What happened to Xojo ifnotnil.com?

Is ifnotnil.com (INN) down? Yes, unfortunately, it is.

For years ifnotnil.com was the alternative forum for Xojo-relevant postings, but also for alternatives to Xojo and general programming topics. These times are over now. Virtually overnight, the creator decided to switch back to the “official” forum and abandon the alternative forum.

That is legitimate, that happens, and that is normal. However, in my eyes, it is part of a good ethical business attitude to ensure a smooth migration even in stress and resentment and not drop out the baby with the bath water. That’s what happened though. For a forum and SEO, an outage of a few hours (currently days) is fatal and in Austin, the champagne corks are likely to pop.

We also have to hold our noses here. If you complain for years that the software supplier does not use its internal processes and partly uses obsolete libraries in their product, then you should also offer as little as a possible attack surface, but that’s exactly what happened now. Outdated nginx, the forum is gone, no professional attitude, … too bad.

Status for a few days now.

Outdated nginx Webserver from 2018

ifnotnil.com was legitimate in that it was a mouthpiece for the users that Xojo Inc. blocks on their forum (even if they still have or had an active license).

The founder of the alternative forum was upset with the harsh tone and some disparagement on itnotmil.com. Besides the fact that apart from the usual trolling nothing really bad ever happened and the founder very rarely got involved in moderation, there is a good reason for this person to stop working. Of course, at the latest as a plugin developer for Xojo, you have to decide which side you want or need to be on. However, the whole process has a taint and everyone should make his rhyme, especially if by chance at the same time positive Xojo postings multiply on the official forum.

One can also see it as a sign of the months-long nervousness among all involved people. Even without a critical forum, the current problems of the software will not disappear overnight. Critical forums exist for other software solutions as well and they usually don’t bother the companies because at least one is in the news.

So, the only thing that will happen now is that Xojo will seem even more insignificant (after all, INN often had a better ranking in Google than the official forum). In any case, in my professional career, sinks of discussion forums were almost always a seismograph that fundamental problems of the product were about to hit.

It is what it is and the world will continue to turn. Too bad for the good posts and the numerous tutorials. Too bad for all the work some authors have done, and too bad to watch the irrelevance and agony of original very good ideas.

I feel confirmed to only ever post my opinion in my tools, which in the worst case I could migrate from a backup to other platforms in a few minutes.

A few tutorials are still preserved on Norman Palardy’s site: https://www.great-white-software.com/blog/ and of course here:

Xojo Development
About the Xojo Programming Languagexojo.jeannot-muller.com

Disclaimer: I have no shares in ifnotnil.com and can not comment on whether it will rise magically soon, I remain sceptical and it remains a taint.

Update 2022/11/16: still down since 10th Nov. Apparently “some” are working on recovery.

Update 2022/11/18: still down …

Update 2022/11/21: still down … and Google is slowly “forgetting” the links to INN … SEO 4.0 :-(

Update 2022/11/24: they are back, finally. https://ifnotnil.com/t/yey-it-is-back/2885