How AnimaRules Came to Be

The old forum where I’d spent half my life had gone down again. Years of conversations, photos, arguments, jokes only we understood were left there. And people I’d grown used to having around, even though I’d never met many of them. Sad… But… Those of us who hadn’t lost touch and still wanted to keep talking gathered in a private chat. We talked it over and decided: we couldn’t keep doing this. We needed a place of our own, something reliable. So I took it on…

I bought forum software, installed it, opened the site… And felt even more downhearted 🙂 Everything seemed to work, but it looked basic and not remotely welcoming. I started reading and asking questions. It was explained to me in no uncertain terms: want it to look good? Buy a theme.

Bought it. Installed it. Still a long way from the picture in the advert. Another explanation: “Well, you have to configure it.” So I tweaked settings, changed colours, moved things around. A couple of weeks later, it was starting to look like what I’d had in mind.

But now some of the features I needed were missing. More searches, questions, discussions. I found a plugin, bought it, installed it. Turned out it didn’t get along too well with my theme. Back to reading, hunting for a solution and peering at code I barely understood at the time. More things on the wish list — another plugin, more settings… Round and round it went… Getting everything I wanted turned out to take far more time, money and nerves. But… all I’d wanted was to give us a place to talk again…

And finally, everything worked 🙂

Then I discovered the licences needed renewing every year. The forum software gets an update? Time to update the theme, the plugins and everything else on top. And with components coming from different sources, updates meant more attention, more settings to adjust, more fixes. “That’s just a system administrator’s job,” you might say. Perhaps. Except I’m no system administrator. And I find all of that more than a little boring. Especially when, instead of talking to people, I’m trying to work out why a button has wandered off somewhere after the latest update.

That’s when the idea came to me: build ready-made packages for different needs on a solid, dependable foundation. One installation with everything included: themes and design, extensions and modules already configured, the necessary default settings in place. And an appearance you could change right from the admin panel.

One button, and it all installs together.

At first, I made it for myself. Then I decided to share it with the world.

That’s how AnimaRules was born.