I got into xmb almost 5 years ago when an old site I used to have was needing a good forum software. I had gone through several, phpbb, IB, IkonBoard
and a couple of others) that I didn't care for either the functionality or the look or both. So while searching I found XMB. I liked the look of it
and the ease of its use. At that time I didn't know anything about php or mysql. But like everything else web-related I taught myself when I started
installing my own hacks. After awhile I became adept enough that I started offering help at both XMB and XMB Hack where eventually I was made a Super
Moderator. After a couple of years XMB stopped the support for hacks and forced it all to XMB Hacks in an attempt to revive it because that site was
dying. It was a futile attempt as XMB Hacks kept dying a slow death with all the staff and site owner's abandoning the site leaving myself and about
2 or 3 other mods pretty much keeping it alive. For the most part of 2005, until late July/early August, it was pretty much me and xmbg staff keeping
it alive. So while XMB Hacks was in its death throes I decided something needed to be done as a certain other site owner was starting sites and
killing them just as fast (3 in one year). So in April of 2004 I started XMBG with the idea of providing hack installations for a price because I was
tired of fixing people's boards all the time for free after they'd butcher them attempting their own installs. Guldan was the first installer to
join the team. And from their the site externally grew (look at the history in the stats calendar) while struggling to find proficient, dedicated
staff. XMBG has gone through at least a dozen moderators but don't have them anymore as they didn't do the job for whatever reasons. XMBG has gone
through 3 installer crews pretty much for the same reasons as installers because people didn't take the job seriously enough and insisted on doing
the job their way instead of the way I need it to be done which is why I ended up doing the majority of the forum support and the majority of hack
installation requests. Around May of 2005 it was announced that XMBXtreme was going to close and I was talked into offering General Support (against
my better judgement and still is) and offering downloads (again against my better judgement and still is) to fill the void of XMBXtreme's ultimate
closing which never happened. At around this same time we started our own Developement team which I didn't really want to mess with since we got the
hacks from XMBXtreme and I saw no need for the extra workload because I knew I would end up over seeing that as well as the downloads and General
Support. I just didn't need or want the extra work heaped on me like I predicted it would. So anyways we put together a dev team, offered general
support and download. May, June and July ended up all being record months with each month surpassing the one before. And the workload was just getting
out of hand for me. It just really sucks when all the other staff takes time off whenever they felt like it leaving their work for me or someone else
to cover, especially when the absences were unannounced and sometimes would be as long as a week or so. During this time, though, we had 4 installers,
6 developers and 3 moderators and things were skyrocketing out the roof. So about mid-August I thought it was about time to go paid as I was already a
year past due. So in September XMBG went paid. A short time later a conflict arose between myself and a former Super Admin who subsequently left the
site while doing a lot of internal damage on his way out. This conflict erupted into several fights across several threads with me battling several
people on several different fronts causing a lot of dissention on the site. Then this former admin started his own site and a lot of members and all
the staff but Guldan, maluta and kc183391 left to go join his site. So in return I kicked them all of the site and some of these disgruntled people
decided upon themselves to keep coming here and keeping the trouble going. Which now brings us to the present where XMBG is struggling to get activity
going as we used to average between 100 and 150 posts a day to now anywhere from 30 to 50 posts a day. Prior to this trouble I was putting in 15 to 18
hours a day on this site, sometimes more, and felt as if I had a fulltime/overtime job that didn't pay. Well with the advent of paid installations
hack requests have dropped from 400 - 500 a month with anywhere from 1000 to 1200 hacks a month being installed to maybe an average of 1 request a day
and 100 to 150 hacks installed a month. So it's like going from 200 mph to 10 mph in a heartbeat. So it's become apparent even tho people said the
service was valuable, of course when it was free, to a small handful of people who have ever donated and a small handful of people paying for
requests. They'd rather install the hacks themselves and risk trashing their boards, which a vast majority do, and then come here to get it fixed for
free. And that's why the new Help Desk was implemented. It's not fair to me that they don't want to pay but expect me to fix their screwups for
free. I even implemented the ads as a way people can support the site if they don't want to pay for any of the services.
So there you have it, the story of XMBG.
PLEASE DO NOT U2U ME FOR GENERAL SUPPORT ISSUES!!!
Growing old is only going back to where you're from.
~Kansas~
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Posted on 11-30-2005 at 03:33 AM
WormHole
)
,
ive been the n00b in trianing for nearly two years now. i like to think of myself as Guldan's Protege. Anywho. Ive been a staff member on and off for
the past two years, staff member because i keep nagging jim, and on and off because i have patches of Far to much school work, and about a year ago, i
lost the need for a forum in my life, However genesisgaming and my-forum have changed all that 
