New Forum Software

[Illusion]

The forum has now been converted to different forum software (YABBSE). This has been necessary as the old software (YABB) was very difficult to transfer to a different server, as demonstrated when there was a lengthy period of downtime a few weeks ago when our old host was cut and we nearly lost the whole forum and messages.

The new software is far easier to back-up (it is MySQL/PHP based as opposed to Perl for those techies amongst us!). Since we have now built up an important message archive, I can now make regular back-ups and in the event of a future website host failure, it will now be much easier to restore on another host. In addition, this forum should be more efficient and less bandwidth hungry, without any major loss of performance.

You should find the forum very similar to the previous one (I have spent the last 5 hours setting it up). All messages and accounts have been transferred, however you will need to log in again (use the 'Forgot Password' feature if required).

One known issue: Some member's posts are showing up as 'Guest' even though their account has been transferred and still active. This is a problem in the conversion process which meant some messages are no-longer matching the user account. You should still be able to log-in to the new forum and your post count should not have been affected. Indeed any future posts you make should appear in your name as normal.

Please report any problems you encounter.

[Kieran]

All looks very nice, seems faster, too.

[Billy]

Yup, pretty snazzy!

[HStorm]

I like the new look, it's generally easier to read.

One problem, though not really important, I've lost a few IMs that were stored in the Inbox.

[Illusion]

One problem, though not really important, I've lost a few IMs that were stored in the Inbox.

Yeah, I was aware that the automatic converter isn't perfect and sometimes messages may be lost during the conversion, but I think it's been quite successful.

[HStorm]

Well yeah, like I say, my life wasn't exactly immeasurably richer for having them!

[Kieran]

Yes I have lost all PM's except for yours, Nic. It is a sign!

[MoanaLiza]

I was just wondering why threads are showing some people's usernames instead of their forum names i.e. mine, Motley's, etc.

Are we going to have a poll board since there is now a poll option?

[WhiteDevil]

Maybe some new darker "new topic" buttons but apart from that YaBBSE is usually very reliable...

Good choice Nic, seems a lot quicker than YaBB CGI...

[Illusion]

just wondering why threads are showing some people's usernames instead of their forum names i.e. mine, Motley's, etc.

I've done a bit more research on this. Apparently this is caused by users logging on to the old forum using a username with a differerent case to the one they signed up with, e.g 'martin' as opposed to 'Martin' (it still logged in okay though). This only affects Windows based hosts, which are case-sensitive.

I'm not even sure if this is really the reason, but I also notice that the affected users also have specified a different display name to their username. It seems that the conversion process has lost the connection between the two names.

Like I said, it shouldn't be a problem for new posts you make on this forum.

Are we going to have a poll board since there is now a poll option?

For the moment, members can create polls amongst existing boards. Depending on how things do I may create a separate poll board.

I have lost all PM's except for yours

Hmm, I haven't lost any myself.

I'll have a look at changing the buttons when things have settled down a bit.

[MoanaLiza]

I don't know if it's just me but it sometimes seems a bit faster, even though the last one was quite fast

[LordF]

This one is alot fast then the last.

The old softwate I had to refresh it to get it working but now it works first time.

Well Done with the update Illusion.

[Velda]

Love the new look - and it's a lot faster too!

[MoanaLiza]

...and no it's not run through ME Elita