ANNOUNCEMENT: SOFTWARE UPGRADED-POST QUESTIONS HERE or EMAIL

[webmaster]

IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM NEEDING A FIX - EMAIL IT TO : [email protected]
PUT "PROBLEM" IN THE SUBJECT FIELD.

Ladies, Gentlemen and Silhouette Shooters - I have been picking at the not-so-small task of upgrading the forum software from v2.0 to v3.0 for about six months.

I expect I'll have the conversion process ironed out and the data archives ready shortly. We're also going to be moving our hosting to our central server.

What does this all mean to you?

1) You may (or may not) experience a period of outage.

2) When the website and forums come online, they are going to look a little different. While I like the classic look of the current display, there are a few features I'm trying to incorporate with the upgrade that may lead to some new fixtures around the place.

The current version of the software makes validating new users a ROYAL PAIN for everyone. The updates should resolve this and make everyone happy!


When is all of this going to happen? Likely over a weekend in the middle of February if things go as planned.

Stay tuned!!!

[Jason]

Sounds great. Just so you know, though, validating users ain't all that great on version 3.0+ either. Definitely one of the weak points of this forum software, but the benefits outweigh the weaknesses for the most part.

[Bob259]

Great!!!! Sounds good!

We'll miss tha old layout for a little while I'm sure

[webmaster]

Sounds great. Just so you know, though, validating users ain't all that great on version 3.0+ either. Definitely one of the weak points of this forum software, but the benefits outweigh the weaknesses for the most part.

True, although my lengthy testing has shown about a 25-1 number of false positives from v2.0 to v3.0 - I'm going to take that in a heartbeat. And the user tools, while not as improved as I would like or hope, are going to be a help.

[BlauBear]

Ooohhh! I just love software updates! Especially when it's someone else's Maalox moment!

[Jason]

After the outage, posting to see if things are working correctly now.

[Jason]

Wow, it even fixed it so that my avatar shows correctly now.

[webmaster]

OK - Ladies and Gentlemen - I'm going to try and do the cut-over this weekend. Stay tuned!!!

[webmaster]

This is a test of the cut-over and new Forum software...

[webmaster]

Ok - we're live. Sorry for the delay. Everything was ready to go late last night but I seemed to have missed one record that kept us from pointing to the new site...
Everything looks good now though....

Well, there are going to be a few tweaks over the next few weeks, so if you see anything oddball or have a recommendation for something, let me know.

--Steelchickens.com

[Jason]

Mike,

You might want to throw a forwarder in from the URL of the old forum, in case other people had the forum bookmarked instead of the home page. Here's the old URL that I had bookmarked that throws a 404 now. A quick forwarder in there that says update your bookmarked page and forwards in 10 or 15 seconds with a meta refresh would probably take care of it.

http://www.steelchickens.com/phpBB2/index.php

[Jason]

It's also not logging me back back on automatically between browse sessions even if I have the option checked when logging in. Even logging out, clicking on "delete all cookies...", and logging back in with the option to auto-login checked didn't fix it. As soon as I closed that browser window, a new window would require me to log back in. Could just be my browser or something with the cookie on my machine, but thought I'd throw it out there. I'll run through some more scenarios when I have time tomorrow to try to narrow down the issue.

[Bob259]

Also logs you off if no activity and just monitoring. When you refresh it doesn't remember you and you have to relog in also.

[mordecai]

Forwards - some missing forwards added - looks resolved...
Persistent/Auto login problems - found a few settings out of whack from the conversion. I think I fixed them. It seems to be working for me now.
Inactivity problem - not sure yet - may be resolved by Auto-login fix above. Waiting for more feedback. (it does have a one-hour max idle time...)

[Jason]

Confirmed, auto-login working for me now.