do you know where else to go? 😟
I looked around a number of suggested replacements. I haven't found an option I actually like, but.
Octocon is the most similar. Apparently the SP dev helped a lot with it. But it lacks a lot of stuff. I didn't look around for very long, but as far as I saw, there's no chat function, there's no custom fronts (and they get exported as members), there's no buckets, you can't tag other members in profiles, and I don't think I saw the ability to make captions or notes on fronts either.
The only things I saw that SP doesn't are very minor and cosmetic and not worth having a whole other app, I don't understand why they made it in the first place, but if you can get over the fact that they are sysmedicalist, the app explicitly has "DID/OSDD" in the name and is marketed towards pwCDD's, and it calls members alters and provides no alternative, then I guess that's your best option. The exporting certainly helps. It takes your custom fields too so as far as I noticed in my brief look, all you gotta do is address tags, sort through CF's, adjust the privacy settings of your custom fields and get your friends added. And maybe address embedded images, idk if it supports that. Or what the markdown is like. But it is similar. But the people suck ass. I looked around this one the most of everything but I just. Looking at it filled me with rage.
Then there's Ampersand. It's been picking up recently and is also really similar to SP. I know @radiosquad / @gordon-freesystem has been trying it out, maybe & can talk about it?
I didn't get the opportunity to look around much because after trying to figure out how the fuck to import SP to it [you need to export your data, download the json file, and upload it to the app] and waiting at least 10 minutes for it to load, it was frozen and wouldn't move at all. We've heard a lot that it stalls for large systems so I imported before looking around the app intentionally to see how it handled nearly 400 profiles and. well yea it didn't like that. So I can't tell you much about it but, it only works for smaller systems right now, and it doesn't have a friends function. Also it's isolated to your device I think, I don't think it had me make a profile.
The only other thing meant for systems that we know of is Lighthouse. It was suggested to me today, but I didn't look through it today. We already have an account for the One person who used it, but we Do Not Like It. You can't make custom fields, they're pre-determined, and more importantly, they're all bullshit like "perceived species" which is just. no.
However, it does allow you to pick between "alters" and "headmates," so that's nice. I looked for such a feature on Octocon, no such luck, not that I'm surprised considering their notorious sysmedicalism. It also has a lot of pretty themes to choose from.
But most notably, its primary function is having personal journals. Also iirc there's some kind of somethings about exploring your innerworld and self treatment for dissociation idk we didn't look at that stuff and it was years ago. But it's very different from SP.
As for things that aren't geared towards systems, there's OC sites like toyhouse [but it needs an invite code 🙄] and CharacterHub [.com] which, I didn't wanna fuck with it but if you're equipped for learning a new site then it looked like a really good option as far as the information tracking part.
Other things you could use for information tracking are Obsidian, Notion and Milanote. Milanote was one of the things suggested to me today; I don't think it's a very good option, at least for us, but I'm listing it anyway. Notion is... idk... we tried to make an identity term archive on it last year and it's. complicated and I don't think it's that good an option. But it could work. Better than like. Google Docs. And Obsidian... we've heard about systems using it but I think when I tried to look into it I couldn't. go anywhere. so. I got nothing. I think @truthwithlight uses it, though idk if it uses it for plurality.
As for the chat function, a lot of systems use Antar, an app meant for what appears to be like, self-lead IFS therapy. For creating different "personas"/parts so they can talk to each other. Apparently there's a bit of profile ability but not much I don't think, not enough. Twinote was also suggested to me but I don't think that's a good option...
By the way... Website only: CharacterHub and toyhouse App only: Antar, Obsidian, Twinote Both: Octocon, Notion, Milanote
Personally since neither Ampersand nor Octocon work for us, I think we're gonna make a Discord server or something...
We already use the front function on PK. And we already have multiple journal servers, as well as an image archival server, plus a PK work server. We spend a lot of time on Discord and have made a LOT of servers of all kinds so it would be easy and convenient.
Supports markdown and images, we can use PK, we could technically leave messages for people in their channels, make notes in threads, keep track of front history, tag other members by channels.
Main thing we would lose is folders. Categories aren't a good substitute for that. But we could have a list of what folders there are and how they fold out, or rather a list of tags, and list them somewhere in the channel. We did that for our server for the aforementioned Notion archive. It's not great... but with our proficiency, we can work with it.
It'll be annoying. It won't be perfect. It's gonna suck, no matter where we move, for so many reasons, but. It was my first thought. I looked for other options. I considered each of them. This is our best option. I hope everyone else finds what works best for them too.
-- Izumi // she/her