How the move will work

[Elliot Kane]

As it may be a little unclear from my posts in other threads, I think it best that I lay out exactly how the move to the new forum will work, so that you all know exactly what is going to happen.

1. The new board will be created. As soon as we have something vaguely functional, a link will be placed here so that you can immediately join the new forum and start settling in. This should give everyone the most possible time to transfer anything they want to to the new forum.

2. The new board will be close to the current structure, but some of the less used boards will be combined, as follows:

* Comics, Web Comics & Manga
* Celebrity, Fashion, Culture & Lifestyle

3. Steve, Fille & I will move across rules threads, forum explanation threads and other stuff that forms the infrastructure of Chaos. We'll also sort the colour scheme and do other general backgroundy stuff.

4. You guys & gals will be free to move across absolutely anything you want to from the old forum to the new. I would especially suggest moving across any stories, photographs or artwork from the sections that are due to be deleted.

5. Before we hit the ProBoards deadline (IE the end of next Friday) the Writer Guide, Graphics Creation & Your Story/Art etc sections that collectively form 'Creative Chaos' will be deleted in their entirety. The 'Your Photos' section from the Art & Lit board will similarly be deleted. The link to the chat room will also be removed. Any of your creative threads you specifically ask us to delete in other sections will also be deleted. Please ask us AFTER you've moved them, if you intend to, to avoid confusion

6. The current forum will then be placed into maintenance mode. That means that all threads will be available for reading (And copying if you want to) but that it will be impossible for new members to join and for anyone to make new posts or topics. Chaos mark one will be an archive and nothing more.

7. Chaos mark two will then reign supreme over the whole universe! Although granted, this part of the plan might not come off! ;D

Ask any questions you may have

[Alrik]

Excuse me , but personally, I'd prefer to transfer the *entire* forum, not just parts.

It's the archivist in me that says this.

[Elliot Kane]

So would I, Alrik! Best of all would be never having to move it at all. Unfortunately, there is just no way I know of to transfer the whole thing

[Cat]

Yo,
You wanteth the same chat room?

[Elliot Kane]

Yeah, thanks, Cat. That's just a matter of putting the link up on the new forum. Gladder than ever it's a completely separate program

[Flix]

Ok. So, the archivists of us will still have access to everything posted here (minus the art, etc.) - as if the place were frozen in time.

[Elliot Kane]

Absolutely, Flix, yes.

[Hand-E-Food]

I say we leave it all behind and start fresh! Why hold onto the past? ;D

[The Sonar Chicken]

There's some converter I found(it's probably against Proboard's TOS but who the hell cares?):

www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73370

[Elliot Kane]

Hard to make a moral stand when acting immorally oneself, Luci I thank you for the thought, though

Don't forget that all of the old threads in most of this board will still be fully accessible. There's no reason to think that any of it will be removed, damaged or otherwise impossible to get at. The memories will still be there. They'll just be a couple more clicks away is all

[The Sonar Chicken]

I know... that's just in the event, the data gets yanked off by Proboards. You never know what'll happen, should they start moving to "paid services" only or change how they provide their free services. It happened with Geocities, and a ton of other "free services" where everyone assumed that their data would be untouched forever. In the worst case scenario, they might actually start suspending all "old/defunct" boards and then charge a token amount of money to say... retrieve that data, before a cut-off date. Stuff like that happens with most free services that get too big to maintain/with change of management, anyways.

Sorry, I tend to be cautious and a little wary of most "free services" 'cos these days, most of them tend to have too many strings attached.

Where is the board going to be moved to, btw? Is it going to be on another free forums service or if not, some paid hosting with a custom forum software?

[Alrik]

May 5, 2010 21:14:43 GMT Elliot Kane said:

So would I, Alrik! Best of all would be never having to move it at all. Unfortunately, there is just no way I know of to transfer the whole thing

Then just save it via HTTrack !

[Elliot Kane]

Luci - it will be a free forum service, yes. We're still looking at options, but zeroing in. We're very close to a decision. Hopefully! ;D

Ideally we want to have the new board set up by tomorrow morning GMT at the latest. Ideally being notoriously unreliable, don't hold us to it, though

[Nero the Glorious]

Ek if you need a hand with design work/getting permissions set up let me know, I'd be happy to help.

[The Sonar Chicken]

Oh I see, then... hmmm... no way you'd be able to import the data, then. I can't think of any that'd allow you to do that. Hmmm... considering the TOSes must be a pain, though. I'm wondering if there're actually many that tolerate forums revolving around political discussions.

[Elliot Kane]

Thanks Nero. Appreciated

***

Luci - fortunately the decision on discussion of politics & religion is usually left to the forum owner rather than the service provider. Most places just don't have the awesome boardies Chaos does

[peterh]

I´ll be okay with Chaos staying as an archive if that´s the only possibility

And even if you managed to import all the data, it would probably be impossible to attribute posts to a specific poster, since they´d be there before we even signed up. In fact, I might use this as a possibility to change my name to Peter.