Sonofnothing
Member
Anybody working on getting AK on tapatalk? 
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Tapatalk?
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Sonofnothing
Member
booty
I dumped Tapatalk from a few of my own forums three or four years back. The architecture was highly flawed--it bypassed the security and spam-trapping features built into Xenforo (and other forum systems), and the company itself has been involved in some highly questionable practices over the past few years. (Essentially, doing things without the site owners' consent.) With Xenforo working in "responsive" view now, there is no pressing need for a mobile app--the only feature anyone ends up missing is the push notification system.
There are push notification systems out there (like Pushover or Pushbullet), but they are very, very expensive with sites that have a lot of activity like AK (hundreds of active users making thousands of posts). And, the apps themselves are not free either.
There are push notification systems out there (like Pushover or Pushbullet), but they are very, very expensive with sites that have a lot of activity like AK (hundreds of active users making thousands of posts). And, the apps themselves are not free either.
Sonofnothing
Member
Very insightful. I should read up on that. The recording review forum is the only other one I really use so I could change my defaults. I wish I could set preferences for specific link to forums do either browser or tt by default.
Just a couple of recent highlights (essentially a "Cliff Notes" version):
1. They are "syndicating" content. Imagine someone pulling all the recent activity from AK and duplicating it on their own servers. They probably claim it is a "convenience" but a lot of us saw it as possibly affecting our search engine rankings, on top of being unauthorized use of our content. Not only that, they did this without any announcement to, or consent from, the owners of the site.
2. They added a "chat room" feature for each forum. Essentially, forum members could be running amok in a chat room that the site owner has no control over. Another feature site owners did not consent to, but was enabled automatically.
3. If I understand it, they turned on certain types of banner ads or popups (or signatures) in the app that the site owner could not disable. Memory's fuzzy on that one.
4. They have historically been lax with bug fixes to product--they get a feature about 75% done, and move on to add another feature.
And there were the ongoing security holes, and the lack of membership control using the in-app signup feature...
So they are somewhat unwelcome in the grand scheme of things.
1. They are "syndicating" content. Imagine someone pulling all the recent activity from AK and duplicating it on their own servers. They probably claim it is a "convenience" but a lot of us saw it as possibly affecting our search engine rankings, on top of being unauthorized use of our content. Not only that, they did this without any announcement to, or consent from, the owners of the site.
2. They added a "chat room" feature for each forum. Essentially, forum members could be running amok in a chat room that the site owner has no control over. Another feature site owners did not consent to, but was enabled automatically.
3. If I understand it, they turned on certain types of banner ads or popups (or signatures) in the app that the site owner could not disable. Memory's fuzzy on that one.
4. They have historically been lax with bug fixes to product--they get a feature about 75% done, and move on to add another feature.
And there were the ongoing security holes, and the lack of membership control using the in-app signup feature...
So they are somewhat unwelcome in the grand scheme of things.
I agree. I don't recall if it was stored on their server, but with them, you just never knew! (And no, I wouldn't like it either.) I know that there was a complaint about passwords being sent in the clear from the Tapatalk app but, in reality, unless SSL is in place, most forums out there have passwords sent in the clear anyway. And while a hacked forum login is an inconvenience, it is not exactly as catastrophic as getting ahold of someone's email or bank account. (Although it can lead to that, if someone has used the same password at dozens of sites.)
There is a movement out there to have all Web sites on the Internet run securely via SSL. Let's Encrypt is sponsored by some of the Internet's largest companies. The idea behind this is offering site owners/server admins a free certificate authority. I haven't had any luck yet getting it running on any of my projects (nor the time to deal with it--the process is still in a beta stage and the procedures and scripts are evolving regularly), but the concept revolves around the certificate application process being simple, and certificate renewals (every 90 days) being completely automated. I believe these sponsors are working on the premise that offering free SSL certificates for a safer overall Internet is less costly than the losses that arise from dealing with the aftermath of compromised logins.
I think if Tapatalk were more open with how they did things, users and site owners would have been more trusting. Instead, they tend to not say too much, and threads on their support forum have been known to evaporate if they were critical of the product, or the company's practices.
