Hello there! :3

[Zyraph]

I'm not new to working with adoptables, though I'm very new to working on my own site with adoptables. I've made a few other sites in the past, but none really took off. I was really out of my element, honestly, and still kinda am, but I'm hoping to build my own adoptables site.

I am wondering though, and I know this probably isn't the best place to put this, but...assuming 1.4 is still in the works, does anyone know of a timeframe for when it will be released? I've heard a LOT of work is going into it, and I'm just wondering if I should keep waiting for it to be launched, or if I should just grab 1.3.4 and start editing it as much as possible. I'd have to do a lot of work just for that, but I'm just really curious if I should keep waiting or not. I just am that anxious to get my own adoptable site started, and I've already got a little bit of pre-planning done for it (mainly word documents outlining different things).

Hope to hear from you guys soon!

--Zyraph

[Hwona]

Hello! Honestly, I think it depends on what direction you want your site to go in. 1.4 may have some features you don't want on your site so I would read up first. :3

[Zyraph]

Actually, I've been reading up on some things, and multiple currencies would be critical for what I want to do. Like...it's a make-or-break for what I want to do, because of the way I'm trying to set things up. Like, different colored pets will produce different colors of resources, which will be used as currencies to create items :3

[Hwona]

Hmm, in that case, if you're not planning on doing any serious customization to the code of 1.3.4, then I don't think starting there would be a proplem since most users upgrade...

[Zyraph]

Alrighty! I'm just looking into specific things at the moment...I see a lot of the suggestions going into 1.4, and there's a lot I know I'll utilize...I might even chip in a couple ideas for what I'd like to see :3

[Hwona]

If you see a lot of features you'll use in 1.4, plan on using it - it couldn't hurt. But if you happen to be using a lot of art and writing for your site and less coding, maybe just work on that for now since you won't have to go through all the trouble of updating. :3 The software needed for all the uploading doesn't work on my device, so its a real hassle. Also, the host often doesn't connect when I can upload.

[Zyraph]

I suppose I could just do the main bits of planning. I'm not sure how I'm going to get art handled yet...and if I was to just start working on little bits from 1.3.4 by working on the database, it would probably be able to be updated, I think...since it's not going to be truly customized, so if I somehow lose that stuff, it won't be a great loss. It's the artwork I need help with, heh

[Hwona]

Ah, I see. Well, good luck with your site! And if you need any art, I'm doing free adoptables (normally don't do pixels though) for practice. If you want something just ask - there's a lot of other stuff floating around too. :3

[Zyraph]

Oh? Well, I'm mainly trying to get artwork of dragons...I haven't gotten their designs figured out yet, but I'm trying to get three different kinds for now: Scale, Feather, and Fur dragons ^.=.^ if you're interested, I'd be really grateful to see what you might be able to come up with ^.=.^

[Kyttias]

I think 1.4 could be out as early as this summer, but you never know what comes up. It wouldn't hurt to make a closed beta version of your site with the current version and get the look and feel down, I think. If there are modifications you'd like specific to your site, there are a couple of really nice people around the forums who should be able to help you. Your idea already sounds interesting. ^^

[Zyraph]

I think 1.4 could be out as early as this summer, but you never know what comes up. It wouldn't hurt to make a closed beta version of your site with the current version and get the look and feel down, I think. If there are modifications you'd like specific to your site, there are a couple of really nice people around the forums who should be able to help you. Your idea already sounds interesting. ^^

Why thank you very much! My idea is mainly to have dragons that can actually "glitch" into different alignments based on the duration they are wearing certain items. The name is naturally "Dragon Glitch" :3

I'd make a lot of the mods myself, but I'm a complete newb with PHP, and my art sucks...but I'm already setting up my forums, and I'll probably work with 1.3.4 after things are set up for that to my satisfaction. I'm hoping to offer a few tricks not yet seen with adoptables, and maybe even a couple that would make a lot of people very happy :3

[Hall of Famer]

Welcome to Mysidia Adoptables. My recommendation is similar to Kyttias', its better that you work on your site with Mys v1.3.4 right now rather than wait for Mys v1.4.0. You will gain a very good experience at how to build an adoptables site, and by the time the new script arrives you will be ready to make it popular.

[Zyraph]

Welcome to Mysidia Adoptables. My recommendation is similar to Kyttias', its better that you work on your site with Mys v1.3.4 right now rather than wait for Mys v1.4.0. You will gain a very good experience at how to build an adoptables site, and by the time the new script arrives you will be ready to make it popular.

