Believe it or not JC, the move is happening.

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[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]
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[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.

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[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>

 

...

We ARE moving.

 

So...are we really moving?

 

Would you adopt me?

 

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.

 

Hopefully everything transfers over. But we don't know for sure yet.

 

Everything should transfer over, usernames included, just like last time.

 

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...)

 

I wanted to reply to your comments yesterday, Beth, but I didn't want to ruin the surprise.

 

It's not like we have a choice.