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Tom Westbrook
8-May-2006, 11:46
My apologies for a long post, but please read through the whole thing before doing anything.

We will implement the new forum software switch to vBulletin next Saturday morning. I'll post a detailed announcement about that later today. I wanted to get this out now since it requires you to do something ahead of time.

One big difference with the switch is that users are required to register to be able to post messages. Reading can be done without registration, though.

Anyone who has made a post here since Sept-2003 (when this incarnation of the forum went live) will be sent an email to the address stored on this version of the Forum after the conversion is complete. The email will contain your initial user password and a URL where you can change it and to modify other user settings. Your old posts will be associated with this new account when the archives are imported into the new system, so you'll be able to hit the ground running.

In order to actually receive that email, your email address stored here in the Forum needs to be a valid email address you have access to on or after this coming Saturday.

So, to avoid registration problems, please do the following to find your stored email address & check it for validity:
<ol>
<li>Use this page (http://www.visi.com/~tomw/user-list.html) to find your name. You can use your browser search function to find your listing. It is a large page and will take a while to load. You can also find your user page the usual way by searching for your name in the search box at the top of all the forum pages and finding one of your old posts.
<li>Once you locate yourself, click on your name to go to your user page.
<li>Save the URL to your user page, you may need it later.
<li>Check your stored email address by clicking on your name where it says "Click on the name and the e-mail address for <you name> will appear after a 10 second delay."
<li>In a few seconds the email address will be displayed in "safe" mode, i.e. with @ replaced with the word "at" and each “.” replaced with "dot".
<li>Confirm that the address is valid. If not, save the address with your user page URL from step 3.
<li> Repeat from step 1 if you have more than one "account" here with posts associated with it.
</ol>

If your email address is correct, do nothing, even if it's not your preferred email address. I only need responses if you won't get the email at all or you want multiple accounts consolidated to one address. You can change your preferred email address yourself after getting signed in after the software change. If you find some of your posts listed under multiple user pages, read on.

If you have only one address & the address is wrong, you can try the procedure to change you email address in the FAQ (www.largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/help.html#f6 (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/help.html#f6)). Only works if you’re going to make a post, though.

Otherwise email me</b> at forumusers(at)tomwestbrook.com (replace '(at)' with '@') with BOTH <ul><li>the URL to your user page <li>and your valid email address. Triple check the spelling of your email--it's safest to copy & paste it from an actual email.</ul>

If you have multiple user listings, email me ALL of the user page URLs you found that belong to you and the ONE email address you want applied to them all. Send this info to my email address above.

For those who haven’t made a post since Sept-2003, you can either read the forum unregistered, or you can register a new account on the new Forum any time after the switch is made. You may want to register to be able to keep track of what you’ve read already.

Send me your corrections by the end of day Friday, May 12. After that date, you will need to register a new account manually yourself (if you're in a hurry to post something) or email the moderators to send your account info so you can log in with it directly. If you create a new account you'll eventually want to contact the moderators to merge your new and old accounts.

Post replies here if you need clarification on any of this.

Thank you

Frank Petronio
8-May-2006, 12:17
Shame you did that Tom. It would be a better forum if people were required to use their real names and real emails for registering. We could have lost posters that exploit a fake ID.

Tom Westbrook
8-May-2006, 12:38
Most people do use their real names. Those that don't may be forced into it at some point--I don't think we came to a consensus about that, since it's all to easy to use a fake "real" name.

But, I mostly wanted to avoid spending way too much time manually connecting new accounts to old posts. Of course, if you're volunteering...

Nitish Kanabar
8-May-2006, 12:51
Tom,

What will happen to posts by users who have passed away? Will these be preserved in some manner in the new forum? I'm thinking about posts by the Late John Cook.

Tom Westbrook
8-May-2006, 13:01
Nitish, they will be imported, but will remain as inactive accounts. All old messages are being imported to the new system--we aren't filtering anything out.

BrianShaw
8-May-2006, 13:07
I get HTTP 404 when I click my name.... what now?

Ralph Barker
8-May-2006, 13:15
In John Cook's case, he'd be welcome to come back and re-activate his account. We might request that he verify it's really him, however. ;-)

Tom Westbrook
8-May-2006, 13:15
Try it again, I forgot the base part of the URL in the link.

Scott Fleming
8-May-2006, 13:21
The Alphabetical listing page only loaded to the 'R' s for me. I need to get to the 'S's.

Scott Fleming
8-May-2006, 13:42
Never mind. I'm cool. Tried again and it finally loaded far enough. Gee I wish I could get some sort of high speed out here.

Tom Westbrook
8-May-2006, 14:00
Save the file to your own hard disk (in your browser, use menu item File/Save as...) in case you want to refer to it more than once. That will save having to download it again. It's 1MB large, so it will take some time over a slow link.

Vick Vickery
8-May-2006, 15:05
Sure hope you do better than photo.net...I can't post an answer there even though I'm registered and know my password...now I just read the posts and don't even try any more! I e-mailed them several times about the problem and to double-check my registration and password...I had the name and password right, but still couldn't post an answer...they have been of no help.

Tom Westbrook
8-May-2006, 15:15
Hopefully, Vick, we will have everything figured out.. Worst case would be to just give up on the old account and make yourself a new one. The moderators can merge accounts if you can't use the new one for some reason, but we'd rather try helping you use the existing one, if possible.

jj_4045
9-May-2006, 07:35
Does this mean there will be an Amnesty?

:)

Ralph Barker
9-May-2006, 07:57
John - we're considering it. Or, perhaps a "guest poster" program. Those who violate the "law" will still be subject to "deportation," however. ;-)

jj_4045
9-May-2006, 17:21
Ralph said: "John - we're considering it. Or, perhaps a "guest poster" program. Those who violate the "law" will still be subject to "deportation," however. ;-)"

Gosh, a guy looses his temper once and pays forever. I do understand. I've no problem with it, Ralph.

Very Best,
John

Joseph Dickerson
10-May-2006, 11:33
Tom,

I couldn't find my name at all. I recently subscribed via Paypal.

Joe D.

Ralph Barker
10-May-2006, 12:01
Joe - you have mail. 8-)

kreig
10-May-2006, 21:54
Seems too complicated to me. This forum, the way it works and reads is simply perfect. Why do we need to Change?? If I am not automatically signed up to the new forum I probably wont be here.

I just bought a new phone (plug in the wall type). It has an operators guide 1/4" thick in one language and requires set up, programing and registration. needless to say it goes back to the store tomorrow. Nothing seems to be broken so why are we changing everything??

Kreig

Ralph Barker
10-May-2006, 22:47
Kreig - there are a number of user and administrative features that we need to keep the forum going. Modifying the current software to accomplish those goals wasn't feasible, so we opted for a commercially supported package. Even if we had been able to modify our current software, the same sort of conversion process would have be required.

Our hope is that the conversion will go smoothly for most folks, and Tom has gone to a lot of effort to make that happen.

Emre Yildirim
11-May-2006, 00:55
What I'd personally like to see is mail notifications that appear more like "real" mail.

For example, I use Gmail to read my e-mail. Gmail creates little tabbed conversations, so you don't have a million seperate messages for each thread. It works wonderful with regular mailinglists that don't use a web interface. It mostly works with this forum too, but on some threads it doesn't. I hope vBulletin behaves more like a 'real' mailinglist (but also as a web forum at the same time), since I mostly read this stuff in my inbox.

But really, the interface is not a big deal. I like this forum because of the content and the people who contribute here. It's everything I want in a photo forum: it's technical (but not too technical), free of spam and full of friendly and knowledgable people.