Old info on the old Forumer site

[JamesPerrin]

I have been 'involved' and, as a consequence, received this from the Forumer Support Team.

You've been 'able' to be involved, there has been no lack of activity or want of trying by the Admin team, but Forumer has not responded on the communication channels that have been available to us.

At least we have got it back for a period that will allow people to access and backup any information and resources they wish to save. The Admin team will endeavour to formulate a more structured manner of saving the data.

[flakmonkey]

To clarify, Forumer have not been allowing new members into their support forums since before we moved house. This removes what appears to be their primary (only?) line of comms from members of the admin team. Everything possible is being done to secure all of the old content from our old place. Lots of people are involved in this, on many levels, and they are all doing their best. Keep calm and make models.

[JohnRatzenberger]

Latest News

The Admin Team is happy to announce that Greg Wilson (Gregers), the founder/owner of the original UAMF on Forumer has arranged for our old forum to be migrated to their new system in a couple months.

The migration will preserve our archive but may require some effort to update links on the current site pointing back into the new archive; the Admin Team is discussing options.

In the meantime, the old forum is still available, read-only, as in the past at http://gregers.7.forumer.com/index.php;

Thank you for your patience while we worked through this.

[bromo]

Thats great news John and thanks to all the admin team for their hard work on this.

[JohnRatzenberger]

Latest News - an update ...

The Admin Team is happy to announce that Greg Wilson (Gregers), the founder/owner of the original UAMF on Forumer has arranged for our old forum to be migrated to their new system in a couple months.

The migration will preserve our archive but may require some effort to update links on the current site pointing back into the new archive; the Admin Team is discussing options.

In the meantime, the old forum is still available, read-only, as in the past at http://gregers.7.forumer.com/index.php;

Thank you for your patience while we worked through this.

The old forum will remain locked (read-only) to preserve the content and integrity as before.

Members may want to copy their old posts and other information, but it is not a very friendly task while the forums are locked, partly due to the nature of the forum software. It may be easier once the migration has occured.

Likewise, now that we have secured the old forum, we request you not duplicate information from the old forum here. Once we have migrated, we can best determine how we can integrate the old forum with the new. There are several possibilities and we have just begun studying the issue.

One thing is exciting -- all members of the old forum will get a "migrated" email and we would hope that draws some of them back to that forum and thus to here.

Again, thank you for your patience while we continue to work through this.

[MerlinJones]

The old forum will remain locked (read-only) to preserve the content and integrity as before.
Members may want to copy their old posts and other information, but it is not a very friendly task while the forums are locked, partly due to the nature of the forum software. It may be easier once the migration has occured...Likewise, now that we have secured the old forum, we request you not duplicate information from the old forum here. Once we have migrated, we can best determine how we can integrate the old forum with the new. There are several possibilities and we have just begun studying the issue.

"Not a friendly task" is a slight understatement! Perhaps a How To... for the less PC-aware of us, would be useful.

Given the apparent emphasis on keeping the old place running, why would we need to copy anything from it, especially given that you don't want duplicate materials appearing in here?

...One thing is exciting -- all members of the old forum will get a "migrated" email and we would hope that draws some of them back to that forum and thus to here.

This suggests that there will now be two UAMF Forums running simultaneously. Is this a long-term plan? I ask because I will not be spreading myself between two Forums and it would be unfair on new members to ask a question on a post and not have it answered.
Will the Admin Team be giving equal priority to both Forums and/or, to facilitate informed decisions, what will be the differences between the resurrected old UAMF and this one?

How will new members to the old Forum be directed here and what will be the 'draw'? (Besides the obviously improved functionality).

Regards,
Bruce

[JamesPerrin]

The old forum will remain locked (read-only) to preserve the content and integrity as before.
Members may want to copy their old posts and other information, but it is not a very friendly task while the forums are locked, partly due to the nature of the forum software. It may be easier once the migration has occured...Likewise, now that we have secured the old forum, we request you not duplicate information from the old forum here. Once we have migrated, we can best determine how we can integrate the old forum with the new. There are several possibilities and we have just begun studying the issue.

"Not a friendly task" is a slight understatement! Perhaps a How To... for the less PC-aware of us, would be useful.

Given the apparent emphasis on keeping the old place running, why would we need to copy anything from it, especially given that you don't want duplicate materials appearing in here?

We are referring to those who wish to make personal backups of specific content from the old website.

...One thing is exciting -- all members of the old forum will get a "migrated" email and we would hope that draws some of them back to that forum and thus to here.

This suggests that there will now be two UAMF Forums running simultaneously. Is this a long-term plan? I ask because I will not be spreading myself between two Forums and it would be unfair on new members to ask a question on a post and not have it answered.
Will the Admin Team be giving equal priority to both Forums and/or, to facilitate informed decisions, what will be the differences between the resurrected old UAMF and this one?

How will new members to the old Forum be directed here and what will be the 'draw'? (Besides the obviously improved functionality).

Regards,
Bruce

No, of course we will not be running two forums. The old forum will be available on the new system but remain inactive. Everyone who registered on the old UAMF will just get informed that their accounts have been migrated to a new system, hopefully this make prompt some people who not already followed us here re-register. How best to redirect them here and how that complies with Forumer's usage policy has yet to be worked out.

[MerlinJones]

"Not a friendly task" is a slight understatement! Perhaps a How To... for the less PC-aware of us, would be useful.

