Interview with David Munn - Ikonboard

[The Sandman]

The Sandman submitted a new Article:

Interview with David Munn - Ikonboard

Most experienced forum administrators are aware of [ame="[URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikonboard[/URL]"]Ikonboard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Forum_illustration.jpg" class="image"><img alt="Forum illustration.jpg" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/14/Forum_illustration.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@en/1/14/Forum_illustration.jpg[/ame], the PERL based forum software originally written by Matt Mecham, who then moved on to create the Invision Power Board. So what happened to ikonboard after Matt's departure? We did an interview with David Munn, AKA David-iB, an ikonboard team member, supporter, and fan.


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Please give us a brief bio.

I was born in England in 1986 (making me 19) and moved to Brisbane, Australia where I have lived ever since. Professionally, I am working in the hospitality industry, although I am also studying IT and have a high interest in computer related subjects.


Why did you move to Australia? Is that where you plan to stay?

I moved to Australia when I was a lot younger, a toddler actually with my parents and the Brisbane area is where I have been since. I do plan on heading back over to England (Portsmouth in particular) for an extended holiday in the next couple of years. I am not interested in moving back or away from Australia at this point, the life style here is too great.


What is your educational background?

Gained a Certificate II in Information Technology back in 2001, since then I have completed High School and stated study towards a Diploma of IT.

I also take a heavy interest in web development and design which is a big passion of mine.


What is (was?) your involvement with ikonboard and how long have you been with them?

I first joined the IB team in 2002, where I stayed for about a year and left due to schooling and personal commitments. I later rejoined in October of 2003 till present.

My main role at ikonboard has been with the support team, although at one stage I took control of IB Hackers to try to breath some life into the community - but due to lack of support from upper management the effort soon failed. I have also contributed some code to the forum system.


Can you outline the history of ikonboard for us?

Ikonboard was originally created by Matt Mecham, who released three different versions of the...

Read more about this article here...

 

[Dietrich]

I'm afraid iB is also suffering from the popularity of PHP boards over the past years, YaBB also didn't run that well the last few years.

 

[IMPAQ]

Infinite Core looks pretty promising. http://www.infinitecore.com

I'll have to keep an eye on them.

 

[Jorrit787]

Such a shame that bureaucracy had to ruin the iB project

 

[ChrisLM2001]

Wondered where your post and my reply went at vB -- the thread was closed.

That said, this article shows --again-- what arrogance and mismanagement can do for a product. Even once market leaders can fumble, due to arrogrance and greed too.

Great interview, The Sandman, great interview. May it inspire forumware makers to do the right thing, not dictate what they believe what's right for customers.

Chris

 

[Deleted member 3691]

A sorry state of affairs, indeed.

 

[MartsLair]

As Matt said, a sorry state of affairs indeed.

I was also on the Ikonboard Support team right up to the very end, and I'll back David's sentiments. I'm really dissapointed with all the latest events at Ikonboard.

A group of us (support team members) keep in touch on a private forum, but I fear there's very little we will be able to do. We have registered with John Jarvis's latest board (an Ikonboard by the way) to ask questions about the future, but our posts have been deleted and the accounts banned.

Jarvis's latest company, Pitboss Entertainment, is at: http://www.pitbossent.com, but at the time of writing this that site seems to be down too.

If my information is correct, John Jarvis has been in a legal battle over the ownership of iB for some time with Westlin. This resulted in ownership being returned to him by the courts. From that moment on, everything went downhill.

Personally, I hope Ikonboard survives, but I most definitely won't be part of it anymore. Ikonboard was (and still is if you have a recent copy) a great board. I've heard the Perl -vs- PHP arguments many times, but what difference does the language a program is written in matter? If a board works well, it works well.

Incidentally. The latest version, 3.1.3 (beta build 2005.09), was about to be released as a final version. As far as the DEV team were aware, all known bugs and security problems had been fixed.

 

[Brollachan]

I echo MartsLair in what he said in terms of iB's future etc.

I joined iB support late on, I think it was June this year (under the name "KEM"), though I had been registered on Ikonboard since approx September 2001. Since 2001 I've seen many things come and go the biggest project that never happenned being the iB PHP and PHP-Lite (Project Mongoose?).

Like David I have also been banned from the Pitboss' forums, after enquiring what is happenning with Ikonboard. Up till that banning I had been prepared to continue giving support, but since then I'm merely watching to see what if anything happens to Ikonboard. iB3.1.3 even in its beta form is very good, and once with a quick fix to bypass the update centre (connected to iBs server) it works fine.

 

[The Sandman]

If you guys are interested I'd be willing to put up an Ikonboard Forum here at TAZ for ikonboard team members and users to hang out in.

 

[MartsLair]

Hi Sandman.

Thanks for the offer. If the current owners of iB were as quick to come to the rescue then I doubt if there would have been this problem.

Personally, I won't be continuing with iB under the Jarvis/Pitboss ownership, but that's not to say that some of the other guys on the team wouldn't be interested. I'm sure they are all aware of this thread but I'll bring this offer to their attention anyway.

Unfortunately, the most important part of any bb team are the DEV boys, and they have all withdrawn their services. In a nutshell, they are all dissilusioned with the total lack of communication from the new owners.