I actually decided to take that advice, though I seem to be having some weird issues trying to get it to work correctly. I'm going to try a few things before posting something official, since what I did before was upload a version with the anti-brute-force scripts modding the core files. I'm hoping a clean install with an unmodded version will work, then I can modify it from there.

Once I get a decent amount of things ready, then I'll probably look into seeing if anything can be easily modded before the 1.4 update. I'm just hoping this time I can actually login to the vanilla version X3

[IntoRain]

Welcome to mysidia! :D I see you have many ideas for your site, I like them!

[Zyraph]

Welcome to mysidia! :D I see you have many ideas for your site, I like them!

Thank you! I've worked on the basic ideas for about a week before touching anything relating to scripting, so...I'm hoping that in the coming months, they'll be feasible X3

[Kyttias]

*slight nudge* Yo, I know this is your starter thread from nearly a month ago but I'm back again because I noticed your location says you're in Indiana.

Coincidentally, I'm moving to Lafayette this summer! I'm travelling across the country for the move, and I don't really know anyone in the area other than the person I'm moving in with. I don't even have any family in Indiana. x'D

[Zyraph]

*slight nudge* Yo, I know this is your starter thread from nearly a month ago but I'm back again because I noticed your location says you're in Indiana.

Coincidentally, I'm moving to Lafayette this summer! I'm travelling across the country for the move, and I don't really know anyone in the area other than the person I'm moving in with. I don't even have any family in Indiana. x'D

Oh, that's cool! Yeah, I'm in Indianapolis! I haven't been around that area too much, so I'm not quite sure what's around Lafayette, but most of Indiana is mainly crop fields. Though we do have a few cities and towns, and what cities we do have are usually pretty lengthy and in wide areas. Unless you're down south, in which case you'll see a few hills.

I will say the small towns are the best though. Honestly, walking around in a small town is amazing. I actually had to go to Vincennes for college, and it was a lot smaller than Indianapolis, and I had a blast! I usually walked around in the park near the campus, because it was fun to be there at night (even though nobody was technically allowed, but it was still fun)!

So, ya...If that's your hint of "can we meet?" I wouldn't mind, though I know some people would be afraid considering they may feel it's unsafe. Honestly, I've met a few people in person that I first met online, and none of them were bad. In fact, I actually had better experiences with people I met online than ones I met in person first (except a few people I knew personally first, but that's few and far between) :3 Don't worry, I won't bite X3

Also, honestly hoping that didn't sound creeperish! I tend to seem a little weird on things like that, so please forgive me!

[Kyttias]

The person I'm moving in with attends Purdue University, and its in West Lafayette. I met them online, also! I flew in through Indianapolis the first time we met offline, and I stayed for two weeks. (I'm horrible at social interaction offline, so, I've also had better experiences with people I've met online, aha!)

(( Apparently there's an anime convention called ACEN over in Chicago in May, and I'll be going to that. (Not quite local, but it's only a few hours away.) On the off chance that was already up your alley, that is. ))

I'd say sure, we could meet sometime. But we only know one another through here, and that's hardly enough to go on. So we both have crazy dreams of someday owning a successfully awesome website. It's a start. But what are you into? (I'm not actually that into anime, despite mentioning the convention. I've only watched a couple things in their entirety. I'm a big fan of the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series, and they're based out of Japan, so... there's that.)

Recently I've just binged watched all of Transformers Prime on Netflix, because I saw the older generations in my early childhood and was told the 2010 run was actually pretty good. And I just discovered there's going to be a Transformers MMO, and the next wave of beta testing starts in a couple days. I'm excited over something I just got into, ahaha. (Speaking of MMOs, used to play WoW, and I'm thinking about trying out Elder Scrolls Online.)

[Zyraph]

The person I'm moving in with attends Purdue University, and its in West Lafayette. I met them online, also! I flew in through Indianapolis the first time we met offline, and I stayed for two weeks. (I'm horrible at social interaction offline, so, I've also had better experiences with people I've met online, aha!)

(( Apparently there's an anime convention called ACEN over in Chicago in May, and I'll be going to that. (Not quite local, but it's only a few hours away.) On the off chance that was already up your alley, that is. ))

I'd say sure, we could meet sometime. But we only know one another through here, and that's hardly enough to go on. So we both have crazy dreams of someday owning a successfully awesome website. It's a start. But what are you into? (I'm not actually that into anime, despite mentioning the convention. I've only watched a couple things in their entirety. I'm a big fan of the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series, and they're based out of Japan, so... there's that.)

