Charles Kozierok
06-30-2002, 07:43 PM
Hello everyone and welcome to our new digs! ;) It took the entire day to set the new forums up but I think it was worth it. The new forums solve many of the problems with the old software, and also provide us with numerous additional features that I think we will all enjoy.
Not only is the software new, I have also taken the opportunity of this move to completely restructure the forums themselves. You will notice some new forums, some old forums, and some that have been renamed.
I am sure you all are very excited about the new forums and software. You probably also have a bazillion or two questions. I am going to try to address some of the more important issues in this posting. I will be answering some other common (and anticipated) common questions using the new Frequently Asked Questions forum. I must ask you all to:
Please be patient. Don't overwhelm myself or the moderators with tons of questions all at once. Please take some time, look around the forums and get comfortable with the software. Much of your initial confusion may resolve itself if you do this.
Check the vBulletin FAQ by clicking on the "f.a.q." button at the top of each page of the software. You will find many answers to common questions about the software there.
Understand that there will probably be some quirks related to the new software. I have done my best to verify that everything is functional before going live but whenever you start using a new system, there will be some gotchas.
Now, with that said, I am not going to try to "cut off at the pass" some of the more common questions that I anticipate regarding this move. First, issues related to the move and the new software itself:
The migration of data from the old software was a complete success, as far as I have been able to determine. All threads, postings, users and settings have been moved to the new software and you should be able to use it as before.
You will probably have to log in using your user ID and password. There should be no problem with mixed-up passwords. Once you log in, you do not have to enter you user ID and password each time you post.
You will notice that many postings have what appears to be a duplicate signature. This is a result of a discrepancy between the old and new software. The new software (IMO) implements signatures the right way: they are kept distinct from the post text and displayed on the fly. The old software stuck the signature right into the text, so there was no way for the new software to separate it out. Ugly, but I can't do anything about it. This will not happen with new postings.
Paleo Pete and mjc are still moderators. They do not show up next to each forum because they are moderators for all the forums.
Each user has their own Control Panel which can be accessed using the "user cp" button. There you will find a staggering number of features you can access to customize the software to your own needs. This includes such niftiness as setting your time zone so all posts display in your local time and much more.
All threads currently show zero views. I don't know why this is. It may be because the view tracking wasn't turned on in the old software. Whatever, don't worry about it. :)
Now, some description of the changes to the forums themselves:
Forums that have postings in them already are ones from the old software, some of which have been renamed. New ones are of course empty. It's pretty simple to figure out which old forums correspond with which new ones. More on this below.
Due to the shuffle, some posts are now technically in the "wrong" forum. The moderators may move some threads if they feel like it, but mostly we will just not worry about this, and in time it won't matter much. It would be too much work to sort everything out completely.
The new "Frequently Asked Questions" forum is read-only and is for myself and the mods to put answers to questions that get asked all the time so we don't have to answer them all the time. :)
You can reply to postings in "Announcements" (like this one) but not start new ones (finally! ;) )
The two forums "How Do I..." and "How Does This Work..." have been removed from the active forums. The reason is that they were far too vague and were being used as a dumping ground for a myriad of questions and troubleshooting matters. All postings should now be put into the correct hardware, software or networking forum.
There weren't new forums that matched well what the two "How" forums used to be for, so they are now at the bottom in the Miscellaneous section. To allow folks to continue discussions they were in the middle of, these forums are now set like Announcements: you can post replies but not start new topics. When activity dies down on those forums, they will be locked.
The former Troubleshooting section has been split into Hardware and Operation Systems/Software sections. These are now for both troubleshooting and other questions of the appropriate hardware/software.
"Core Hardware" is what System Troubleshooting used to be. Multimedia is of course Audio and Video, and the others are pretty obvious. "Case, Power and Cooling" is new.
The former "Operating System Troubleshooting" section is now "Windows". Sorry Linux guys, but I made the decision based solely on which OS the majority of posts were on in that forum. ;) You guys now have your own forum, enjoy.
There is a new Networking section containing four new forums.
There were a number of requests for "special topics" that of interest to folks but don't really fit in well with hardware/software troubleshooting and questions. I still think it's good to give people what they want, so I have created a section for "Special Interest Forums". The three so far are Performance, Programming and Gaming. I can add more if there is interest.