Never the less it might be a good idea if only to allow a place for loyal Ikonboard users to learn what's happened to their support.

Also, it's claimed that there is still some support being offered over at: swarf.net and possibly netgimmicks.com.

Plus, Pitboss (the new owners) created an "Ikonboard Support" forum on their new board. However, any of the team that has posted there have simply had the posts and their accounts removed. The Pitboss forum is at: http://forums.pitbossent.com/ikonboard.cgi

 

[ChrisLM2001]

Hate to say it, with a name like "Pitboss" it's just isn't inviting (it reminds me of illegal dog fights. Their logo doesn't help with that imagery as well).

Someone in the PR department apparently doesn't understand marketing.

Chris

 

[MartsLair]

Chris, when you wrote the following:

That said, this article shows --again-- what arrogance and mismanagement can do for a product.

I didn't think the words would be shown to be so true so quickly.

Someone (probably from here) started a topic on the Pitboss forum asking what was happening with iB. A few people added to that topic, including an Admin called Josh. As far as I could see the topic was perfectly in order.

However, as I was reading it a short while ago, the whole topic got deleted. Gone, just like all the others. They really don't want to talk about it over there.

I just wonder how anybody can take them seriously anymore.

 

[Munnday]

I would like to once again thank TAZ for carrying out this interview. I feel it has done a lot more then I ever thought it would at getting some of the story behind ikonboard out to the public domain without fear of editing or deletion.

Sandman: Anyway you are able to help ikonboard we would be glad to accept - anywhere away from the domain of Jarvis has to be a good thing!

Matt: What can we say? At least you managed to go onto bigger and better things at a good time

 

[The Sandman]

I've created an Ikonboard Forum in the Software Specific section.

 

[pinkdottedflies]

I can confirm that netGimmicks [ http://www.netgimmicks.com ] is still alive and well. While, I may not post as regularly as I use to, members seem to be helping out each other for now... Ironically enough, traffic has actually increased since the support forum died.

As for ikonboard, I doubt there is any future. Frankly speaking there is no motivation to continue development even if the rights were handed over to the public. There are very few active users left. By active I mean those who are continually looking to improve their ikonboards. There are however, hundreds and maybe thousands of active boards whose admins are satisfied with that they have and don't actively seek new hacks or mods. This makes for a very small community when it comes to development of hacks. I have basically stated on my site that I have stopped making hacks for ib and I believe sly has moved on as well. We have been the only two developers to actively release hacks in large numbers post Golden years which were really the golden years for hacking as well. There is almost no chance of iB every recovering. A very sad state of affairs as Matt said.

Anyway, my site will be around for atleast another 6-8 months, after which I will probably setup an archive or some sorts depending on user activity. So feel free to drop by.

 

[Livewire.FM]

What a great interview! This is my first visit to the Interview Forum at TAZ. Full of info and how interesting!

David, You are an impressive young man & I applaud you. Good Job!! It sucks that the original heart & soul was replaced w/ crap by others. Shows the creators are the true talented creative people...not the "suits".

Ironically, my daughter is in Brisbane airport today. She is flying back to Los Angeles after finishing filming the latest of a reality show for MTV. She enjoyed the Byron Bay area.

Rock on David!!


Sandman, I know someone you may want to interview. He has been in software design for over 30 years and is a very interesting man...on many topics.

 

[The Sandman]

Sandman, I know someone you may want to interview. He has been in software design for over 30 years and is a very interesting man...on many topics.

PM me with more details.

 

[maddog39]

Wow.... I very seriosly feel bad for your guys over at iB. I went to the site for the first time in a while about a month ago and im pondering to myself "those jarvis idiots", lol. I was also wondering myself what the heck happened. Also,

How do you see the internet in general changing over the next 5 to 10 years? What about online communities in particular?

I'm extremely scared for online communities in the future, I strongly feel if a top of the line free forum doesn't hit the market in the next 2 years we are in trouble.

Bloging will continue to grow and will reach even bigger heights, bbPress is community software I am keeping a very close eye on.

I hope to change that with a bulletin board system im writing in PHP, im very serious too, I expect it to take another 6-8 months to get to a pre-alpha stage. Also phpBB is working on Olympus, which is pretty darn sweet if you ask me, but the code is a mess and they have been working on it for the past 3 YEARS, which is totally insane if you ask me and alot of people are just leaving the idea and theres alot of people wining. Im trying to make a support for for the CVS versions but phpBB isnt willing to cooperate so far, but I havnt gone all the way up the chain of command yet. Anyways, I thought id add that comment in, im a big fan of IPB mostly but ikondboard too mostly because of Matt's roots.

 

[coolgal]

a friend was trying to iplement ikonboard at a social website for London girls but he somehow thought it was too complicated. now he tells me he's gonna use phpbb3 cuz its free and not too hard to use.

i personally feel vbulletin is great to use but it has features which not everyone requires.

 

[leesw]

I remember back in the glory days of IB. I thought nothing would compete with it. Then support stopped. Other forums, like PHPBB and SMF blew by it in terms of their support, hacks and even basic features. For a while I refused to convert to another forum, to the harm of the large forum I had. Finally, when the old IB wouldn't work with the upgrades being made to host servers, I converted over.