Recently I've just binged watched all of Transformers Prime on Netflix, because I saw the older generations in my early childhood and was told the 2010 run was actually pretty good. And I just discovered there's going to be a Transformers MMO, and the next wave of beta testing starts in a couple days. I'm excited over something I just got into, ahaha. (Speaking of MMOs, used to play WoW, and I'm thinking about trying out Elder Scrolls Online.)

That's actually pretty awesome! And don't worry, I'm actually very shy offline. I've honestly never been to any sort of anime convention. There's only one convention I've been to, and it was a furry con (it was hosted literally in my city and someone offered to take me). Not that bad of an experience, actually.

I do like anime though, and I binged watched Naruto (all 300+ episodes at the time) when I was in college. It's now got over 500 episodes and is still in production, though it'll probably be wrapped up sometime this year I think. Other than that one, I don't have any real favorites, but I do like watching anime on occasion.

I never played WoW though, but a great friend of mine has (he's actually my boyfriend. Yes, I'm gay X3) but he mainly played it for the lore. As for me, my guilty MMO pleasure is Guild Wars 2. I don't play it too often though, but I do have at least one character at level cap.

As for more basic things about me, I can be random and weird, but I try my best to be friendly. Not always social though, unless something holds a great interest to me. For example, the site I'm hoping to create (which I'm actually starting to shell out money for, now that I have figured out what I really want to do with it). I'm really hoping to get things working with my site. I'm more technical with code, and I love to write. I'm not too great with PHP (yet) but I'm hoping to learn a little bit as I go along. I'm great with configuring services though (like the MySQL databases, accounts, actual software to run sites like forums, etc).

But ya...not sure what else to say exactly though. If you have questions, feel free to ask!

[Kyttias]

*high fives* And I'm lesbian (and its actually my gf I'm moving in with but I didn't want to come right out and say it), so no worries.

I've always had interest in web development, I think. I'm 23, but the first website I made was in 3rd grade (and I asked my mom's permission and she said no, so I waited about four months before going ahead and doing it anyway) - it was just a little Pokemon fan site. By 7th grade I was running about four Yugioh websites, which were just shrines to individual characters. It just seemed to be a thing at the time. By 10th grade, I was just using the hosting I had to store my homework, make a few presentations, etc. I took a web design class which used Dreamweaver, and it was all done out of a book, and the teacher had no idea what he was doing... and it was just kind of laughable when I'd been doing all my HTML in notepad since the dawn of time, yknow?

I stopped working on websites for a while, until just a couple years ago when a friend of mine decided to go into college for that. But... what they were taught in their first year of college? Was nothing I hadn't taught myself. By the time they eventually dropped out, they still hadn't learned more than I knew by the end of high school on my own... which I found really strange.

So I decided to get back into things recently (in the last three years or so). I've dabbled with PHP and MySQL and even my own web server through WAMP on my laptop. I've hosted forum scripts and poked at how they worked, then wrote a few basic things myself, and then of course, played with Mysidia here.

But... with the latest advances in server-side Javascript (nodeJS), Javascript frameworks in general (jQuery, Angular, Ember, Backbone, Knockout), and Javascript databases (the JSON format, and even services like Firebase), I've decided I'm going to focus my effort more towards that than PHP. The traditional MySQL/PHP hookup isn't going away any time soon, but alternatives have started to appear on the block. My decision to go the cutting-edge route has the major disadvantage of a distinct lack of documentation and less open-source resources available, but... it'll grow in time. With how fast the tech industry moves, this is a wave I want to surf on top of by the time it gets popular, ya?

I'm also an artist, but I'm unfortunately not that great at dragons. Anime style humans (http://37.media.tumblr.com/4589c2eedfd7f4393b38cb7b5163d0d7/tumblr_mstlvftHUA1qiv4muo1_1280.png) (and chibis (http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2014/038/a/a/me_by_kyttias-d75jdsm.png) in various sizes) and cute monsters (http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/044/4/2/lythine_by_kyttias-d7696ha.png), sure, but dragons... I wish. It's nothing some practice and some style reference couldn't remedy, but I sadly don't do pixel art (gif) very well. However, vector art (svg) and raster art (png), yes - and my coloring style is hard to reference without some digging some more (and its different between vector, where its simple cell shading, and raster, where I get into semi-realism). :catfish:

I'd be willing to help out with your project, in that jack-of-all-trades sort of way. It's not often you get an artist who knows what's going on with both the front end and back end code. :wutno: If you wanna talk about your project with me a bit more, I'm signed up with lots of instant messaging services. :wiii:

[Zyraph]

I can already tell you're going to be epic as far as a friend and as a person who actually knows what they're doing with programming! I'm really happy that I came on this site now!

