Thank you, AK. Very helpful…

No disrespect intended whatsoever but I honestly had to think twice about registering here. The site looks great and hopefully all of the terrific folks on the old site will re-register. For folks who have been around for awhile, however, this is not the first experience of having our ideas disappear into the internet black hole. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve repeated what I thought was a good idea and seen it disappear with a forum change or entire board meltdown. Sure, I was probably the only one who thought my idea was worthwhile but it’s still frustrating to either see it disappear or have to decide which of your posts are worthwhile repeating.

I’m not sure what the solution is and I trust the mods to transfer good, active threads. I’m sure there’s a good reason for the forum change but it kind of feels like starting from scratch. I guess that will be the challenge of the mods to transfer good discussions and keep them going. I’m also guessing that there is no way to transfer all of the threads on the old board to the new?

Stupid internet…

I am working on a way to make the transfer of old posts more automated. The goal is to preserve them like this:

http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=221

Doranchak – That looks good, hopefully there is a quick and easy way to transfer threads as you say. If you perfect it that would be great.

Entropy – Yes I share your frustration. On the flip side this is a public forum, better functionality, better images and hopefully a permanent home.

Right now you can go to the old forum edit, copy and paste your important posts over here.

If it is a thread where a lot of other posters made important contributions, you can ask a mod to do it. A mod can edit, copy and paste all posts.

There are a lot of great threads at the old forum, hopefully we can get most of the important and best ones over here, but it may take some time.

AK thanks for that first bit of advice. I was particularly pleased that the links to the images still worked simply by copying them.

Entropy, all valid concerns and I feel the same way. I fear change and I wouldn’t like to see the stuff on the old board disappear into a black hole either. One good thing at least is that we haven’t lost links to images in the way that it happened over on ZKF when the board moved. I don’t know if we can physically accommodate all the old posts but since the images are hosted on a separate server (I assume) and the links to those images still work I can’t see it having any over the top space impact. I don’t know if Morf is all that enamoured about bringing absolutely everything over but we should be, no, we will be able to bring everything of value and I think we’ll all work out over time what that is.

Dave, good work, hope it’s not proving too difficult. I think if we can bring posts in, in the format you are suggesting I think it will work well as it would be like having an archive of the thread contained within it’s new thread here and then will continue on from there with new posts formatted as they are showing the distinction.

We’ll all get there in both sorting stuff out and everyone getting used to this new place. I didn’t like the old board at first, thought it was too busy and too confusing, soon got over that though lol.

Appreciate the great work. Patience isn’t my strong point. Thank God the smilies survived the forum change…

Doranchak – That looks good, hopefully there is a quick and easy way to transfer threads as you say. If you perfect it that would be great.

Entropy – Yes I share your frustration. On the flip side this is a public forum, better functionality, better images and hopefully a permanent home.

Right now you can go to the old forum edit, copy and paste your important posts over here.

If it is a thread where a lot of other posters made important contributions, you can ask a mod to do it. A mod can edit, copy and paste all posts.

There are a lot of great threads at the old forum, hopefully we can get most of the important and best ones over here, but it may take some time.

I certainly understand the frustration Entropy mentioned. There were some really great posts and topics at the old forum,and we are doing all that we can do to bring alot of it over. As Doranchak mentioned, he is working on something that could archive much of what was loaded on the old forum(much thanks to him). Of course,I will not close out or delete the old forum until everything we need is done. Worst case,I will simply leave the old forum up,but just locked so no new posts can be made there. The old forum will remain PRIVATE,for old members only who will need to login with their old password there to view anything. The new forum here is open and available for public viewing. Even without a membership,people can view the site.

AK is correct too. This new site should be our new home permanently. I own the domain here,as opposed to the old site that let us essentially just ‘borrow’ a forum. This site does indeed have better functionality (see the working search box). In addition, I have paid for security measures to help keep the site safe and protected. As a matter of fact, some of you have noticed once in a while that the site might give you a message that reads something like ‘the site may be offline,or doing maintenance’. Usually within seconds, it is back up. That actually IS one of the security measures at work(sorry I dont want to go into alot of detail about it,nor do I fully understand it). Just be aware that every once in a while the site may appear to be down,but after a few seconds is right back up.