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 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). 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