Believe it or not JC, the move is happening. [image=http://mattcbr.files.wordpress.com/2006/09/palpatine004.jpg] [color=darkred][b]I Sense A Disturbance In TheForce.net...[/b][/color] On March 18th, I had emailed [link=http://boards.theforce.net/UserPages/Profile.aspx?user=Maximus_IGN]my IGN contact[/link] about a separate board issue and I received this in response: [quote=Maximus_IGN]Hey there, There's a been a serious cut of resources at the company this week. You can read more of it here: http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/16/ign-layoffs-hit-all-divisions-of-media-giant/ I have to be honest that I don't think we'll be able to support the forums at all. Even getting ads on them won't happen. I would recommend that you guys try to figure out a way to migrate to your own servers. We won't be shutting off the forums, but I can't promise you that won't happen sometime in the future. It could be years, or it might just drop out of the blue, if the Engineers want to move to a new platform. Sorry for the bad news.[/quote] [image=http://videogum.com/img/thumbnails/photos/anakin_skywalker.jpg] [color=darkred][b]What Are We Gonna Do About It?[/b][/color] Following this news, I immediately got [color=darkblue][b]Philip Wise[/b][/color] involved and we discussed our options for moving the boards to a new server. Philip and I agreed that resurrecting our old vBulletin test board from 2005 was the best option. Knowing that this move is going to cost a good bit of money to pull off, I asked Philip if this was something he was willing to do. This was his response: [quote=Philip Wise]I'd be crushed if the forums got killed, so you don't have to worry about my willingness to make sure this does not happen.[/quote] I was relieved to know Philip wanted the same thing I did, and since then he's gotten the ball rolling on acquiring a new server to run the boards. We will also have our test board up and running again thanks to Philip re-hiring [color=darkblue][b]Astaran[/b][/color] to do the data conversion and forum setup. Astaran still has all of our old data from the last test board and we'll be able to re-use all of the customizations we wrote. So thanks to Philip, it looks like we're in very good shape to pull off this move. [image=http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080402011514/starwars/images/thumb/b/b8/OldBen%27sGhost.jpg/200px-OldBen%27sGhost.jpg] [color=darkred][b]You Will Go to the vBulletin System....[/b][/color] In the time since first sharing the news, IGN has told us that they will be able to export our data at some point within the next few months. They will be doing it at the same time as another data export they have to do for their boards. As of now, they don't know exactly when it is going to happen since there is some planning that needs to be done first. As soon as IGN's data export happens, we will be shutting these boards down for good. The new boards will open as soon as the data is imported. There will most likely be a gap in between, but as of now we don't know how long that is going to be. It could be a couple of days or even a week or two. We are still discussing what to do for that brief period of time, but the general consensus right now is to open up a temp board we can all use. Personally, I am very glad this move is happening. I'm very excited to be moving to a more modern forum software with many more features available to us. On one hand, I'll be sad to see the old place go, but I know that where we're going will be even better. :)[hr] [color=darkred][b]April Fool's Day Epilogue[/b][/color] [i][This is in regards to us announcing the move the week of April Fool's Day and the reaction we got. The move itself is not an April Fool's joke, the joke was that the news is true and many people thought it was just a very lame joke we came up with.][/i] For the record, we pretty much got the response from this that we wanted. Some of you believed the news despite it being announced on April Fool's Day. Some of you "saw through it" and played along. And, as expected, many of you "knew" this was>
First post. Someone needs to pack the Jam Tins. EDIT: Actually, it's great that you guys can pull out all your old stuff and start working on it again. Hopefully this will make the board transition as smooth as possible.
So I bet this has been asked already, but just to be absolutely clear...... Is EVERYTHING (including current topic threads) going to be transfered or will we have to start fresh? I'm a Fan-Fic author and have a number of works in progress going.
As long as the boards look and act the same, I don't care where they're hosted. boards.theforce.net is dead, long live boards.theforce.net!
We already moved actually, your internet is just lagging friend. Good question about the topics being moved though, on a side note does it include locked topics and forums? Also can we leave the auto-prune monster on these forums? That thing has always pissed me off, locking threads and deleting the things nearest and dearest to my heart.
Just reposting that from the other thread since the move will obviously be discussed in this thread from now on.
We're going to do our best to bring the database over. There might be a transition period between when this board is shut down and the old data is loaded back up. Just in case, we've developed a tool to back up posts, PMs, and stuff like that on the user's own computer.
I didn't see this in Grimby's post but will we have to re-register or will our accounts come over? If we do have to re-register are there going to be rules about not taking someone's user name? Meaning I can't register as Maulfly (ha, I like my life and she knows where I live so like that is going to happen). Are you all going to develop a FAQs thread so we have questions like this easily answered? Perhaps a locked, sticky thread? And last, what about my sock army?
LOL. Well, I have to give mad props to those who suggested yesterday that the joke was it wasn't a joke. Apologies for my sarcastic comments yesterday, but my cynicism runs too deep to be easily overcome. It sounds interesting, and I look forward to learning more as the details become better hashed out. BTW, next time Philip Wise needs a forum consultant, feel free to point him my way... I've got just the right combination of skills for the job! I will be PMing him my hourly rate shortly.
That is something I was curious about, will we have to re-register? I think in the ATB/MSU update there was talk of transferring post counts or hopes of it so whats the story on that? I just recently, finally, got over 5000 posts, i'd rather not start back at 0 again Edit: Guess that answers my question.
We'd rather not lose any usernames, posts, threads, or private messages either. Trust me, if there's a way to make it happen, we will make it happen.
[Edit: Too slow, was posted as a response to Kahn.] Add a "0". What shall I say? (As said above, posts are supposed to be transfered, but you know the problem of moving...)
Yeah, posts counts etc. should transfer over - ditto threads. And we're going to back up everything we can.
Well it isn't like we can't still save threads on our computers anyway. I remember doing that quite a bit in the old days with specials threads, locked ones and such. It is time consuming but worth it if you really want them saved. The mods seem pretty pumped about this, is that the general feeling among the Squad or are there some in dissent over the move?