I did go to college and learned very little about web development (my classes were more focused on VB.NET and C/C++, and I didn't learn too much with either). I've had experience with setting up quite a few PHP-based forums (http://forum.dragonglit.ch/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3&sid=046a209f9fb50fb723573a54cfb3612d for reference), though I've also installed Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, and quite a few others, even without using Softaculous. I had my own forums when I was a freshman in high school. I used an odd form of IRC when my oldest brother got WebTV when I was in the 7th grade, and that got me interested in IRC when my family got an actual computer (I'm also thinking of getting an IRC channel but that's going to be in the future).

I was always interested in programming, but it was more of a hobby type of thing. Which is why I didn't do so well in college, to the point I just changed my major looking for something easy but still fulfilling. Didn't find much, and dropped out after four years, with some knowledge of things that were quite interested. During the time, I was also a moderator for DragonAdopters, and ran their IRC channel. I had a few people on my staff, and worked my way up to moderating the forums, though I really just preferred working on things relating to the IRC channel at the time (that was so much easier than anything I was doing in college).

Most things for programming, I was self-taught (I did learn a few things about HTML in college, but it was trivial since I'd learned CSS due to deviantART's journal system). What I've learned, I've still not quite mastered, however. I can do edits in PHP, but not write my own code. Though that part comes with managing my own installations of things for at least 6 years. I was more of a hobbyist tinkerer, until now. Now I've actually started shelling out money for some of the things I'm trying to get set up (I got three domain names and decent hosting for a year, so...ya...X3).

Also, I do love your style of drawing! I'd love to see what you could do for a dragon with a little drawing practice and a lot of spare time! And if there's anything you want set up for your site, I could try to give you a hand (I'm not great at coding, but I know my way around cPanel and MySQL databases) :3 I'm usually reachable by Twitter or through a text, though I also have Skype, but I can't use it too much because it kills my internet (I'm on 3G for home internet, and I'm constantly throttled. I'm apparently in the top 5% of highest usage X3)

My Twitter (http://twitter.com/ashanriu)
Site Twitter (http://twitter.com/dragon_glitch)

[Kyttias]

Nice, nice. What you have that I don't is clearly money - I've got no college experience. Everyone dreams of going in and popping out with an amazing job, but all they tend to pop out with is a lot of debt. I'd rather work a shitty job and not be in debt until I feel stable. I think I'll do college in like ~4 years, at the rate I'm going. Sooner, if mother still agrees to chip in. (The good news: the tech industry is a lot like the art industry, in that, if you can show off a snazzy portfolio, it can speak just as much volume as a degree. And being self taught, I'll be able to get into college and hopefully understand things enough to breeze through.)

But speaking of not having money - I've got a ton of experience with free hosting. Enough to go 'nope, no more' and I learned how to make my laptop into a web server. I didn't have a cPanel go-between, but full access to my PHP and Apache config files on top of having direct access to the MySQL database. Other than a few small CMS (and rather than Wordpress and Joomla I tend to stick to smaller ones with bare minimum features that are rarely heard of - mostly because I wanted more control over things and to observe how they were built), I also had experience with PHPBB - version 2, specifically, and a lot of mods. I had a pretty sweet NulAvatar setup but then free hosting magically deleted all my files when I hadn't logged in for a month. And that's about when I decided, no, no more free hosting.

I still really like a lot of mods for PHPBB2 but I often hear 'don't use it, it's not secure'. But I feel I shouldn't have to rely on official releases to make my own custom security on a site that doesn't even look like it's built with PHPBB2. If people don't know what something's built with, that alone should help a lot. If people don't start making awesome mods for PHPBB3 soon, I'm probably going to look into exactly what's so insecure about 2 and seeing what people have done to fix it. I assume there's some fix, and that's why so many mods don't have clones or updated versions for 3.

I use my Twitter largely just for web development stuff so it by itself it's probably boring (but maybe interesting to a fellow developer?) - Kyttias (https://twitter.com/kyttias) there as well. (Would prefer direct messages, and I believe that requires a mutual follow?)

I may take you up on the texting offer from your other post, but my phone is very much circa ~2009 "look at me I have a flip out keyboard for the first time ever". . . . *chin in hand* . . . money, again. I really should get a smartphone, it's probably my next largest expenditure. But hey, it's Verizon with unlimited texting, at least?

