WPMA-40 makes a pick up at a warehouse in Whiskey Point.

Bruce

   

    Caught WPMA-40 on Division Street.

Bruce

As we go along, there are a lot of slight  tweaks and options that we're changing. Some are global, some will give you choices to make. Right now we've made the following:

All attachments will now show as full-size photos rather than thumbnails (global)

You can select how a post is displayed with the poster's information across the top or on the side as we had before. To have it displayed on the left of the post, you can go to your UserCP, click on "edit options", then check the box marked, "display posts in classic mode" then go to the bottom of the page and click on "update options"/

Congrats on getting back up again. Thanks for all the hard work  The green printing where it says moderated by is so dark I can't read it but other than that so far everything seems fine.

So far the only thing I can't find (possibly because it doesn't exist) is the "Mark all Forums read" button on the front page.

Are there plans to make the new forum colors look more like the old one?  Not a fan of the color scheme but I can live with it.

Tom

Some common answers to some common issues.

Q: Why is everything looks so different?
A: We recently changed to a new server. When we did, we took the opportunity to upgrade to a more current forum software. We also took the opportunity to update the look of Big Blue. There are two themes to choose from, the default Dark and a light version. They can easily be selected by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and selecting a desired theme from a drop-down box in the lower right corner.

Q: My attachments are missing or have broken links.
A: There are roughly about 45,000 external files  that needed to be manually uploaded. Three is lots of room for things to go wrong. It appears that the migration program didn't handle converting the attachments very well. Some attachments in some posts have gone away. Unfortunately, the only fix is to re-upload those attachments.

Q: What up with my avatar? They're missing or look distorted.
A: Again, another issue with the migration. And again, the only fix is to re-upload the avatar.

Q: Holy heck! My signature size is off the chain! And not in a good way.
A: Strange side effect of the migration is how it changed the signature formatting. If you reformat your signature and select the "Enable my signature in all of my existing posts." check box before you hit the "Update Signature" button, it will fix the signature throughout the forum.

Q: Hey, where did the chat room go?
A: Meh. Was there a chat room before? It really wasn't a highly utilized feature, therefore, we opted not to load one. If there is a major consensus and outcry for one, we'll approach the possibility of bringing it back from the dead.

Q: The forum icons are so small, I can't tell what they are trying to tell me.
A: This is a terrible, terrible design in MyBB. They made the thread icons so small you can't see if it's saying there's a new post, or old post. This is being looked into to be fixed so hopefully they will be big enough for everyone to see.

As you noticed, we are now running an brand new forum software (Something called MyBB for those who are interested). As I'm sure you are all aware, with new comes issues, and this is no exception. Due to some inherent issues with the migration process, there undoubtedly will be thing missing, out of place, or just plain different. We will try to address those issues here. If you are experiencing some odd behaviors or need to know how things work, drop a note here. 

We will provide an FAQ for the more common questions that will be asked.

We have the new software in place, and our current database has been moved over to the point that it’s functional. In order to keep from loosing any new posts, we’re going to go ahead and open the new software that is currently in a temporary location. We still have to shut everything down this coming weekend, moving the database to the new server literally will take an entire weekend, and that’s if there are no hiccups.

Just so you know, there are lots of things that will need tuning up that we’ll try to fix between now and when we make the move. Some of the things we can’t change and will have to live with, some things we can and will change, some you may have to change yourself. For one, a lot of our avatars are distorted and you may have to re-upload them if they are. I found that you can download the existing one, even if it looks distorted, then upload it again, that works fine. It is our intent to have the look and feel of the old Big Blue, so you can change the style from dark to light by selecting it in the lower right corner of any page.

We will have a thread open that you can post your comments, observations and complaints. We want to get this right, so feel free to speak your mind and maybe even find some problem that we’re not aware of. This new software is much more flexible and has more features that what we’ve been using these past ten or so years.

We will change sometime tonight, feel free to post as usual and explore, and yes, comment please.....

We rarely shut down for any reason, but this one is a biggie. On this coming Friday, May 11, we will shut things down here so that we can move over to a new server. It takes a good eight hours just to download our database, then another eight to upload it to the new server. That means we plan on being down for the entire weekend assuming that things go as planned. We will try to do this a quickly as possible, but there are things that we can't control that can get in our way.

We have our Big Blue Google group where we will try to keep everyone updated. Our objective is to get on the new server with new software but still maintain the look and feel of what we have now. The new software will be easier for us to maintain and it has many new features that we all can use if you want.

Remember, Friday, May 11 sometime late in the day is when we plan on starting all this.

WPMA-40 makes it's way down Division Street at Whiskey Point.

Bruce

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