Jiggmin's Village

Jiggmin's Village
Jiggmin's Village's index 2011-2015.
Owner	Jiggmin
URL	http://jiggmin.com/forum.php
Launch Date	May 2007
Shut Down	July 27, 2015

Not to be confused with JV Revival.

Jiggmin's Village (commonly abbreviated JV) was the official jiggmin.com forum that launched in 2007 and shut down in 2015.

Initially a place for fans of Jiggmin to congregate and discuss his games, it eventually evolved into a more in-general discussion board. By the end of its life, JV had over 35,000 members, 130,000 threads, 130,000 blogs and roughly 4 million total posts.

It was succeeded by the Freegoose forums shortly after its abrupt closure.

History

Jiggmin announced in October 2006 that a forum would be added to his site, with an account system and placeholder page set up in advance.

The forum launched following a redesign in May 2007. Unlike subsequent versions, this one didn't use vBulletin and was instead designed by Jiggmin. It was also much simpler (especially profiles), lacking many features that would become standard.

The forum initially contained a single section where members discussed his games, though sections for programming, animation and moderators were added later in the year.

May 2007 - July 2008.

A revamp of the forum was released in July 2008 using the default vBulletin 3 appearance. Accounts and posts were unable to be transferred from the original since it ran on different software.

Along with a more professional look, numerous features were added, including the ability to send private messages, post comments on profiles and add others as friends. This update also officially named the forum "Jiggmin's Village", which it kept until its closure.

July 2008 - early 2009.

A third version of the site was said to be in the works in February 2009. Concept art was posted the next day, with an early design releasing on Valentine's Day.

While JV continued running off vBulletin 3, it featured a more personalized theme based off the Satellite skin that brought it in-line with the rest of the site. It also introduced blogs, profile customization and was the only version to have Conquest.

Early 2009 - January 2011.

The possibility of upgrading to vBulletin 4 was thrown around in December 2009 when Jiggmin revealed he had a license for it. A test forum was made public the following spring, but closed after a couple weeks due to it being unmoderated. This led to it being filled with spam and some abusing its lack of a swear filter.

A variation of its look launched on the main site in January 2011, giving JV a new layout for the first time in 3 years. Given the scrapped transition to pintogames.com a month earlier, it's possible JV wasn't intended to receive the update. While there were few changes functionally, several minor ones were made, such as the addition of a chatbox. The biggest allowed members to change their username once a month, which caused a large amount of confusion; leading to a thread being created to keep track of everyone. A built-in username history tab was added to profiles around a year afterwards.

By the end of 2011, the forum had expanded to over 9 thousand members. Jiggmin described the community's growing size as "awesome and also tiring at the same time", as managing it affected his ability to make games.

Starting in 2013, the website and PR2 began experiencing recurring DDoS attacks. Although he only publicly commented on these twice at the time, it was later revealed to be the key reason he stopped developing games.

Jiggmin revealed intentions of remaking JV in Meteor during 2014 due to difficulties with vBulletin's software. He again confirmed the project privately in the Mod Hut in March 2015, which was also his final post on the forum.

The site as a whole shut down unexpectedly later in July 2015. While Jiggmin set up Freegoose as a replacement a month afterwards (which notably used Ghost instead of Meteor) and explained the sudden switch, no announcement was made elsewhere; leaving former members to congregate to the fan-made Acid Forums.

With the launch of Freegoose, Jiggmin elaborated on a number of issues that lead him to retire JV; the main being it was "a maintenance nightmare". The customized version of the site was intermixed with vBulletin's code, turning "simple security patches into a gauntlet of copy and paste soup". The recurring DDoS attacks and other issues lead to frequent database crashes, each of which resulted in him receiving hundreds of emails per hour. He also cited the 2012 Virus, the 2009 Forum Pruning and several times where Google temporarily banned his AdSense account.

Sections

Village Center

The main central sections.

• Welcoming Gates - Where new members introduced themselves and read basic guides. Its content later expanded to include farewell threads, along with unofficially to post count, anniversary and other milestone announcements for a brief period.
• Discussion Hall - Section for discussing news and general topics. Only section to lack stickied threads.
• Library of the Ancients - Contained tutorials, documents and the rules among others. Due to its ambiguous name, stories and other miscellaneous threads were often mistakenly posted in it.
  • Declassified - Sub-section that housed declassified Shadow Council of Nine discussions/votes.
• Ask a Mod (formerly Dungeon of Despair) - Private section that members could post threads viewable only by them and the staff. Also the only section banned accounts could post in.
• Voters United - A campaigning section used once in May 2014 for electing members to the Shadow Council of Nine. Planned to be used every 4 months, this was scrapped after Jiggmin went inactive.

