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Hello,
I am pleased to announce the official launch of Off Topix! We're a laid back, down to earth general discussion community where everyone is welcome!
As you can tell by looking around, this isn't a new community. It has some history, originally launching as the Wober Discussion Community almost 13 years ago! Wober was a thriving community from 2009 until 2016. If you were around back then you might remember me as theezy or Joe. I am the founder of Wober and was very active in the forum scene back in the day. Before Wober I ran another large forum called Forum Advertiser, a forum where webmasters could promote their current projects and network with other forum admins. I have several years of forum administration experience under my belt and after a 6 year hiatus I have decided to jump back in the saddle!
Regarding Wober's closure, back in 2016 I was starting to become burned out on running the forum. I also had some personal issues I was struggling with. I decided to close the forum and exit the forum world entirely. I deleted all the forum files from our host, stopped paying the hosting bill and let the domain name expire. I deleted all the Wober forum backups I had saved on my computer. I closed all the email accounts that I used to join forums and maintain my accounts. I deleted all my passwords to anything forum related. I pretty much hit the self-destruct button on my whole online persona. Since then, during these last 6 years, I feel like I've grown as a person. I am a little older, wiser and more patient. I realize that I could have handled Wober's closure better and I sincerely apologize to anyone who was hurt or upset by my actions.
Lets fast forward to 2022. A month or two ago I was doing some organizing around the house and I stumbled upon a flash drive in a box in my closet. I was curious as to what was on it so I plugged it into my computer. To my surprise there was a August 2015 backup of Wober on there (mixed in with all my other files from back then). All this time I thought Wober was long gone and deleted forever... but it wasn't!
I debated with myself on what to do with the newly discovered backup. After a couple weeks of thinking on the subject I finally came to the conclusion that I could use a new hobby and got to work on restoring the forum. Since the old wober.net domain is currently owned by someone else, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to rebrand and relaunch this community using an amazing new domain name I purchased, offtopix.com.
As part of the rebranding process I have ran a few Find/Replace SQL queries on the database. All instances of the word "Wober" have been replaced with "Off Topix" in all areas of the forum. This will help out with search engine indexing and will alleviate any potential confusion from new members reading old threads who have never heard of Wober. We have launched Off Topix with the latest release of the XenForo software. Please review the topics in our Announcements & Information forum for tutorials and information on all the new features and functions we have to offer.
I am excited about the future of this community and look forward to interacting with everyone once again. To all Wober members who had an account on or before August 12, 2015 your account has been preserved and you are welcome to login and start exploring the community once again. You may need to reset your password. If you need any help getting into your account, please email OffTopixForum@gmail.com and I’ll be more than happy to assist you.
Thanks for reading and welcome back!
I am pleased to announce the official launch of Off Topix! We're a laid back, down to earth general discussion community where everyone is welcome!
As you can tell by looking around, this isn't a new community. It has some history, originally launching as the Wober Discussion Community almost 13 years ago! Wober was a thriving community from 2009 until 2016. If you were around back then you might remember me as theezy or Joe. I am the founder of Wober and was very active in the forum scene back in the day. Before Wober I ran another large forum called Forum Advertiser, a forum where webmasters could promote their current projects and network with other forum admins. I have several years of forum administration experience under my belt and after a 6 year hiatus I have decided to jump back in the saddle!
Regarding Wober's closure, back in 2016 I was starting to become burned out on running the forum. I also had some personal issues I was struggling with. I decided to close the forum and exit the forum world entirely. I deleted all the forum files from our host, stopped paying the hosting bill and let the domain name expire. I deleted all the Wober forum backups I had saved on my computer. I closed all the email accounts that I used to join forums and maintain my accounts. I deleted all my passwords to anything forum related. I pretty much hit the self-destruct button on my whole online persona. Since then, during these last 6 years, I feel like I've grown as a person. I am a little older, wiser and more patient. I realize that I could have handled Wober's closure better and I sincerely apologize to anyone who was hurt or upset by my actions.
Lets fast forward to 2022. A month or two ago I was doing some organizing around the house and I stumbled upon a flash drive in a box in my closet. I was curious as to what was on it so I plugged it into my computer. To my surprise there was a August 2015 backup of Wober on there (mixed in with all my other files from back then). All this time I thought Wober was long gone and deleted forever... but it wasn't!
I debated with myself on what to do with the newly discovered backup. After a couple weeks of thinking on the subject I finally came to the conclusion that I could use a new hobby and got to work on restoring the forum. Since the old wober.net domain is currently owned by someone else, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to rebrand and relaunch this community using an amazing new domain name I purchased, offtopix.com.
As part of the rebranding process I have ran a few Find/Replace SQL queries on the database. All instances of the word "Wober" have been replaced with "Off Topix" in all areas of the forum. This will help out with search engine indexing and will alleviate any potential confusion from new members reading old threads who have never heard of Wober. We have launched Off Topix with the latest release of the XenForo software. Please review the topics in our Announcements & Information forum for tutorials and information on all the new features and functions we have to offer.
I am excited about the future of this community and look forward to interacting with everyone once again. To all Wober members who had an account on or before August 12, 2015 your account has been preserved and you are welcome to login and start exploring the community once again. You may need to reset your password. If you need any help getting into your account, please email OffTopixForum@gmail.com and I’ll be more than happy to assist you.
Thanks for reading and welcome back!
Elite Member
Member
Moderator
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I realized that right after I sent it. If emails had an 'Unsend' feature, I would have immediately unsent it. I accidently put recipients in the 'To' line instead of the 'BCC' line. My apologies. Won't happen again.