Twilight Sparkle ✨

The update was the merging in of Everfree Northwest's forums - a process that is much more complex than you might imagine. I know this may not be the news you want to hear, but the glitch that's been going around, telling people they are "not allowed to visit this community", is unrelated and somewhere down the IP.Board rabbit hole. That's still under investigation.

It's my honour to announce that Poniverse has partnered up with Everfree Northwest to manage their official website and forums! For those of you not in the know, Everfree Northwest is the Best West Coast's first pony convention. Now gearing up for its third annual event on July 4-6, 2014, they've established themselves as a bustling, fun-filled event embodying the spirit of MLP. They're among our fandom's largest conventions, and their team is beyond committed to putting an unforgettable weekend together. The EFNW forums, now hosted here on MLP Forums, will be frequented by their staff, eager to answer any questions you may have about the convention. Pre-registration is now open on EverfreeNW.com as well, starting at $50 for a three-day pass! Everfree's staff have been nothing but awesome to work with, and it's a pleasure collaborating with them to bring more poni to the masses. If you have the chance to make it over to Seattle next summer (or live in the area), be sure not to miss it! And yes, we as Poniverse will have an official presence there. More details to come!

Done.

Subscribers and donors do have an increased limit of 500 KB available to them. It looks like this was missing from the FAQ entry on the subject... I'll add it in. Edit: Added.

Tonight, I decree that there shall be poni. And it shall be ruthless.

Woo! Glad to see next year's con coming together. Don't hesitate to apply for a staff position if you're looking for a fantastic way to get involved with the brony community. We're hiring all across the board, and you'll be helping to make BronyCAN 2014 an unforgettable experience for everyone who attends.

*Beginner While I'm tagging this one as "beginner" because it goes over some basic aspects of web development on a very conceptual level, I am assuming that you understand the following basic premises of web dev: The browser renders a page from HTML and CSS. A web app is an interactive website. Browsers "ask" a server for the pages and data they display. You know what a URL is. Browsers are capable of executing JavaScript code within a page to, among other things, interact with and manipulate its HTML structure (known as the Document-Object Model, or DOM for short). Frameworks are usually built by really experienced developers. And that's great! If there's a single tip I could give to new web developers, it's to start with a framework. It's extremely tempting to either be overconfident in your abilities or underestimate how much time can be saved by building on top of already-solved problems. It can be an ego-booster to be able to claim you built something "from scratch", but (in a best-case scenario) you'll inevitably wind up spending a lot more time doing low-level manipulation of this and that rather than putting that time into designing and bringing your vision for a new tool to life. Mature frameworks typically come with tons of tools and community support ready for you to use and abuse, and it's really nice to be able to trust that your URL routing is going to just work when there's so much else to think about. Don't know what URL routing is yet? Good luck implementing it yourself without leaving a vulnerability you don't even know about if this stuff is still all new to you. Some great frameworks worth checking out in various languages: Ruby on Rails (Ruby) - often credited for kicking off the "framework craze" Laravel (PHP) - Pony.fm and Poniverse.net are built on it Sails.js (JavaScript) Django (Python Web development does not mean knowing PHP The other things I'd recommend for new developers is to start with a higher-level language than PHP. That's widely considered the defacto web dev language for many reasons, but most of that can be attributed to a combination of commoditized dirt-cheap PHP hosting and a proliferation of readily available software that runs on it like WordPress, phpBB, and others. Modern hosting is available nowadays at similar prices to classic "PHP hosting" from providers like DigitalOcean that allow you to set up any language(s) you want, so PHP is much less attractive these days as a language to build your own stuff in. I'll let you in on a little secret... PHP is not a well-designed language. While it's relatively performant and good at what it does, it's a clashing hodgepodge of different methodologies, quirks, and WTF moments that'll have you scratching your head when you encounter a "white screen of death" (you'll run across one in your web dev career eventually). Ruby or Python would be better places to start, in my opinion, if only because they have many of PHP's advantages (garbage collection, dynamic typing, community support, availability of tooling & libraries) but actually have an overarching design philosophy that you can comfortably settle into as well. If I could go back in time and do it all over, there's a great chance Pony.fm might have ended up happening in Ruby+Rails rather than PHP+Laravel. If you're lost and wondering where to start, you can't go wrong starting with Ruby+Rails. Learn front-end engineering For the vast majority of modern web apps, building forms and tables that accept and display data isn't enough anymore. They're becoming vastly more interactive than they've ever been before, to the point that some web apps are even beginning to compete with bona-fide desktop apps! You want in on this new paradigm. Believe me, you do. The classic way of implementing additional interactivity within a web app is to throw jQuery (a JavaScript library that hooks you up with a bunch of useful tools for manipulating and working with HTML in real time, among other things) into your pages and start attaching code to the HTML tags rendered by the server-side framework (you are using a server-side framework, yes?). While this is a perfectly acceptable way of handling simple on-page interactivity, there's an evolving paradigm known as single-page applications, which is just a fancy way of saying that the server doesn't render your app's HTML at all! Single-page apps can go above and beyond anything that requires the browser to load a new page from the server and replace everything on your screen with it, because you can put all the logic for rendering HTML together with whatever in-browser interactivity you have. When a user navigates to another area of the app, you don't reload everything on the screen; rather, the "single page" just brings the new content into the appropriate place in the HTML structure that the browser already has loaded. With a single-page app, you get to keep the server focused wholly on storing, serving, and securing your app's underlying data. The "client-side" code, meanwhile, is JavaScript running in the browser which contains all the logic for rendering HTML, and asks the server for the data it needs to present to the user. Single-page apps are here to stay, and being able to separate your data from its presentation is really liberating once you get used to developing that way. You can build the client- and server-side components of your app (which is a fancy way of saying "presentation" and "data handling") separately, and they'll still work when you put them together because the server will provide data in a standardized format. The implications of this become clear the day that the receiving end of the server's data is no longer just a web browser - perhaps you'll be building a mobile app for your site, or another site may wish to integrate your data with theirs. Whatever is built in the future, your server will already be set up to accept and serve data in a standard format, and it's going to work, because your own "website" depends on it as much as any other application will. Just like server-side development, the front-end world has plenty of great frameworks that exist to make your life easier. For single-page apps specifically, Angular.js is a fantastic way to go. Try the tutorial and google around for various podcasts, videos, and how-to articles that show you its power. You'll be left asking yourself why people ever did so much stuff by asking servers for new pages.

