Good day/Good evening.

Let me start by saying that I am currently trying to create a Forum for one of my professors at my University. I am fairly new to this concept of creating forums, so I'd like to know a couple of things.

My first question would be, if hypothetically this platform would fail/die or whatnot, what would happen to my forum? Will I still have it, or will it disappear? What about the database?

I have been reading some stuff regarding the database, such as:
"The Forum's database belongs to who?
The databases which your forums use are the single property of forumotion.com according to the article L. 341-1 of the law of July 1, 1998 on the protection of databases:

« Art. L. 341-1. - The producer of a database, heard like the person who takes the initiative and the risk of the corresponding investments, profits from a protection of the contents of the base when the constitution, the verification or the presentation of this one attests of a financial investment, material, human or substantial "

I don't really know what this means, but basically what I want to do with the forum, is that I would like to access all my database(I.E. the members of my forum, so I can make lists and what not). At the same time, I do not wish for my members's personal information to be revealed to either the public or the forumation team. I want it to be available only to me. Is that possible?

I've been also reading stuff regarding security. I will look into this back-up system because I find it interesting and also important for what I'm currently trying to do.

Then, lastly, I would like to know how does a forum actually work? From what I understand, from my own personal knowledge on the matter, I basically create it via a platform such as this one, and afterwards I switch to a premium version in order to select my domain. Is that right?
What I'm trying to say, is that I do not wish to have xxxxxx.forumotion.com, and instead I would only like to have xxxxxx.com. If that makes any sense.
I would like to know, if Forumotion is actually offering me a host or if the "Premium" version only offers me the ability to get one from a different source...like a stand-alone kind of host.

I honestly hope these questions make sense, and I am patiently waiting for your response.

Thank you very much in advance!

Hello,

In regards to your first question the database is only accessible to Forumotion, we do not give access to the database to anyone outside of our team in the head office. This is pretty standard among any service you go through and is for security reasons, since providing access to people outside the company could lead to people putting malicious code in the database and/or abusing the information in it.

That being said, Forumotion collects the typical stuff that basically all sites on the internet would collect such as IP Address, and E-mail addresses if your members make an account with this. This information is stored in accordance with Forumotion's privacy policy. And of course Forumotion uses all the necessary encryption and security measures that are standard across all major websites and platforms.

As for your last question, when you buy either an advanced or premium package with us, it gives you the option to either A. Buy a domain name through us (at an extra cost not included in the package) or B. Use a domain name you bought through an external domain registration service such as Godaddy.

I would recommend checking out our Frequently Asked Questions section (link is in my signature) as there are topics that cover the basics about Packages, and setting up your forum and all that stuff.

These FAQ topics are ones that can help answer your specific question on packages and domain names so check them out:
Forumotion Packages
Buying A Domain Through Forumotion
Using A Domain Purchased outside our service

Hope this helps answer some of your questions. In the future though, please create a separate support topic for each question or problem you have, this helps us not only better focus on each problem and question at hand, but allows users who may have a similar question or problem to find the solution in an already existing topic using the search bar.

-Brandon

Thank you for your direct and prompt response. I fully understand everything now and in the future I will do so as you instructed, regarding the question asking.

Now, there will be one slight little problem that I am facing still. Before working on my design, and doing everything that I wanted to do, I would like to know if I, as an admin/owner, can have access to a list of members of my forum.

Is this possible?


EDIT: After re-reading, I still didn't get a response on what happens to my forum if Forumation suddenly disappears for some unknown reason. I would like to know that as well. Even if it's highly unlikely for this to happen, I would like to know still.

There is a memberslist feature on all forums that lists every active member, this can be found by adding /memberlist to the end of the forum url (for example this is a list of all Support forum member: https://help.forumotion.com/memberlist ) additionally there is also a list in the admin panel as well.

As for your 2nd question, I can not really answer that. There are no plans to shut down the service anytime in the foreseeable future and as such, there is no policy or procedure in place regarding what would happen with database info. And really there is no scenario where Forumotion would just disappear off the face of the planet, even if there was a catastrophic failure of a server or something, this would be temporary until the problem was corrected and the forum would be back online. And we keep backups of the database for a period of time to prevent data loss in a scenario such as this. And even IF (and this purely hypothetical) in the extremely unlikely event Forumotion ever did shut down, there would almost certainly be some sort of a gradual wind down. My point is, no matter what happens, it's not like your just going to wake up one day and we are just going to pull the plug on the server and call it a day.

The only thing I could recommend if your looking for security in knowing that you will always have a copy of your data, would be to manually keep copies of any posts or information you want and store it on a flash drive or how ever you would want to preserve the data. Outside of that, as I said I can not answer because there is policy, procedure that I am aware of, regarding what your asking. But don't worry, Forumotion is not planning on going anywhere anytime in the foreseeable future.

-Brandon

Thank you! That would be all.

You're very welcome. I hope you have a great rest of your weekend.

May I consider this topic solved?

-Brandon

Indeed. Please do!

Ok thank you very much. As I said before I hope you have a great weekend and if you have further questions or problems, do not hesitate to make a new support topic and we will be happy to help.

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