Things are changing – please read!

We have some exciting developments happening at FTB HQ and we wanted you to be the first to know about them. We want to stay in touch with you and we want to offer you more than just weekly video updates, and we believe our new project is the way forwards, both for us and for you. Say hello to FTB’s Discord!

About FTBMates
We developed the FTBMates forum as an extension to Patreon, giving us a space over and above what Patreon offered to communicate directly with our supporters.

The Problem
But FTBMates is for our supporters only and many of you can’t access our extra updates. And because FTBMates is a custom-made forum hosted on our website it presents house-keeping problems for us and page-load times for our users. In this day and age of fast social media, this form of communication is expensive, time-consuming, and out-dated.

The Solution
You may have heard of Discord, and some of you may even use it. If you do, you know where we’re going with this! For those who aren’t familiar with Discord, it is a communication app that’s as fast as WhatsApp or Signal, but sophisticated enough to migrate the entire FTBForum to. It was once the preserve of geeks and gamers but is fast becoming a legitimate business tool. Discord is easy to use, flexible, fast and solid.

What It Offers
The followtheboat Discord server has a number of channels within it. Channels are like forums. There’s one for advanced episode viewing, one for our Dropbox high-res images, another for chat and so on. Moreover, we can now host both public and private channels, so even if you aren’t a supporter, you can still see all our updates.

This is just the beginning and there’s so much more we can do with it. We can easily post interesting updates; chat with you directly without swapping phone numbers; post extra videos; live-stream via video; automate rewards for regular users; send news feeds to our channels. There’s a lot we’re exploring but don’t worry, once you have the basics, it’s really easy to use.

*Note that the default colour scheme is white text on a dark background. You can change this in your settings.

Why We Like Discord
Simply load the app on your phone or computer, or just access it via a browser, and then select the channels you’d like to receive notifications for. You can post comments, photos, links and react (thumbs-up etc) to any post. It’s a fun and convenient way to stay in touch, but you have complete control over it. If you don’t want Sailing News updates, for example, simply turn the notifications off for that channel. Want to share a cracking photo you took recently? Just post it in the photography channel!

For us it’s easy to manage because it’s all done by phone and there is little to housekeep other than setting it up. And that’s where we’re at now. We’re now at the stage where we need a few more willing participants to give us feedback and get involved before we go public with it.

Interested? It’s pretty easy:

1. Either download the Discord app on your phone, tablet or computer, or go to discord.com.
2. Create an account using the same email address you use for FTBMates or Patreon
3. Join the followtheboat server by clicking this link: https://discord.gg/yBda3PjT

You’ll need to agree to the terms before you can start posting but once you’re in, click the Start Here link. Use the ‘Banter‘ channel to message me if you get stuck.

We want to stay in touch with you and we want to offer you more than just weekly video updates. We’re all busy people but we think that the Discord route is going to make things more simple and more fun.

*Please note that the link is only available for seven days as of 25th Nov 2022. Leave a comment if the link has expired and I will post another.

If you like our content and would like to support us, we will give you ad-free access to our videos before they go live to the public, discounts in our shop, access to Jamie’s iconic full-res photographs, and supporter-only blog posts. Click our ugly mugs for more info!