I'd pay more attention to who wrote the review than whether IGN published it. As a large media outlet, they have a lot of writers, all with their own opinions and preferences.

Nothing wrong with Xcode itself. The issue is that our developer staff would need to purchase Macs and iPhones to develop with, since Xcode isn't available for Windows. The hardware investment needed to properly develop an iOS app is something we cannot make. If you have your own iOS dev environment and would like to work on an official MLP Forums app, shoot me a PM.

This thread's in need of a good revival. Let's kick it off again with an epic Spitfire.

Communities big and small grow great through harmony. Those with passion can even grow great beyond the boundaries of all expectation. ~Artwork by Tzelly-El Hello MLP Forums! First things first: YAY ANNIVERSARY!! Ever wanted to change your member title? Or maybe you just want a bigger signature? While we cannot bring free donor perks back this year, we're pleased to offer a 20% discount on subscriptions for the next seven days! And to make the deal even sweeter than MMMM, everyone who subscribes or renews with this promo will get a custom email address on mlpforums.com, pony.fm, or poniverse.net (your choice)! mlpforums.com email addresses were given to the first round of subscribers who financially supported the site's existence in its earliest days. After being unavailable to the general public for nearly two years, we're bringing back the opportunity to grab one for a limited time in commemoration of our second anniversary. To take advantage of this special promo, purchase or renew your subscription as usual, but just add the coupon code YAYANNIVERSARY on the checkout screen. You'll be contacted via PM to choose your email address and get it set up. [/endsalespitch] Peace. Love. Unity. Respect. It's time to come together. Listen to this song as you begin reading. https://pony.fm/tracks/1441-freewave-time-to-come-together-plur-remix It's hard to believe this place is already two years old, eh? It feels like only yesterday that I published a megapost chronicling the history of MLP Forums' first 366 days of existence. If a year is an eternity in Internet time, it may not be entirely wrong to look at our founding days as the legend of an ancient peoples. Hmm... no wonder I've been called an ancient elder... Speaking of ancient peoples, the sheer volume of posts, if printed out and stacked, would nearly reach the crest of the Great Pyramid of Giza. How's that for bronies with tons of time on their hands? From MLPF's days as a humble bedroom project to its becoming the world's largest brony forum and still remaining a bedroom project, watching the community "move in" and grow has been an amazing spectacle to behold, and it's an honour to have played a role in catalyzing its growth. Though many things in the community have changed since its creation, we remain committed more than ever to our founding values of providing the richest brony community experience possible. Establishing a parental unit in Poniverse may seem like a stark departure from the forum management I did two years ago, but this new structure allows us to operate like a real volunteer organization, giving us the ability to effectively manage many projects at once. We're in a better position than ever to develop and continue providing valuable services to the brony fandom, and despite what some skeptics may like to think, Poniverse was founded on the same principles that made MLP Forums successful. It's no secret that managing Poniverse and balancing it with school is a huge commitment. With that in mind, after two amazing years at the helm of MLP Forums, it's time to turn in my alicorn badge, for the administration team we have now has proven itself more than capable of picking up where I'm leaving off today. Speaking of vacationing in Haweewee, if we were to take the total amount of registrations on our site since our last anniversary and put each of those users in a single airport, we would need 20 1/2 of the largest known passenger planes. To CD, Lavo, Arty, Swoop, Elvis, NC, and Spoon in no particular order - you guys are all amazing. You've already been pulling most of the weight around here in the past few months, and I could hardly have asked for a better team to manage the community's operations. Your support, patience, and integrity have played a massive role in shaping what we have now, and what Poniverse will give in the future. To the MLP Forums community: though I may no longer be involved in the day-to-day ops of this community, I can say with full confidence that you are in better hands than ever before. The human mind can only keep track of so many things at a time, and the fragmentation of my attention led to some less-than-stellar results where things didn't need to go that way. As Poniverse's network director, I look forward to being able to focus on bringing new projects and experiences to life, unified together in the name of all that is poni. Enough rambling from me. Your forum leaders want to take this opportunity to reflect on the past and share some thoughts on the future. Grab a cider, pull up a comfortable chair, and start scrolling. Preserving El Dorado Has anyone here seen Dreamworks' The Road to El Dorado? Back in 2000, Dreamworks created a movie based around the quest to seek out the famed golden city of El Dorado, and the riches it contained. What made the movie so memorable for me as a young kid, was the opening song, written by legendary man Elton John. Give it a listen. I've been obsessed with this song for over a week, have listened to it frequently on my way to work and elsewhere; but only now, as I'm writing this, did the lyrics and meaning of the song strike a chord with me. If you pay attention to the lyrics, you'll see that the song's story boils down to a wonderful place created long ago for the people, of which is treated as a haven of sorts, as opposed to much of the rest of the world. It talks about the people who live there to that day, who strive to preserve El Dorado, and keep its' magnificence alive. Two years ago to this day, Feldicorn and Kurtiss the Ancient Deity (my new nickname for him. Don't tell him.) created the wall of coding and work that we sit here posting ponies on to this day (albeit back then, it was hardly at where it is, now!) Along the way, a legacy of things has occurred, and a list of talented young pony fans have dedicated their time and energy to making our site thrive with life and fun for everyone to enjoy. Staff members have joined and given their all to make the site memorable, regular members have made the forum experience lively and friendly, and the users as a whole have made what would otherwise be nothing but a heartless pile of code, into something special. I was not here for the forums' beginnings, but I'd like to think I did join at a time early enough to still be remembered to some veterans as the 'golden era'. Since that time, the forum certainly has changed. Things have gotten far larger, and goals to expand with Poniverse has been in high development for months. Many folks are no longer comfortable with such growth; they need the smaller, tight-knit, 'everybody pretty much knows everybody' feeling in a community to feel at their most comfortable. This is a perfectly understandable mindset to have, and in some ways, I agree with the folks who have left the forum in the past year or so. But if you'd like to know why this twenty-year old spends so much time on a site like this, through thick and thin, through pony waves and pony droughts, through drama and more drama, it's because this community's vibe has not vanished, for me. When people leave for their own reasons, be it 'the management doesn't know what they're doing', 'I don't like big forums' or 'this place isn't what it used to be', I know that I try my hardest at the end of the day to make this an enjoyable place for pony fans to gather, and I believe I know the other members of the community enough to know they do the same. No matter what may happen in the future, or what people's current thoughts are on how things are going, every person on this site is here because of either a common interest, or because they found something in this community that was worth spending their time on. Though drama and difference of beliefs are always common, there is something keeping this massive thing together, and as long as that exists, I will never see a reason to cease efforts to make this the greatest pony community we can make it ~Chaotic Discord~ Coming Full-Circle Let’s turn the clock back momentarily to last June. BronyCon was underway in Secaucus, New Jersey with an attendance of 4,100 by the end of the event, obliterating their previous record. That’s a lot of humans to be packed into a building of that size. Among that roiling, sleepless mass was one now known to you as Artemis - an utterly unremarkable man of 23 years attending his first convention unaccompanied and unknown to anyone. For me this convention was a time of new beginnings. BronyCon 2012 gave me a taste of what friendship could be and whetted my appetite for more, prompting a search for a community where I could find it in abundance. BronyCon led me here. I found far more than I could have hoped for in this place. Everything came full circle this year with MLP Forums leading me back to BronyCon. No longer as an obscure, solitary man, but in the company of many friends I’ve made during my stay. Getting to meet the people I’ve come to know and love here on the forum was the highlight of the convention for me. For over a year now I’ve become quite close to several people through the course of ordinary posting, Skype calls, texting, PMs, etc. Meeting up for the first time felt more like a reunion than an introduction. We shared rooms, ate together, got lost together, drove the wrong way down one-way streets together, everything. If you can imagine the forum being a real, physical place, it would be BronyCon. Those bonds which I thought already unbreakable were somehow strengthened further in that time. Once it was all over and we prepared to part ways until next year, I saw a few tears issued. I’ll gladly admit that I bawled my eyes out in my car later. But it’s still hard for me to fathom how a few strangers from the internet can stumble upon a little pony forum and become so inextricably bound. As the forum grew and Poniverse began to coalesce, I’ve heard people say that it’s just not what it once was communally. That it’s become too big to get to know anyone or enjoy old friends in the same way. This is a sentiment I’ve understood yet not shared, and BronyCon served only to solidify my position. We forum friends from around the nation and some from across the world arrived separately to a massive event of over 8000 people. Throughout our time there, we stuck together, doing as we pleased and making new friends along the way. We gained a few things and lost nothing. It’s really no different here. Your friends are still your friends and you are still you. No amount of growth or restructuring will change that. ~Artemis No evolution without change. No future without a past. It would be an understatement to assert that MLP Forums has undergone tremendous change within a span of two years. A website that began as a nascent idea among the collective machinations of Feld0 and Kurtiss has emerged as a sprawling community, the largest brony forum on the internet. BronyCon, believe or not, may only be just the tip of the iceberg. As anyone who knows Feld0 would admit, he is never satisfied with complacency. Neither are we, the MLP Forums staff. We echo Feld0’s commitment to making MLP Forums the place to discuss all things pony. But MLP Forums is nothing without you, the community. All the bells and whistles, the stats and accolades—these things ring hallow if no one can give them life. In the past two years all of you have, in some shape or form, contributed to the sustained success of MLP Forums. From participating in discussions to collaborating on projects, each one of you serves as part of the forums’ lifeblood. Rather than simply end by thanking you for all you have contributed, I want to ask each one of you something: Is MLP Forums a part of your future? The fact of the matter is that MLP Forums, as part of the grand scheme that is the Poniverse, is on the cusp of becoming truly special. At the risk of sounding trite, there is almost an element of magic (See what I did there?) to the meteoric rise of this community. It very much mirrors the profound success of the fandom overall. With growth comes change, and sometimes that change is very painful. We could all cite the growing pains of the brony fandom. There are definitely darker moments we’d like to forget. Will we seek to define our challenges rather than let them define us? It may appear easier to shirk these trials by retreating. Rejecting the novel in favor of the comforts of the predictable can offer fleeting satisfaction. Yet that is exactly what it is: fleeting. Eventually one will be forced to retreat from new experiences, over and over again. When the dust finally settles, rather than embracing the past for what it is, the history we seek is often a new reality shaped by a distorted sense of continuity. In truth, change can reconnect us with the past, enriching our history rather than causing it to stagnate. MLP Forums is moving onto the next stage of its short yet winding history. It is nothing so dramatic or earth-shattering so as to leave us without continuity; but we are evolving. Our community will be riding the train of the Poniverse—with Feld0 wearing the conductor’s hat—into uncharted territory. Even better is the fact that we can pursue this journey together. Nobody is a stranger. In Jeff Pearlman’s book, The Bad Guys Won, an account of the 1986 New York Mets championship season, there is a short story about Mike, a batboy, who considered joining the Mets. Mike was working with the Yankees, a historically successful ball club, while the Mets were only beginning to recover from years of successive losing seasons. Uncertain about his future, Mike asked Bobby Valentine, then third-base coach for the Mets, about whether he should stay with the predictable yet aging Yankees or take a risk with the budding Mets. Valentine replied by asking, “Son, do you want the elevator on the way up or the elevator on the way down?” After two years of constant growth and change for MLP Forums, we can’t be certain as to exactly how or when we may arrive at our destination; but we do know where we are going. MLP Forums has rapidly evolved from a single hub for bronies into an expanding network of artists, musicians, writers, and avid fans. The Poniverse is bound and ready to take off, and MLP Forums will be at its heart. The elevator is on the way up. Do you want to be on board? ~Thereisnospoon303 On Initiative (originally released to staff on June 28, 2013, as an internal memo) Let it be said: Poniverse is complicated. We have a community to run, a film project to host, a dashboard to build, and a video site to launch. We're bringing our stuff to the world's largest brony convention, and we provide one of the best outlets there is for bronies to interact. Even if it was Kurtiss and I who got the ball rolling on MLP Forums in 2011, the combined contributions of all users and staff members, past and present, have shaped the community into the huge forum it is today - and the way we all see and participate in MLP Forums and the other Poniverse communities will continue shaping them as long as the brony fandom lasts. And let it be said: Poniverse is big. By all possible metrics, MLP Forums is a "big board". We've amassed nearly 14,000 members and 1.6 million posts in less than two years. About 100 new topics and 4000 new posts are made here every day. The amount of time the community has spent on MLP Forums, combined, exceeds a human lifetime. This community is bigger than any one of us staff members, and it means something special to an awful lot of real people. Naturally, the expectations people have of this community are high, and it's our task as its stewards to continue hosting an active, friendly, and welcoming environment for everyone who likes these cute little equines. Like the individual contributions of a community's members add up to a huge breadth of content in an impressive environment, the individual contributions of its staff add up to a huge breadth of skills and interests that are represented in the community's operations. Even if within this forum, we all have our own circles of friends that we hang out with - and within Poniverse, our own favourite areas and sites that we frequent - the fact that we can all unite in the name of an even bigger picture is a testament to what we can accomplish when we all put in a piece of ourselves. Finally, let it be said: Poniverse is a platform. A platform for bronies to find fellow bronies. A platform for communities and friendships to form. A platform for projects to come together and present themselves to the world. A platform for dreams to come true. When Kurtiss and I found support from fellow fans for the idea, MLP Forums was born. Later, MLP Forums evolved from a place to simply discuss a colourful TV show into a multifaceted community representing nearly every interest this fandom has. Now, it's all set to become a pillar of a network that will connect bronies in meaningful new ways. When Elvis realized that a lot of other people enjoyed watching pony videos, Synchtube Fridays were born, later evolving into a dedicated site. Now, Equestria.tv is poised to become a video-sharing community itself. When Arylett Dawnsborough wanted to create a place for MLP-themed roleplays to thrive, Roleplay World was born. Aureity and Key Gear took the vision further with various technical enhancements and the creation of the Advanced Roleplays section. And now, Ice Storm is heading up the ambitious new World of Equestria project that takes place in a fully realized Equestria, complete with lore and characters all its own. When Cast wanted to make this fandom's first full-length feature film, he found his team here on MLP Forums and set to work. Many months later, a very real movie is visibly coming together and he joined forces with us as partners to give The Last Stand of Harmony a place on the Internet to call home. In the future, this project will serve as an excellent portfolio piece for all of his team members who wish to break into the animation industry. When Nelson wanted to build a music hosting site for bronies, he found Pony.fm and joined forces with me to bring a feature-rich music platform to the world. Now, he's working to build it into an even greater experience to rival the likes of SoundCloud and Google Music. It's far from an exhaustive list, but a consistent theme should be emerging by now: if you have a project you want to realize, Poniverse can give you the resources and community support to make it happen. All you have to do is take charge of your idea and start using the resources on offer. I may be installed as Poniverse's owner, but that doesn't mean I have to be the guy in charge of every last operation here - nor should I. With the sheer number of projects, interests, and passions that Poniverse can represent, there simply isn't enough time in any one person's day to personally handle everything. All of this community's greatest achievements happened when someone took charge of their idea and pushed it into reality. While most of us have a staff title that implies certain responsibilities, we all have the ability to strike up a conversation with any other staff members via private messages, Skype, or by posting a Star Swirl announcement. Whether you want to start a weekly gaming event or launch an entire new Poniverse website, the true realization of your idea will always start with one person... You. Want to make something happen? It's up to you. And if you need the assistance of people with specific skills or traits - artists, administrators, writers, moderators, coders, night owls, project managers, video producers, etcetera et al - find them in the community, pitch your idea to them, and let them know how they will play a role in making it real. Poniverse is here for all of us. How will you make it yours? ~ Feld0 I began this post with a song about coming together. In closing, have one about not splitting apart once we're there. https://pony.fm/tracks/780-freewave-brohoofs-tarby-pony-confessions-we-are-the-end-remix You know what's a strange thought? All of us have, collectively, put over 114 years' worth of time into crafting this site into the community it is today. 73 of those years were spent between our last anniversary and today's. Talk about dedication. The sands of time have been heralding change through all that time as the forum staff were, continue to, and will always be challenged with the tall order of meeting your high expectations of this ever-growing community. Much like the site and community change over time, so do the staff maintaining it. As former staff pass their responsibilities off to new generations of members, each leave their personal touch irreversibly ingrained in the community. Stewarding MLP Forums or any of Poniverse's projects is more than a "job" to fritter away time you'd normally spend playing video games. It is an opportunity to volunteer your skills and passions for the benefit of a community much larger than yourself. An opportunity to help this community receive a noncommercial social experience only possible at the scale of a multitalented, multinational, multifaceted organization committed to making the ponynet a better place. An opportunity to contribute toward something larger than the sum of its parts. Many of the staff that previously served Poniverse may no longer with us, but everything the current team does is influenced by and built on the work of all who came before them. On the behalf of the current team that carries Poniverse forward today, I'd like to express a sincere thank-you to the many more who came before. In a time when something as seemingly trivial as a certain purple unicorn sprouting wings creates more controversy among bronies than many real-life political hot potatoes, I think it's safe to say that the fandom's future lies in acknowledging our differences not as grounds for war, but justification for cooperation. The more of us hop on this ride, the more fun we'll all have reveling in the magic of friendship. See ya 'round the Poniverse!

If everyone had a thick "Internet skin", then no, this would not be an issue. But with a forum as large as MLP Forums, the community becomes a microcosm of society at large. Whether you like it or not, this means that the administration must set the bar somewhere to balance the need for an open community with the need for certain standards. What may make the community seem more "open" to you (fewer restrictions on what's considered "too vulgar" and not) may make the community feel like an "in club" to others (a good number of people who are plenty mature enjoy discussing their poni with higher standards than high school vernacular, out of personal preference if nothing else). Let's not delude ourselves that we also have a pretty good number of young teenagers here who are, despite what they may claim, extremely impressionable and open to influence... people for whom its natural to do as their peers to out of a pathological need to find their place in a larger group. All I want to say is, there's a reason we keep a leash on the content here. We've spent nearly two years in this precocious balancing act in a time when most online communities have gone toward one extreme or the other, and as a result of that, permanently alienated a large portion of users. It's a constant cycle of feedback and adjustments to keep up this act as the community grows and changes, so playing an active role in the community by reporting content you consider objectionable and speaking up in the feedback section when you have something on your mind is the best way to participate in the process of shaping its future.

Unfortunately, the forum staff cannot control the titles users choose when starting new topics. However, if you feel the topic (or even the OP) could be better, by all means feel free to report it and suggest something new.

I don't think that such a trend toward negatively toned discussions characterizes, or is necessarily unique to, our community. Humans have a tendency to get much more amped over bad news than good. Bringing out the negativity in people and airing the dirty laundry in various situations spawns intense interest - more often known as this strange "drama" that some people continue to treat like an unprecedented phenomenon plaguing the fandom. In reality, there's "drama" everywhere: just turn on the news and hear yet another update about a war everyone you know finds ridiculous and yet continues to criticize; or track down a local newspaper and find yet another front-page story about some controversial lawsuit or yet another shooting. The drama-mongering that goes on in this fandom is enough to make one sometimes think that the fate of the international economic engine rests on a four-figure deal. Here's a screenshot of what currently passes for top news of vital importance from Google: There's actually a surprisingly simple neuropsychological reason for this: the part of your brain responsible for deciding that something is "bad" (known as the amygdala) has a direct line into your long-term memory - a luxury that positive experiences do not have. That leads to negative experiences being far, far more impressionable than positive ones, and they're ultimately the ones that we have a natural tendency to gather around unless we make a conscious effort to avoid them. There's some pretty interesting reading to be done on the topic if you google for "negativity bias". If a trend toward negative topics bothers you, honestly, the best advice I can give is to avoid reading or participating in them - that only propagates them further. Instead, spend that time making a positive contribution toward something cheerful, or even start a friendly discussion of your own. It's not going to come intrinsically, because your brain will instinctively try to gravitate toward "bad" stuff, so expect to make a conscious effort toward this. On a community as large as MLP Forums, there's plenty to choose from, so you shouldn't have any issue finding the gems if you look for them. As Tina Fey once said...

A lot of people actually know about MLP Forums. Just about everyone I talked to at BronyCon knew about this site's existence, and I've run into some people elsewhere who've heard of it as well. The figure on the front page is merely our number of registered users; we have a whole lot more traffic than that number lets on, from unregistered guests. Last time I checked that number, it was in the ballpark of about 300,000 monthly uniques. As far as brony forum communities go, we're the largest one by far, and are fairly well established as the go-to brony forum. The real "issue" that keeps more of our visitors from actually registering accounts is that forum-based discussion is inherently a very niche interest. Being involved in a forum requires a more active commitment to coming up with stuff to talk about or tell people about; more consumer-oriented activities such as listening to music, reading fan fiction, or watching YouTube videos - basically anything of a relatively passive nature - carry much more mass-market appeal, and are interests you'll see a much larger chunk of the fandom partake in. Most of the aforementioned people I mentioned are familiar with MLP Forums cited that they're "not a forum person". Make of that what you will; but based on what I've found out from talking to them, it simply means that the idea of registering an account on a site to discuss a TV show carries extremely little appeal. You'll find a similar story with any other large fandoms or interest groups out there that have Internet forums dedicated to them: a miniscule portion of the people in the group are actually interested at all in long-form discussion about their interest, which is what forums are designed for. All things considered, we're doing pretty damn strong for a forum community, considering how few people on the planet really want to be part of one in the first place.

The login mechanisms are fully integrated, but restrictions on cookies prevent us from being able to easily "log you in" on different domains at the same time. poniverse.net, mlpforums.com, and pony.fm are all different domains, so Poniverse is unable to set the session cookies on MLP Forums and Pony.fm automatically that keep you logged in there. Keeping domains from setting and reading cookies for each other is a good security measure, but also an inconvenience when a network like us wants to offer unified logins across multiple domains. Now... there are ways to work around this. It's not impossible. But it's not trivial, either, so we plan to come back to cross-site single-sign-on after a few more of Poniverse.net's core features have been implemented.