Springforth Garden

More specific topic sections.

• Infectious Obsessions - Area for discussing sports and hobbies. Created in September 2013 after being voted on by the Shadow Council of Nine, although requests for it dated back nearly a year.
• Melodious Meadow - Talk about or share music.
• Artistry Orchard - Art related threads, added in September 2010. Originally featured in Village Center before Melodious Meadow and Turing Machines were made in 2012.
• Turing Machines - Discussions/questions related to computer programming and coding.

Philanthropy Central

Projects benefiting humanity.

• Folding at Home - Information relevant to Folding@home and Team Jiggmin were found here.
• FreeRice - Where users could find FreeRice topics, guides and questions.

Castle in the Sky

Forum game and video game related sections.

Formerly called the Cavern of Wonder, then Cave of Wonder until summer 2011. Its name is a reference to the Miyazaki film, while the older ones were a location in Aladdin.

• Village Games - The forum's most popular section that hosted a variety of forum games from role-playing adventures to spammy posts. Given its nature, this was the only section where posts didn't count.
• Indie Games - (Originally Flash Games until February 2011, then Web Games until July 2013) Games by independent developers. Given its pasts names, it originally only comprised of Flash games but expanded to other formats over time.
• AAA Games - Games published by large companies like Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. They each originally had their own sections that were merged in July 2013.
• Motley Monday - Where members posted Motley Monday ideas for Platform Racing 2. Although the series ended in September 2013, it remained up until the forum's closure.
• Jiggmin Games - Sub-sections for each of Jiggmin's games. Most were made in February 2011, although ones for Platform Racing 2 and Platform Racing 3 existed beforehand. All his released games received a section (Minus Chalkboard, Scribble and Competitive Line Waiting) and new ones got added as they were announced, including a game that never materialized.

Legal District

Private staff and special group sections

• Admin's Beach - Accessible only by Jiggmin and super moderators. They reviewed mod applications, potential trial mods and permanent mods among other issues.
• Mod Hut (Officially the Chamber of Secrets) - A section where staff discussed a variety of topics relating to the community at large.
• Ban Log - Record of bans given by moderators.
• Reports - Posts and visitor messages reported by members. Once reviewed, their thread was closed and they were automatically notified via a private message.
• Beta Tester's Club - Where Jiggmin posted new builds of his games for beta testers to play and report bugs before a public release. Members applied for the position and needed at least 200 posts to be eligible.
• Village Council - A forum accessible to the Shadow Council of Nine and Jiggmin where they discussed/voted on ideas that were popular or they felt benefited the community.
• Hero's Peak - Exclusive to staff and members who've been Hero of the Week where they voted on the next Hero and other activities.
• Hero's Court - Accessible only by certain Heroes to give Hipponator (the host) ideas and feedback on how Hero of the Week should be run.

Firelight Tavern

Private sections accessible only to people associated with a contest.

• Ballot Box - Primarily used for voting on potential contest judges.
• Long Table - A section where contest owners could discuss contests, the addition/removal of judges or transferring ownership among others.

Removed

• Dev Log - Deleted in February 2009 after blogs were added.
• Announcements and Rules - Merged with Library of the Ancients in July 2013 as Jiggmin wanted Welcoming Gates to be the first section new members saw.
• RPG - Sub-section of Village Games created by request in October 2011. Saw little use, so was merged in 2012.
• Spam Bam Party Fan - A brief controversial section in late 2012 dedicated solely to spamming. Posts in Village Games briefly counted since they didn't here. It was removed after a couple weeks due to a number of members feeling it hurt the quality of the forum.
• PR2 User's Choice Archive - Sub-section of Library of the Ancients that housed threads related to the Timeline campaign. Deleted in July 2013.
• ??? - Secret section discovered in early 2011. Could only be accessed through its URL and was found by several members before being outed that summer.

Other Layouts

Early version of the third layout.

vBulletin 4's default mobile theme, added to the site in 2012.

Notable Threads

• Does god exist?
• Jiggmin.com Historical Reference Guide
• JV Comics
• Minecraft
• Pokémon Conspiracy Theories