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OS and Forum Software Upgrade Coming


Origami

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I want to give the community some heads up. We're about to take the next step in our two-step journey to bring our forum software up to date. This process may begin as early as tonight and I want you all to be aware of what's going to happen and what changes you might see.

 

This second step will take place in two parts. We'll first perform an update of our server's operating system, moving from CentOS 6 to CentOS 7. The second step will be to upgrade the forum software. The two steps will be distinctly separate and will take place at different times - perhaps days apart. We'll do our best to keep you informed of any scheduled outage, giving you as much notice as we're able. However, as we're engaging other support teams in this activity, we may not have complete control over the process once we've requested it.

 

After the forum software upgrade, you'll notice some changes. Some of the changes are because some software customizations that we have on this forum may have been lost and have to be implemented again. Other changes will be a result of changes between the major versions.

 

One change that will affect some members is that your login may change to standardize on your Screen Name. Some background: When you signed up for the forum, you created an account and there was agreement between your screen name (the name that the community sees when you post) and your login name. In this version of software, this information was kept in two separate fields and allowed for us, over time, to change screen names (if there was good reason to) while leaving your login name the same. In the new version, the two fields are merged and we have to standardize on one. We've chosen to standardize on your screen name since that's how everybody recognizes each other. So, if you're one of the affected (as I'll be), you'll log into your account using your screen name after the upgrade. If  your screen name and login name are the same (as it is for the vast majority of you), things will not change for you.

 

Another change that you'll see affects the sponsor banners at the top of the web page. Right now that's implemented in a bit of custom code. In the future, we'll probably do that using the built-in banner ad function, but we'll have to learn a little bit about it to get that to stand in for the old, custom code.

 

Finally, there are several forums where we allow continued editing of posts past a certain time. This includes the first post of threads in the for sale forum and in the tank build forum. We may lose that for a little bit and, if we do, we'll work to find a solution as quickly as possible.

 

So, stand by for the next steps. We'll try to make it as smooth as possible, but I'm anticipating a few bumps along the way.   

 

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Thanks for the update, Tom. And everybody who's working on this as well. 

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