Board going down for a spell

[DScollon]

The message board section of the site will be closing in the near future (perhaps even this weekend) and might be down for as long as 2 days. I'll try to cut that period down as much as possible but the board is due for a major upgrade and a move to a new machine.

When the board reopens, it will probably not open for everyone at the same time. This will depend on who your internet provider is. There may be a few teething problems when we reopen and things may look and function a little differently from now. Even I don't know yet what the details of the new version are. If you have any problems, drop me a note.

See you all on the other side.

Yours with very little sleep.....

[DScollon]

Ok, here's what's happening...

Somewhere between 9 and 10pm the board will close so that the backup of the database can begin. As you can imagine, with almost 30,000 messages, 10,000 private messages and 300,000 (no, I didn't get the number of 0's wrong, I hope you all use the search function!) indexed words, that's going to take a little time. Once it's backed up, it will probably take at least an hour to get this onto the new server and start switching over the site.

From the work I've been doing almost solidly now since Friday evening, I can say the board will be down for a matter of hours rather than days. As work progesses, I'll keep updating you. When you come to the board, it will show a closed message but I'll keep it informative and try to give estimates of a reopening time.

At the moment, all I can say is that I'm aiming for a minor miracle, i.e. switching servers before midnight. Stay tuned...

[DScollon]

Well, here we are, welcome to the new server and the message board's latest release. Bear with us for a while, things will look very different and the images from the old board have still to be set up.

If your avatar doesn't show up here, there is no need to pick a new one. Your old one should be back as soon as I get the chance to upload them again. The same goes for smilies, which will be back soon. (Soon means hopefully this week.)

Once you give me a few days to get settled in, let me know if there's anything else not working. There are no instructions for this release of the board yet, so I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. (Finger is hovering over the ejector seat release right now.)

Anyway, I hope you like it. I'm assured by the development team that this is the future.