Forums updated but not going anywhere

[Lelouch Vi Britannia]

Damn, RIP the theme.

[Alex FRD]

Damn, RIP the theme.

It had a good run...

[Hotaru]

Man Ks has been taking a beating these past years first the forums and now the mishimmie

[Mattyd]

Hey, the forum is fixed

[OtakuNinja]

I'm really happy to see the forum looking like it once did. Feels like 2012 again

[Silentcook]

Migration Notice

Short TL;DR
The Katawa Shoujo forums will be migrated to a different server. The Katawa Shoujo forums are now hosted under the fhs.sh umbrella, and you shouldn't notice any difference besides the new theme, and registrations being open. The whole process is estimated to take about a few hours at most. Have fun!

The long version
Why
The Katawa Shoujo forums have been hosted by RenPy Tom since the early days, but he has decided that he will pass that responsibility to someone active in the KS community.

Who
We, the collective known as FHS (Fleeting Heartbeat Studios), the creators of Katawa Shoujo: Re-Engineered, will be taking over hosting the forums starting from October 6, 2023. We are a mixed collective of collaborators from all across the world, from software engineers to devops engineers with plenty of experience hosting, deploying, and maintaining infrastructure, and we are naturally all huge fans of Katawa Shoujo.

How
We have already performed a test migration, and have held an open beta for testing forum functionality. We've documented the process in great detail, and we'll be referring to this document during the migration process to ensure everything goes smoothly. A full dump of the SQL database will be cloned over to the new phpBB installation, maintaining a 1:1 clone of the forum state. The attachments, avatars, and smiles have also been backed up and will be carried over to the new forum infrastructure. The migration is expected to take a few hours at most.

Where
We will run the forums on a bare-metal server in Moscow, generously offered, owned, and operated by one of our respected community members, Vladimir Hodakov (hdkv@fhs.sh). The server is more than equipped to handle large amounts of traffic, and has good connection to the rest of the world.

What stays the same
Essentially everything. The entire forum will be cloned, including but not limited to: boards, topics, threads, posts, users, roles, attachments, avatars, banners, signatures, private messages, and everything in between. Former staff members will naturally still have the same permissions as they did before, we aren't changing anything about that.

What changes
- Registrations are now open again, so we can enjoy the influx of new users who want to contribute their thoughts.
- We'll be implementing much stricter spam protection. We'll be using HCaptcha for registrations, Akismet for spam protection, and Cloudflare to prevent automated/targeted attacks.
- Some FHS members will become staff members on the forum to help with the technical side of things.
- We will be handling all forum-related inquiries at staff@fhs.sh.
- The new domain will be ks.fhs.sh, however the old ks.renai.us domain will still work via redirecting requests to ks.fhs.sh.
- There's a new forum theme that matches the Katawa Shoujo aesthetic, forked from <https://github.com/rauenzi/ModernRenai>.

Afterword
We would like to thank everyone who helped and encouraged us during this process, and for the trust placed in us. We will continue to nurture and help the Katawa Shoujo community grow, to collectively enjoy all the joy that this wonderful game has brought to our lives.

[Zerebos]

- There's a new forum theme that matches the Katawa Shoujo aesthetic, forked from <https://github.com/rauenzi/ModernRenai>.

Very excited to see my theme become the default on the forums, hopefully others are as well There may even be some active members here that never saw the original forum theme!

Overall though, I'm glad to see the forums come under more active leadership and the FHS team is a perfect fit. And as an engineer, I also appreciate the commitment to open-source and community contribution. I think it's the right direction forward.

[Sharp-O]

It looks great. Proper cozy vibes again!