The VH Trade Site Forums Archives

[Scott Roberts]

The forums conversion was for the most part successful and the forums were up and running as of yesterday.

I'm still working on a few tweaks and fixes. If you see something that's out of the ordinary, I may be working on it but if a problem persists e-mail me about it. BTW, I already know about the older posts showing up on the home forums page. Fortunately as new posts and replies are made in each forum, the newest ones will show up on the home page.

There are a few improvements:

The Forums Control Center. More information is displayed on the forums home page, including any new private messages you may have, a link to all posts you have started or replied to (very handy if you don't wanted to hunt all over the boards for specific posts), and a link to all users' unanswered posts. Want to find out what's been going on since you've last visited? The Latest Topics has both a link to all topics active in the past 48 hours (not just days that begin and end at midnight, but 48 hours from the current time right now), AND all topics active since your last visit (whether it be 30 minutes or 30 days).

Private Messages. They are now separate from the profile page, and contain four different boxes to store messages in: the inbox, the sentbox, the savebox (for older PMs you wish to store apart from your inbox), and the outbox.

And there's a few nice thing for me: vastly reduced server load; far less web server spaced used (approx. 35 MB as opposed to 110 MB before); and less bandwidth used. :)


User/Login Names and Passwords
Unfortunately during the conversion, only the login name (not the publicly-displayed name) got transferred over. So that's what is displayed on this board.

I can change the names to the old public names, but:

1. I would have to do so literally one by one in the database. Doing so could take several hours as you could imagine.
2. There's the chance that someone's login name is identical to someone else's old publicly-displayed name. Not very likely, but it's possible.

What I can do is change them on request, but ONLY if you absolutely, positively need it changed for some reason. If you would like your login name changed, please e-mail me and let me know. I'll try to get it done quickly, but please give me up to a day or two to get it changed, as I do not have database access at work, and sometimes I may not have time at home to check the site every single night.

Please keep in mind that if I change it, this will be your new login name, and you must log into the forums with this from now on. Your password will remain the same, though.

And speaking of passwords, they are now encryted in the database for security reasons, therefore I can't personally retrieve them for you on request like I have in the past. If you have any problems with a lost password, you have to go to the lost password form, have it reset and sent to the e-mail address on file for you. If you have an older e-mail address in your profile and you can't retrieve your password, e-mail me and I'll try to update your e-mail address in the database so that it can be sent to you.

Avatars
Another thing that wasn't able to be carried over was your avatar setting. If you haven't already, go into your profile and select the one that you had before.

Pretty soon we should be able to have custom avatars. I need to change a few settings and should get this done sometime this week.

Member Ratings
You may have noticed that member ratings have disappeared. This will be something I'll work on putting back onto the forums in the future.

[frankm]

Scott, I just wanted to say ... Thank you ... I can appreciate all the hard work you do behind the scenes and, well, thank you !

[vhroxu2]

frankm wrote: Scott, I just wanted to say ... Thank you ... I can appreciate all the hard work you do behind the scenes and, well, thank you !

Same here!! :thumb:

[VHLIVE]

Well said Frank, much apprected Scott.

Thanks