New Forum Software
Posted: 04 Apr 2004, 00:56
The forum has now been converted to different forum software (YABBSE). This has been necessary as the old software (YABB) was very difficult to transfer to a different server, as demonstrated when there was a lengthy period of downtime a few weeks ago when our old host was cut and we nearly lost the whole forum and messages.
The new software is far easier to back-up (it is MySQL/PHP based as opposed to Perl for those techies amongst us!). Since we have now built up an important message archive, I can now make regular back-ups and in the event of a future website host failure, it will now be much easier to restore on another host. In addition, this forum should be more efficient and less bandwidth hungry, without any major loss of performance.
You should find the forum very similar to the previous one (I have spent the last 5 hours setting it up). All messages and accounts have been transferred, however you will need to log in again (use the 'Forgot Password' feature if required).
One known issue: Some member's posts are showing up as 'Guest' even though their account has been transferred and still active. This is a problem in the conversion process which meant some messages are no-longer matching the user account. You should still be able to log-in to the new forum and your post count should not have been affected. Indeed any future posts you make should appear in your name as normal.
Please report any problems you encounter.
The new software is far easier to back-up (it is MySQL/PHP based as opposed to Perl for those techies amongst us!). Since we have now built up an important message archive, I can now make regular back-ups and in the event of a future website host failure, it will now be much easier to restore on another host. In addition, this forum should be more efficient and less bandwidth hungry, without any major loss of performance.
You should find the forum very similar to the previous one (I have spent the last 5 hours setting it up). All messages and accounts have been transferred, however you will need to log in again (use the 'Forgot Password' feature if required).
One known issue: Some member's posts are showing up as 'Guest' even though their account has been transferred and still active. This is a problem in the conversion process which meant some messages are no-longer matching the user account. You should still be able to log-in to the new forum and your post count should not have been affected. Indeed any future posts you make should appear in your name as normal.
Please report any problems you encounter.