New forum's almost ready! (was forum speed)

New forum's almost ready! (was forum speed)
In addition to myself, a couple others have noticed the DAM forum's been pretty slow the last couple days. There's not much that can be done with it on this end, and no, this isn't a result of a swelled forum attendance, more likely its technical issues with the company's service. If I'm not mistaken, this is a commercial forum that's more than likely got the Captain listed under a sub-domain on their own server. Pretty annoying, but this is a good thing! The forum I'm looking to set up for you guys will be hosted on the actual DAM web server, so these speed issues will be gone, along with other things like ads, and the requirement for the Captain to pay people for a service he doesn't require. edit: The new forum's been installed; now its just down to importing the database and getting some good forum styles installed!

A quick look on the Forumer support forum shows this is not the only board having speed(and other issues). Seems the upgraded a disk recently and this is where the problems are coming from. Either they'll have it fixed soonish, or I'll have us in a new home in the coming days, so hang in there!

New forum's installed! I don't have the database from this board transferred over yet, but here you guys go if you wanna have a look: http://stompboxes.co.uk/forum That web address even looks official, fuck yeah! You'll need to make new accounts over there as I'm pretty sure I can't bring that over from this forum, but aside from that, once I get the existing database and a couple cool themes installed we're good to go! :baddancing:

Heh... it was really slow to logon there!

Is registration currently restricted or am I missing something? I went to the new forum but I don't see a way to register. :shock:

I can't find the registration info/button either...

heh, I don't see one for that theme; lemme change it out(I did already, but it didn't update for some reason) WORK IN PROGRESS PEOPLE!!

Ok, I changed back to a factory theme as default. You'll be able to access registration now, and you can set your theme of choice once you log in that will override the ugly default. A couple of these themes are still in beta, which is probably why you can't see a registration link. The release themes that I've sorted through don't 'do it' for me, so I'm still hunting down a good one. Theme of choice for me currently is 'darksunyellow'.

Ok, so what do you guys think of this?

Is there any way to bring all the posts that were on this forum on that one? That would be my only concern. I also don't want to have to check two D*A*M forums a day, so once everythings worked out are we switching there or do you just replace the address here? Not to up on the technical forum stuff. Thanks for your hard work Donovan. No problemo, Poorbob, that's what I'm here for. Ok, here's a quick status rundown: I've hit a wall that might prove to be a(temporary) problem: I cannot export the Forumer database. What this means is, The Captain has this forum hosted off-site with a company that stores all the data on this forum. They do not permit database exports. This has got me a little aggravated right now for several reasons. 1 - They're providing a 'service' which isn't really necessary; anyone can have a forum on their own web server and this is why I've pushed to get the new board established. The Captain simply doesn't need to pay these guys for hosting a board that's not only outdated, but somewhat short on features. 2 - If anything happens to this company providing the hosting service, because of the policy they have which blocks the ability to export data, if anything happens to this company(like they fold, etc), the data is either sold to whoever buys the company or if there's no seller the data is lost. Period. I'd personally would really hate to see that happen, and I'm sure most of you would as well. I can't do much about what's already here, but I can step in and push to have the Captain's data placed safely on his own web server where he can export, backup, etc to his heart's content, and that means that as long as the Captain's around, so will the material on his forums. So, either we stay here and have no real control over data preservation, or we move on out and seize the reigns. If the Captain decides to head on out, he'll need the help of all the members here in bringing over the important stuff. This can be achieved by members who start their own threads copying those essential, original posts over to the new forum. As far as the address, if we go with the new forum, the Captain will probably update his hyperlink on the uk stompboxes site and members here will need to update their bookmarks. That's it. You won't need to check up on 2 forums a day. Right now, all I'm doing is configuring the new board which will take some time. What that means is until either the Captain or myself make an official announcement encouraging the community to begin posting on the new board, all activities should continue to take place here. If the Captain decides to go with the new forum, we'll make sure that each section on the old board has a loud and clear announcement directing everyone to post on the new board. If we do move, I've suggested we leave this forum intact as an 'archive' which gives an extended grace period to permit the extraction of important threads at a relatively comfortable timetable for forum members(six months to a year; there's lots of stuff here, so its going to take a while). I don't want to have him just shit the door on this place as doing so will see all the existing threads disappear. Obviously, nobody wants that to happen. If I can answer any other questions, please let me know. Cheers, Donovan

Lookin' real good over there, thanks for your effort on this!

Nice place over there! If the Captain decides to head on out, he'll need the help of all the members here in bringing over the important stuff. This can be achieved by members who start their own threads copying those essential, original posts over to the new forum. It's been a while since I did anything like this, but couldn't a bot just screen-scrape parts of the old forum and post it to the new one?

That may be possible, but I'm not a bots guy and don't know if I want one running amok on the new forum. If there's a way of doing this I'd be interested in learning more about it, so I'm all ears in a tentative kinda way. I've spoken with the Captain this morning and explained that exporting the threads on the old board will not be possible. The Captain's perspective is old is old, and new is new. He says full steam ahead despite no easy way of importing data! What we're likely going to do is what I mentioned above: We're going to give a considerable window where this forum will remain accessible. At this point, I'm encouraging people to begin posting over on the new forum. This one after a 2-3 month period will become an official D*A*M Archive, and will remain online, but its content will become read-only. This is the best way to go about it. That way we won't be losing the great threads already here, can access them at any time, and the contents can be lifted and brought over to the new board whenever someone wants to grab something. I'll be starting that process myself at some point today when I get a break from other config stuff. I've got a bunch of work I want to get done on this before I start my normal job on Thursday afternoon. I should be able to put a nice dent in the remaining work by then. Right now I'm working on graphics for the Stomps section. No biggie, just a little touch that'll make the place look even cooler, I think. *back to work*

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