[IntoRain]

I can already tell you're going to be epic as far as a friend and as a person who actually knows what they're doing with programming! I'm really happy that I came on this site now!

I did go to college and learned very little about web development (my classes were more focused on VB.NET and C/C++, and I didn't learn too much with either). I've had experience with setting up quite a few PHP-based forums (http://forum.dragonglit.ch/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3&sid=046a209f9fb50fb723573a54cfb3612d for reference), though I've also installed Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, and quite a few others, even without using Softaculous. I had my own forums when I was a freshman in high school. I used an odd form of IRC when my oldest brother got WebTV when I was in the 7th grade, and that got me interested in IRC when my family got an actual computer (I'm also thinking of getting an IRC channel but that's going to be in the future).

I was always interested in programming, but it was more of a hobby type of thing. Which is why I didn't do so well in college, to the point I just changed my major looking for something easy but still fulfilling. Didn't find much, and dropped out after four years, with some knowledge of things that were quite interested. During the time, I was also a moderator for DragonAdopters, and ran their IRC channel. I had a few people on my staff, and worked my way up to moderating the forums, though I really just preferred working on things relating to the IRC channel at the time (that was so much easier than anything I was doing in college).

Most things for programming, I was self-taught (I did learn a few things about HTML in college, but it was trivial since I'd learned CSS due to deviantART's journal system). What I've learned, I've still not quite mastered, however. I can do edits in PHP, but not write my own code. Though that part comes with managing my own installations of things for at least 6 years. I was more of a hobbyist tinkerer, until now. Now I've actually started shelling out money for some of the things I'm trying to get set up (I got three domain names and decent hosting for a year, so...ya...X3).

Also, I do love your style of drawing! I'd love to see what you could do for a dragon with a little drawing practice and a lot of spare time! And if there's anything you want set up for your site, I could try to give you a hand (I'm not great at coding, but I know my way around cPanel and MySQL databases) :3 I'm usually reachable by Twitter or through a text, though I also have Skype, but I can't use it too much because it kills my internet (I'm on 3G for home internet, and I'm constantly throttled. I'm apparently in the top 5% of highest usage X3)

My Twitter (http://twitter.com/ashanriu)
Site Twitter (http://twitter.com/dragon_glitch)

Sorry to poke through you guy's conversation, but I just wanna say it's pretty normal to end up in college for programming because of previous web experience (if I understood your post correctly). I thought I was programming when I was doing html/css blogs, so I went down the road for programming in college as well. A few months in and I was struggling with C, C++ and assembly. It took me a year and a half to start enjoying and understanding it (I failed a lot of classes and I still struggle sometimes!) and out of 30 total classes, only 2 were actually web-related. I just wanted to say it is a common mistake to confuse html/css with programming, and it's actually good you didn't go with it, the course would just ruin your interest for web, it did completely ruin the fun I had with it for me.

(again sorry to poke through...)

[Kyttias]

You're absolutely right, HTML is a markup scripting language, not a programming language. I have done a little bit of actual programming in a game development class I took (it dabbled the basics and differences between the C languages and Java), as well as through Flash's Actionscript language. I retained enough of it all to say it taught me the basics of programming as far as functions/objects/conditional statements go, stuff that can carry over into various languages, despite some slight structure differences (would grammar be a good analogy, ahaha?).

Javascript is programmatic, and it's where my interests truly lie at the moment. Both AS and JS are very forgiving in comparison to other languages. I just can't seem to get a hang of the way object-orientated PHP is formatted, though. (PHP without the objects, totally fine, but without taking full advantage of it's ability to work with objects, I end up treating it like a glorified HTML with some conditional properties.) It's a lot to memorize, so it's sitting on back burner for now. I don't want to learn too many things in too many areas at once.

I'm sorry to hear taking college courses has sucked the fun out of things for you. It's another thing I want to avoid. ><; My gf is in that same situation... she's super interested in artificial intelligence, but the stress of university just sucks the passion out of it.

[IntoRain]

You're absolutely right, HTML is a markup scripting language, not a programming language. I have done a little bit of actual programming in a game development class I took (it dabbled the basics and differences between the C languages and Java), as well as through Flash's Actionscript language. I retained enough of it all to say it taught me the basics of programming as far as functions/objects/conditional statements go, stuff that can carry over into various languages, despite some slight structure differences (would grammar be a good analogy, ahaha?).

