Kiwi hello for everyone!

[Kiwifruit Jam]

Hello,

I was glad to find a Strawberry forum. Probably you'll be surprised to get to know that I happen to be a 22-year-old boy from Hungary, mostly because generally it's not socially accepted to like Strawberry in this age, as a boy. However, as I glanced through this forum, read some posts, I suppose you're pals who either follow Strawberry since the 80s, or met her because you have kids to watch Strawberry with... or you're kids yourselves. Though it's just a guess. I'm kind of a computer geek, I work as a Unix sysadmin at one of the world's largest multinational companies. (Though it's not as good as it sounds.)

How I met Strawberry Shortcake? I confess at first I only met her parodies. Most notably Strawberry Sweetcake from Drawn Together. Well she was an evil gal who wanted to cook and then eat Wooldoor Sockbat. A memorable quote from her: "You can't spell slaughter without laughter!". I liked this character so much that I looked up the real Strawberry. Then (many months later) I noticed that a Strawberry Shortcake cartoon is being broadcasted on one of the kids channels. I took the opportunity to get to know the real Strawberry Shortcake, at last. For some reason I liked it, regardless that I only saw a few episodes. Now I know that I'm watching the last season, when the look of the characters have changed, so Strawberry now has a long hair. The most recent episode I've seen is when Strawberry visits the Land of Oz. Because I'm watching the series in Hungarian, I'll have a bit of trouble identifying the characters by their English names, so sorry for that in advance. I confess I don't even know all of the characters yet. At the end of the day I don't have any excuse for watching Strawberry Shortcake. I'm not young, not a girl, and I don't have kids. I just watch it and I like it, that's all. I hope you don't think I'm mentally ill.

Why I liked Strawberry Shortcake? She's drawn well, she's beautiful. And I like her optimism. Strange, though, because I'm a pessimistic man - that is the exact reason why I like optimistic characters. They help me to notice good things I wouldn't see. It's a bit of hard to tell. After all, I wish Strawberry lived in real life - I'm sure I'd send her a fan mail.

Anyway, how do you like my name? I thought to choose a name that fits Strawberryland's atmosphere. On the other hand, only girls had fruitty names - so is my name girlish? Though there aren't many male characters in the show at all. Maybe if there would be more males, some of them would also have fruitty names. Unfortunately, I've never had kiwifruit jam in my life, but it must be delicious.


All the bests,
Kiwifruit Jam

[huckleberrypie]

Welcome aboard! And it's nice to know someone here at the boards who's also into computers.

[Blackberry Bun]

Welcome! Enjoy your stay here.

[Stella Grapes]

Oh, you'll fit right in here. Not all of us are also fans of the original (though I am) and I'm the only active member here with kids. So much of your introduction applies to the majority of this forum's frequenters. Welcome! Pull up a seat and have some strawberries!

[Blackberry Bun]

Forgot to tell that I'm a 23 years old guy and I've been in this small *nomad community since late 2007. Age and gender won't be a surprise for us here, or maybe at least for me. :mrgreen:

*We have changed forum site several times because of technical problems.

[Kiwifruit Jam]

Stella: I'm just curious, do your kids also love Strawberry Shortcake?

Blackberry: What kind of technical problems you had? Since I'm a sysadmin, I could help you out in trouble. I was sad to see some of my favourite sites die because of technical problems. I even offered my help to them, but they just ignored it.

Anyway, I'd like to know a bit of the history of this forum. Who and when has founded it and why? I suppose you didn't keep the old posts when you moved. Have you always had only ~10 members, or you used to have more? How many times you had to move?

[Stella Grapes]

Stella: I'm just curious, do your kids also love Strawberry Shortcake?

I'm Prudence, and most of my children are too young to actually understand the plots in Strawberry Shortcake media, though they all have toys and those who do understand the plots are also fans.

[huckleberrypie]

Anyway, I'd like to know a bit of the history of this forum. Who and when has founded it and why? I suppose you didn't keep the old posts when you moved. Have you always had only ~10 members, or you used to have more? How many times you had to move?

'Tis a long story, actually. It all started off back in 2007 with a Proboards forum which was maintained by a friend of mine; it got taken down several times due to what it seems to be a TOS violation, so in 2008 I decided to spawn my own forum and ask some of my buddies to register there. It worked fine back then, save for some technical difficulties, until in 2011 when my host disabled my site for inactivity, which was further worsened by the fact that I haven't performed a backup of the site. At least we got over it when I asked my friend from the UK for some paid web space, although it was sad to know that most of the other topics made prior to the reset were gone forever.

As for volunteering for the site, sure, why not? It'll be great to work with guys like you, and you can do whatever you think will benefit us here. Just PM me if you're ready, OK?

[Blackberry Bun]

The post above me pretty much covered most things. As for the number of members, we used to have many more, but they "retired" one by one, and now only those who feel that the community is too good to leave remains.

[Kiwifruit Jam]

'Tis a long story, actually. It all started off back in 2007 with a Proboards forum which was maintained by a friend of mine; it got taken down several times due to what it seems to be a TOS violation, so in 2008 I decided to spawn my own forum and ask some of my buddies to register there.

TOS violation? What kind of violation this site may commit?

As for volunteering for the site, sure, why not? It'll be great to work with guys like you, and you can do whatever you think will benefit us here. Just PM me if you're ready, OK?

Well if you still don't have backups, maybe I could think something up. Guys, once I saw a forum with ~70000 posts go down, and the admins only had an old backup to restore. At least they had a backup, but anyway it is provided by their hosting service. Next time the provider has shut down the account, and everything's gone forever. ~70000 posts of ~3 years... It was so sad. Though the admins have also lost their interest in the forum by that time. So the lesson is that frequent backups are important.

I also run a forum, it's hosted from a cheap VPS service, and I implemented daily file system and database backups those are transferred to a different host. Ironically, the site barely has visitors. Funny that I have more registered members than this forum has, yet I have much less posts. The latest post was made on 3 June. hock: Anyway, it's a fan site dedicated for my favourite actress, AnnaSophia Robb. Few years ago such forums were loud, but it seems the interest for AnnaSophia has drastically decreased in the recent years.

The post above me pretty much covered most things. As for the number of members, we used to have many more, but they "retired" one by one, and now only those who feel that the community is too good to leave remains.

I must tell that I must be damned - I observed that when I register to a forum, it starts to decline. Or maybe I'm just so unfortunate that I always find forums too late, when they're already declining. :? From my point of view, it seems like always I give the last shot. hock: