XBMC Server Update, SCALE, and Other Notes

Now that some of the excitement of the XBMC 12 release has blown over, we need to take a moment to handle some maintenance and take a look at the very near future.

Server Update

First up, this Sunday (Feb. 10th) starting at 2100 UTC (1PM PST), we are finally going to deal with the ever increasing popularity of XBMC by upgrading servers and moving the forums onto a completely separate server from the XBMC.org blog, downloads, and the wiki. This way, when tech blogs and other news sites from all over the internet point to us, the massive load (375,000 page views on the blog alone last Wednesday) will not affect the support and development discussions in the forum.

From the user perspective, nothing will change, except there should be fewer forum (and blog) crashes. With that said though, if forum.xbmc.org and xbmc.org are acting glitchy at all on Sunday, there’s a reason.

We’d also like to thank WebHostingBuzz for generously sponsoring an additional server to help us bear the load.

SCALE

Once again, XBMC will be attending SCALE in sunny Los Angeles, the weekend of February 22-24th. This year, we plan on showing off some pretty exciting hardware at our booth, including the Pivos XIOS DS, PVR in action, and – with luck – an Ouya Dev Box.

Cory Fields (theuni), Keith Herrington (keith), Ned Scott (nedscott), and Nathan Betzen (natethomas) will be manning the booth, where we plan on having some awesome, never before seen XBMC swag. Additionally, Nathan will be giving a talk ongrowing online software communities at 11:30am on Friday.

We’d love to see you all there, and to help make that happen the SCALE organizers have agreed to help out the XBMC community. If you enter the promotion code XBMC during registration, you can get 50% off your full access pass for the weekend.

There are no plans for an XBMC user meet up this year, but if enough of you speak up in the comments, we could definitely look into arranging one.

Clearing Up Confusion

Recently we’ve noticed a fair amount of confusion about what software is offered by Team XBMC and the XBMC Foundation. To clear up that confusion, we’d like to direct everyone to the XBMC Software page, which lists all the software XBMC officially supports. If you happen to run into some software that is not on the list that appears to be offered by XBMC, don’t hesitate to ask about it in the General Discussion area of the forum.

We’d also like to take this time to ask the operators of all XBMC fan sites and related sites that use the name “XBMC” to include an official disclaimer, preferably on the front page, but at a minimum on your About page and on any software you distribute and on any official press releases that includes the following language: “(Insertname) is not connected to or in any other way affiliated with XBMC, Team XBMC, or the XBMC Foundation. Furthermore, any software, addons, or products offered by (Insertname) will receive no support in official XBMC channels, including the XBMC forums and various social networks.” We believe that language will effectively clear up most confusion. We would also appreciate if any users who come across a site that uses the XBMC name without this disclaimer to inform us either on the forum or via ourcontact page.

Updated Forum Rules

Finally, to make the lives of our moderators easier, we’ve updated the forum rules. The goal with this update was to better spell out acceptable general conduct, clear up rules on no solicitation, and reduce unnecessary clutter and spammy behavior. Those of you who spend a lot of time in the forum are encouraged to check these rules out to make sure you are in compliance. We hope that this update will make the forum overall an easier place to read and navigate. And because we believe the forum is ever changing, comments and suggestions for alterations to these rules are open in theForum Rules Update thread.

Conclusion

That just about wraps it up. If you are planning on attending SCALE in about three weeks, definitely let us know, either in the comments or on one of the social networks. We’d love to see you guys!