Hey everyone,
It's been a while since I last posted a forum announcement. I figured the new year would be a good time to keep everyone up to date.
Can you believe Y2K was 25 years ago? It's unreal!
For me, 2025 is going to be the biggest year ever. I'm going to be a father. We're expecting a baby boy in April 2025. It's going to be the challenge of a lifetime and an incredible journey. Can't wait to meet this little guy.
Obviously, I won't be spending as much time online. But I'm sure I'll still be able to visit the forum a few times a day, say hello, and get involved. Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere and neither is the forum.
So, what happened on Paranormalis in 2024? A lot of fun stuff! Then what’s going to happen in 2025? Let’s go!
Streaming and gaming
We introduced a new section for streams and gaming. I, for one, didn’t stream as much as I wanted in 2024, for numerous reasons. Various real-life stuff getting in the way.
I have several games or programs I’d like to stream. For example, I have over 400 Warhammer 40k: Warpforge booster packs to open. That would be a 3 to 4 hour stream. I don’t have time for such a long stream. I’ll probably just open them all while watching TV or something! The downsides of being a responsible adult I guess.
I’d like to create a “thread-reader v2.0”, aka Paranormalis Radio. It would scroll down threads and read them on stream, live from my local browser. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it take suggestions in the chat. That would be pretty awesome.
I’d like to, but don’t expect to stream more in 2025. Time will tell. For me, streaming is fun and I love it. But the place I’m at right now, streaming doesn’t create value.
Volunteers are welcome, though. If you’re interested to stream and have your Twitch, Kick, YouTube, Rumble, or any stream featured here, just let me know in a DM.
So, despite not being that active, the Streams section will remain available. It’s fun to spot our favorite streamers online, like the L.A. Beast or The Why Files. More will be added, suggestions are welcome.
Books and poems
Earlier this year, I created a new post format that turns your forum message(s) into novel/book pages. This format can be used for fiction, non-fiction and poetry. I’m glad we were able to share a couple of books on here using this publishing template.
Click here to check out our small collection of works.
Click here to read more about our posting formats.
I have a couple more books I’d like to work on and eventually release.
- The History of Paranormalis
- My John Titor 2K Fanfiction
- Book of short “mind-breakers” science fiction stories
- Titorian Scripts
- Volume II (IT, computing and tech-related poems)
- Volume III (short stories and gospel, medieval-themed)
- Volume IV (short stories taking place in the far future of John’s saved timeline)
- A science fiction adventure about parallel realities and discovering the true nature of existence and the Universe.
- A video game about exploring foreign worlds through servers and remote connections. “Myst in a terminal”
Maybe an online magazine
I plan to expand our post formats so that more types of works can be natively shared here. For instance, I’d like to create a format that would be suitable for publishing an online magazine. I’m not sure how exactly I’ll do it, or what it will look like, but I’m excited to eventually do it.
The objective is that you feel like you’re reading an actual paper magazine, but within a forum thread.
Then, once this magazine format is ready, I’ll use it to create our own paranormal-themed magazine. Cool original and quality articles about numerous topics we like to discuss. Maybe a place for a short story or something. Snippets of what’s happening on the forum.
Think of it as the modern equivalent of your old, weird tabloid magazine.
While completely different in format, I like to think this magazine and its articles could take inspiration from Alex Jones exposing bad guys and their plans for global domination. Joe Rogan and Lex Friedman also come to mind, when they are attempting to decrypt and understand reality.
The idea would be to create quality articles that are solid and credible, then share them on other platforms like Medium, X, etc. Then see what happens. X and it's new algorithms interest me in particular in this case.
I’m currently experimenting on X, trying to get traction and reach. I’m most likely to create visibility and value for Paranormalis there, compared to Twitch and Medium. X is likely to become a good place to share and interact with others who are into the paranormal, and therefore drive some traffic to the forum.
Oh, and I’ll also collaborate with @cosmo on an online magazine he’s been working on for some time now. More on that later, I don’t want to spoil any of his stuff.
So I'm sure by now you understand that I hope to be writing more in 2025. Writing creates value and enhances what we have to offer. And it's a great creative activity to unleash your brain cells.
Chronovisor and content curation
@Wind7 and I did some curating on the forum. Cleaning up old threads, rewriting parts of old posts here and there. I like what we’ve done.
I’d like to commit a little more to the Chronovisor, and restore old threads on a more regular basis. I did restore nearly a hundred old discussions in 2024, but I did it early this year… And I didn’t touch it since. I’d like to restore more, of course, but I’d like to do it over a longer period of time. For instance, I could restore 1 thread per day, so that we reach about 300 threads per year. That would be pretty rad. To be continued…
I’m also looking forward to updating/improving the Vault in various ways when possible. I’d like to make it a little more dynamic and interesting. Right now it looks like a big bland page full of bullet lists.
The idea behind this is to have high quality rare content that is easy to browse and find.
XenForo 2.4
I expect XenForo 2.4 to release in 2025. Considering how long it took them to release 2.3, I’m not holding my breath. I’ll take it when they release it.
They are going to replace the text editor with a new, better, more up-to-date one. This will be a good thing. Our current editor is fine, but in 2025, BBCode and tags won't be the only standard. Markdown is here to stay. And this new editor should support the old BBCode + tags format as well as Markdown.
Happy New Year!
And, most importantly, Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2025 will be a good year for all of us. Let’s plow through this new year together, and make the best of it.
Alright, that’s about it for now. Man, that has to be the longest community update I’ve ever written. Talk about writing more! LOL!
Have fun and take care! See you on the forum!
--Num7