Phew. Well, that ought to about do it for now. Enjoy! Feel free to follow up here with comments or questions (after you check out the FAQs etc.) or use the Suggestion Box.
--charles
Not only is the software new, I have also taken the opportunity of this move to completely restructure the forums themselves. You will notice some new forums, some old forums, and some that have been renamed.
I am sure you all are very excited about the new forums and software. You probably also have a bazillion or two questions. I am going to try to address some of the more important issues in this posting. I will be answering some other common (and anticipated) common questions using the new Frequently Asked Questions forum. I must ask you all to:
Please be patient. Don't overwhelm myself or the moderators with tons of questions all at once. Please take some time, look around the forums and get comfortable with the software. Much of your initial confusion may resolve itself if you do this.
Check the vBulletin FAQ by clicking on the "f.a.q." button at the top of each page of the software. You will find many answers to common questions about the software there.
Understand that there will probably be some quirks related to the new software. I have done my best to verify that everything is functional before going live but whenever you start using a new system, there will be some gotchas.
Now, with that said, I am not going to try to "cut off at the pass" some of the more common questions that I anticipate regarding this move. First, issues related to the move and the new software itself:
The migration of data from the old software was a complete success, as far as I have been able to determine. All threads, postings, users and settings have been moved to the new software and you should be able to use it as before.
You will probably have to log in using your user ID and password. There should be no problem with mixed-up passwords. Once you log in, you do not have to enter you user ID and password each time you post.
You will notice that many postings have what appears to be a duplicate signature. This is a result of a discrepancy between the old and new software. The new software (IMO) implements signatures the right way: they are kept distinct from the post text and displayed on the fly. The old software stuck the signature right into the text, so there was no way for the new software to separate it out. Ugly, but I can't do anything about it. This will not happen with new postings.
Paleo Pete and mjc are still moderators. They do not show up next to each forum because they are moderators for all the forums.
Each user has their own Control Panel which can be accessed using the "user cp" button. There you will find a staggering number of features you can access to customize the software to your own needs. This includes such niftiness as setting your time zone so all posts display in your local time and much more.
All threads currently show zero views. I don't know why this is. It may be because the view tracking wasn't turned on in the old software. Whatever, don't worry about it. :)
Now, some description of the changes to the forums themselves:
Forums that have postings in them already are ones from the old software, some of which have been renamed. New ones are of course empty. It's pretty simple to figure out which old forums correspond with which new ones. More on this below.
Due to the shuffle, some posts are now technically in the "wrong" forum. The moderators may move some threads if they feel like it, but mostly we will just not worry about this, and in time it won't matter much. It would be too much work to sort everything out completely.
The new "Frequently Asked Questions" forum is read-only and is for myself and the mods to put answers to questions that get asked all the time so we don't have to answer them all the time. :)
You can reply to postings in "Announcements" (like this one) but not start new ones (finally! ;) )
The two forums "How Do I..." and "How Does This Work..." have been removed from the active forums. The reason is that they were far too vague and were being used as a dumping ground for a myriad of questions and troubleshooting matters. All postings should now be put into the correct hardware, software or networking forum.
There weren't new forums that matched well what the two "How" forums used to be for, so they are now at the bottom in the Miscellaneous section. To allow folks to continue discussions they were in the middle of, these forums are now set like Announcements: you can post replies but not start new topics. When activity dies down on those forums, they will be locked.
The former Troubleshooting section has been split into Hardware and Operation Systems/Software sections. These are now for both troubleshooting and other questions of the appropriate hardware/software.
"Core Hardware" is what System Troubleshooting used to be. Multimedia is of course Audio and Video, and the others are pretty obvious. "Case, Power and Cooling" is new.
The former "Operating System Troubleshooting" section is now "Windows". Sorry Linux guys, but I made the decision based solely on which OS the majority of posts were on in that forum. ;) You guys now have your own forum, enjoy.
There is a new Networking section containing four new forums.
There were a number of requests for "special topics" that of interest to folks but don't really fit in well with hardware/software troubleshooting and questions. I still think it's good to give people what they want, so I have created a section for "Special Interest Forums". The three so far are Performance, Programming and Gaming. I can add more if there is interest.
Phew. Well, that ought to about do it for now. Enjoy! Feel free to follow up here with comments or questions (after you check out the FAQs etc.) or use the Suggestion Box.
--charles