Did you create an account at chat.poal.co first?
For those of you who do not know, poal is losing it's host because "someone" reported the site for "Fake News,Anti-Semitism, and other hate speech". This is not new to us, this censorship has taken down countless sites before this one with the same horseshit. You can read more on this at AOU's post here:
https://poal.co/s/Announcements/495228
During the shutdown you can go to the QStorm chat room that is on element. You need to create an account because your account here is not tied to that site. You can use the same username and password if you like (I believe element requires strong passwords, Uppercase Lowercase a Number and a special character). Here is the link for account set up:
https://chat.poal.co/#/welcome
After you create an account you will see these options:
Select "explore public rooms"
Locate QStorm and click/tap the join button. Note: if you are using a cell phone to access, it looks horrible through a browser. You will want to download the element app, instructions on that to follow.
Go to you app store and download Element Messenger, it looks like this:
https://pic8.co/sh/gjAXgF.jpeg
Once you launch the app and prompted to register, be sure to select "Use custom server options (advanced)". The home server needs to be filled out EXACTLY like this: https://chat.poal.co
Example here: https://pic8.co/sh/8leWl2.jpeg
You will then use the username and password you created earlier, then find QStorm room like you did in the above instructions.
There have been recent backups of the site, so almost everything here now will be on the new host. It will nice to be at our new home and be able to continue our work. I'm very excited. If you have any questions, feel free to comment.
We are extremely lucky that the poal Administration were able to see this coming, and find a solution with minimal disruption. We could have had the rug pulled out from underneath us without warning, and that would have been horrible. We should all be very grateful that isn't happening to us, and I thank them.
I'd also like to thank and with helping moderate the chat, you guys are awesome.
(post is archived)