Given the apparent emphasis on keeping the old place running, why would we need to copy anything from it, especially given that you don't want duplicate materials appearing in here?

We are referring to those who wish to make personal backups of specific content from the old website.

Regardless of to whom who were referring, a How To...would remain useful and, in light of preventing duplication, the point of back-ups being for personal use only could have been made more clear.

This suggests that there will now be two UAMF Forums running simultaneously. Is this a long-term plan? I ask because I will not be spreading myself between two Forums and it would be unfair on new members to ask a question on a post and not have it answered.
Will the Admin Team be giving equal priority to both Forums and/or, to facilitate informed decisions, what will be the differences between the resurrected old UAMF and this one?
How will new members to the old Forum be directed here and what will be the 'draw'? (Besides the obviously improved functionality).

No, of course we will not be running two forums. The old forum will be available on the new system but remain inactive. Everyone who registered on the old UAMF will just get informed that their accounts have been migrated to a new system, hopefully this make prompt some people who not already followed us here re-register. How best to redirect them here and how that complies with Forumer's usage policy has yet to be worked out.

James...there is clearly no "of course" to any of this.

Regards,
Bruce

[mattbacon]

We moved from the forumer site because of poor performance, outages, and lack of communication from the management team. We left it available as an archive, so that links could be pointed there from our new home. That logic still obtains. When the site disappeared, we "lost" some archive material, which may or may not have been missed by the users of this site, longer term. Greg has negotiated a stay of execution so the old forumer archive is available again for a period of time, and we are exploring various longer term solutions to see if that archive can be maintained indefinitely. Whatever those may be, there is no question of returning the forumer site to active status, and never has been, since all the problems that caused us to migrate in the first place are still extant.

bestest,
M.

[Softscience]

Has anyone raised the option of letting the old forum die? If not then consider it raised. The lack of traffic in this thread suggests to me that the presence or absence is of little concern to most users.

Just saying.

[mightymikeD]

Has anyone raised the option of letting the old forum die? If not then consider it raised. The lack of traffic in this thread suggests to me that the presence or absence is of little concern to most users.

Just saying.

I'm a newbie so never featured on the old site.. however, a lot of Builds, both Solo and Group are on there and it would be a shame to lose them as archives/reference material. Also, obviously, many people built many great models there so it's good that they can still link to them when in need. But the old site (in my understanding) has been closed to comments, debate etc anyway so it's effectively dead. I'm fairly sure that all that is going on here is a laudable effort by the Admins to preserve some of the remarkable work done under the Aegis of the Forumer site.

I know I frequently find myself redirected there when searching for build info.. would definitely rather have it available as a reference.

m

[Gregers]

Hi Mike.
Well said. That's exactly why I and others will be forking out the folding to keep it open as an archive. All that hard work by the membership is too much to just let go.

All the best.

Greg

[MerlinJones]

The majority of my works are long backed up, with the last few pieces backed up more recently.
This has been done both the friendly and 'unfriendly' way.
The same could easily occur for others, who wanted to back their own stuff up. Likewise, the Admin Team is able to back stuff up that is no longer of interest to the original posters.
Paying money will not guarantee future access, nor will it guarantee survivability.

Regards,
Bruce

[Boldman]

Hi Guys

Is there any form of API available in your admin accounts on the old site? Manually copying every post would be tedious in the extreme. However if it were possible to download the database tables that contains the data, then you would have the freedom to find a host for that data. Professionally I work integrating different customer systems with the one my company sells so this type of thing is not unusual in my experience.

Next question would be how is the current forum set up? Do you have your own hosting account which has the phpBB system installed or is it another host like you used before with forumer?

Just thought, will forumer (or whatever they are called) offer a "backup" or "data dump" service? Since both the old and new forums are using phpBB, it would in theory be possible I believe to export the data from the old forum and create a second instance of the phpBB forums on your own server to host it, maybe on a subdomain like "archive.uamf.org.uk".

I suspect that whatever happens the old URL will cease to function at some point. In theory it might be possible to do a batch search and replace jobbie through ALL the posts on the current forum to change the domain to the new location - although that will require a certain amount of testing and so on.

Okay maybe I'm getting a bit carried away with myself here... got to take the WORK hat off and put the MODELLING hat on

[flakmonkey]

Hi Guys

Is there any form of API available in your admin accounts on the old site? Manually copying every post would be tedious in the extreme. However if it were possible to download the database tables that contains the data, then you would have the freedom to find a host for that data. Professionally I work integrating different customer systems with the one my company sells so this type of thing is not unusual in my experience.

Forumer, the hosts of the old site, have removed the backup option from the admin control panel and don't allow access to phpMyAdmin on their server either. Fair enough, given that they're running a business.

Next question would be how is the current forum set up? Do you have your own hosting account which has the phpBB system installed or is it another host like you used before with forumer?

This forum runs on our own server, on phpBB3.

Just thought, will forumer (or whatever they are called) offer a "backup" or "data dump" service? Since both the old and new forums are using phpBB, it would in theory be possible I believe to export the data from the old forum and create a second instance of the phpBB forums on your own server to host it, maybe on a subdomain like "archive.uamf.org.uk".

Forumer don't offer a database backup - in fact they say very specifically that they don't. The simple solution would be to install phpBB2 (which the old forum runs on) and import our database into that then upgrade to phpBB3 - but we don't have that option currently. It may happen at some point, and would be the preferred solution.