Javascript is programmatic, and it's where my interests truly lie at the moment. Both AS and JS are very forgiving in comparison to other languages. I just can't seem to get a hang of the way object-orientated PHP is formatted, though. (PHP without the objects, totally fine, but without taking full advantage of it's ability to work with objects, I end up treating it like a glorified HTML with some conditional properties.) It's a lot to memorize, so it's sitting on back burner for now. I don't want to learn too many things in too many areas at once.

I'm sorry to hear taking college courses has sucked the fun out of things for you. It's another thing I want to avoid. ><; My gf is in that same situation... she's super interested in artificial intelligence, but the stress of university just sucks the passion out of it.

Yeah, it is! Usually C-like languages are easy to pick up after you learn another one! And the logic almost always stays with you. Java though does some magical stuff for you that makes everything easier and faster to code than say C++

Javascript I don't really know much of it but I do have fun with it when I gotta do something with it! I have no doubt though that JS will be the most wanted language for web-related businesses in the long run, if it isn't already lol
From scratch, I also don't use php with objects, even though I've worked with object-oriented languages. In mysidia though since the frame is already built, I get the logic and go with it.

Yeah, it's mostly the stress and the "you gotta do this to pass, not because you want to do it" of classes. I'm actually going to have an artificial intelligence exam this wednesday, but I'm not liking the class at all. This was one of those classes I was truly hoping to go great and hoping to like it, but nope. Even watching the MIT's open course (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-034-artificial-intelligence-fall-2010/) for that area doesn't help me understand the class. It sounds so awesome and it has so many interesting parts, but it just doesn't click with me. And I still have one more class on this next year, I'm getting quite worried xD

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy programming and finishing a project and feeling like I actually contributed to it, I might hate it throughout the semester but I end up loving it if I actually feel like I gave it my best. But all areas I was looking forward to haven't really been what I was expecting, so it kinda ruined it for me. Taking your time and becoming better in an area you like on your own and just then taking up college for credentials purposes makes it impossible for classes to ruin that passion after you have pursued it alone before. It's just my opinion on it though

[Zyraph]

You both bring up some amazing points about college and it's something I wish I had known when I was kinda being forced to go the college route before truly knowing where my passions were. I liked programming: I made my own few scripts through mIRC, but it wasn't with a true scripting language, just something that kinda somehow resembled C.

I should not have gone to college just out of high school. My family did pressure me to go ahead into college, so I went with it, and I really regret it (my loans from it are devastating, and I still don't actually have a job, I just know how to manage money when I acquire it). Honestly, when I get my site running, I want to be able to get the money back that I invested into it, but not much else unless it becomes that big of a success (mainly because I'd probably start actually paying developers for their time, but that's if it truly becomes successful).

HTML is definitely not in the same category of traditional programming languages. VB.NET, Java, C/C++, Python, Perl, all of these have a common core of functions they share as far as programming. HTML has nothing remotely close in concept. All you get are some tags and that's how you're defining things. VB.NET doesn't use tags like that, the only time you "tag" something into brackets is with your own functions or If/Then/Else.

Also, I know exactly who you're talking about when your things magically got deleted after a month, Kyttias. I used them for awhile, and admittedly used them to get my code set up before I transferred to A Small Orange (Amazing hosting, though they only really limit you on bandwidth and storage space, I only have 250MB storage right now). I went with their tiny plan which is $35 for an entire year of hosting. What I needed was unlimited subdomains while still allowing for at least 2 domains linked to a package, and it's got pretty much unlimited everything except space and bandwidth, so I can't complain...yet.

The reason why people are saying to go with phpBB3 is because they're starting to transition to a more fluid and dynamic way of programming (they're using a few different frameworks, including Symphony). Once 4.0 hits, it'll be completely converted to the new frameworks, and anything for 2.0 will be virtually unupgradeable as far as mods, at least not without extensive coding background with both versions.

Honestly, I really, really love programming! I'm just not always great at learning on my own as far as structured tutorials, and school was just a waste for me on it. I did learn a LOT about Windows 7 however, and even got certified for it by Microsoft, though I probably could've gone about it on my own for far cheaper.

Kyttias, I'll make sure to follow you on Twitter, and I have unlimited texts too, though I use Google Voice for that (sooooo much easier to multitask simply because I can have a screen just for my texts on my computer and a screen for whatever I'm working on) :3 And I can do DMs through Twitter, though if you see some things that seem a bit odd, it's because I'm random...and sometimes not always civil on my personal one. Though the site one will be as clean as I can make it ;3