Forum Software Change Outage Notification

[Tom Westbrook]

Forum Software Change Outage Notification

On the morning of Saturday, May 13th, the LF Forum will be down from 5:00 AM until 2:00 PM CDT (10:00 - 19:00 GMT).

Time has been revised to 6:00am-9:00am May 13th (see message below).

Work will be done to convert the forum to new forum management software (vBulletin).

When the work is complete members active since Sept 2003 will be sent an email containing the URL to their new user account where things can be set up as desired and the initial log in password. It is very strongly recommended that you change the password. Instructions on how to do that will be in the email & posted on the new Forum in a prominent place. There are about 3,000 emails to send, so it may take an hour or so to send them all out, so don't be upset if you don't get notified the instant the Forum is back up.

Some of our most active members have tested and commented on the test site and have given it a green light (after we fixed a few things).

During the outage, a substitute page will be displayed with basic information about the conversion. If we go into overtime, I'll post an update on that page with a new completion estimate. I don't anticipate any huge problems, though, and have run through the whole process a few times.

If you have questions, post them as replies to this thread.

Thank you

[bglick]

What made you select vBulletin forum software?

Any sample sites with it?

[QT Luong]

A combination of features, track record, and price. Many here are familiar with apug.org

[bglick]

QT, how is vBulltetin software priced? Monthly, one time fee? What is the cost?

[Nitish Kanabar]

wg, check out their web-page http://www.vbulletin.com/

[bglick]

Nitish, thanks, I should have thougth they had a web site :-) dah....

Anyway, based on the web site, it looks great, and, $160 one time fee, and the software looks very impressive.... Thanks again QT and team for all the effort to maitain this community....

[John Sarsgard]

I'm just grateful for the hurculean efforts expended by QT and the others who make this wonderful place available to us. It is the very essence of people doing something that is great for everybody with no profit motive of their own. I appreciate them, and trust their software decisions. They are the most admirable of my friends and colleagues. Thank you.

[Peter Collins]

I add my heartfelt thanks and appreciation for all who maintain the LF Photography web page and this forum. Do any other early 60-somethings remember how hard it was in the '70s and '80s--pre-web days--to learn, to obtain information, to know what is worth trying? The forum's availability and its knowledgeable participants are friends of a special kind!

Again, thanks!

[Hening Bettermann]

Yes MANY thanks to you who maintain this wonderful forum! Yes Peter I'm another 60-something who remembers the bad old days!

[Tom Westbrook]

After some final testing on our new destination server (see below) I've shortened the outage time window to 3 hours total. so, the outage will now be

6:00 am- 9:00am CDT Saturday, May 13th (that's 11:00-14:00 GMT).

The reason is due to the very generous donation by Brian Reid, our hardware/network benefactor, of a new server with quite a bit more bandwidth, disk, and memory than we have now. Hats off to Brian!

[Paul Moshay]

Is there some way we, the benefactors of all your hard work, can make a financial contribution to help with the job, perhaps via Paypal?

Thanks, Paul Moshay

[Tom Westbrook]

A kind thought, Paul, but it's not necessary. For me, I would rather keep it a volunteer thing. It's a good deed that helps counterbalance a misspent youth ;^)