists.

Is there some kind of trigger that can be used to send an auto-email to new users, welcoming them to the forum and giving them a link that will take them to the page where they can edit their profile?

 

 

Ed likes this

[Ed]

Not that I’m aware of. Patreon’s plugin is VERY basic.

[Jesss]

I seem to have accidentally landed on your new site under construction, so I can confirm that the Patreon log in works!

Ed likes this

[Ed]

That’s good to know. Thank you!

[Ed]

Annoyingly, I’ve hardly had any time to work on the new site. I’m supposed to have got the new hosting sorted but I just haven’t had time. Why does life have to be so busy?

TheG likes this

[John]

I certainly appreciate all the hard work you put in and I’m sure we all do. It’ll happen when it happens, don’t stress about it, life always gets in the way of things 🙂

Ed likes this

[Ed]

Thank you.

I’ve only got a month to close this site. The clock is ticking.

[Ed]

I should probably start locking down these forums and encourage everyone to chat on the new site.

[Jesss]

I tried replying to posts on the new site since you said you want to move stuff over there. I notice that the user profile has a 0 that I presume I’d meant to be a post count — but mine should really be 2, and you are on 0 too Ed.

[Ed]

Thanks for pointing that out. I think I’ve fixed that one now.

Jesss likes this

[Jesss]

So are we officially testing the new site in development now? Or just annoying you over there too?

[Ed]

No, I’m not ready for testing yet.

I’ve been working on the new site for almost 9 hours today. I’m running on about 3 hours sleep (due to the heat) and I’m receiving e-mails, PMs,  Teams messages, post comments and forum posts (on two sites).

TheG likes this

[Jesss]

OK. Message received.

TheG and Ed like this

[Author]

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