After NINE years with the same hosting service without any real problems - the forums are going to be down for a few days. The hosting company wants to move the site and their plan has the forums being down for well over a week. Under their plan this would begin prior to the end of the month and continue well into February.

Needless to say, I am not happy with this idea. The best case scenario would be for me to change hosting companies which would probably cut the "down time" in half or better. If I decide to do that it would be happening prior to the end of the month - I would likely initiate the change around January 25th and should be complete a few days later.

Moving a busy forum presents some unique challenges and it is necessary to close the board to new posts in advance of moving to ensure that nothing gets left behind - so the down time is longer than for moving a static website.

Stay tuned

So, the forums will be making a move. The forums will be down sometime within the next week for the hosting change - and it should only be for a day or two (depends on how much trouble I have making the move)

When you visit the forums and find that you are unable to post you will know that the process is underway

Will you be using the same forum software? The search feature is archaic and takes entirely too long when searching all forums.

Check out:

http://www.vbulletin.com/

It's top notch! No, I have no affiliation with this company, I just frequent other forums that use it & it's impressive.

I also think that it would be a good idea if the forum were to charge a nominal amount such as $1.00-$5.00 for membership. This would cut down on the spammers and casual idiots that breeze in & out of the forums posting nonsense.

The membership fee would defray the bulletin board software and hosting costs.

The software will stay the same for now. A software change can't be made while changing servers. The change has to be completed before any changes could be made because any new software needs to have a working forum to import posts and members from.

I have checked out vBulletin and it does look like a good program. It does not seem to have the same banning power as this current program does though. My understanding is that you can only ban by IP or username - and I currently have more options than that. They may have mods available though - I have not looked into that yet.

Also, any software change would have to have very major benefits as all pages currently in search engines would be lost and it would take a very long time for search engines to pick up and rank the replacements. That is an important issue that I need to consider before making any decisions on software changes.

VBulletin also has issues with duplication that negatively affect search positions unless some major tweaking is done. As you can tell, search engine positions are a major consideration for me. This software helps us to be #1 for "real estate forums" and an off-the-shelf version of vBulletin would have detrimental effects. I would need a spend a lot of time (which I currently do not have) making modifications to make it search engine friendly and then the forums still will suffer the drop because all of the existing pages would disappear.

The forums are now open at their new host. There may be a few bugs discovered over the next day or so - you can let me know in this hread if you find any.

In the near future I will also be upgrading the forum software to the newest version which will add a lot of features - and speed up the searches

Maybe I screwed something up on my profile, but I don't think the email notifications are working too well. I'm getting them sporadically for different topics.

When you receive an email notification that someone has replied to a topic you have started or posted in there are two links in that notification. The first link is the "Subject" and if you click in that link you will go to the post and you should continue to receive notifications when others post to the thread.

The second link is in the body of the email notification and it reads
"Click here to stop notifications for this topic." - it is very easy to click on this link in error and when you do your notifications for replies to the thread stop.

You should be able to use the "full reply form" when you next reply to the thread and click "email notification" and begin receiving your notifications again if you accidentally unsubscribe.

You can also check the topics you have subscribed to from within your profile to see if you are still subscribed and you and turn those notifications on and off.

Thank you!!! Did the recieve email on the full reply form box used to be default checked & stopped, or is this a profile setting?

I thought that the "Email Notifications" option was in our profile preferences? I can't seem to find how to default my threads to be email notified. Every time I post now, the "Email Notification" box is unchecked and I have to go in and check it. I want to default it to be checked. I think something is not working correctly here. Can this be fixed?

I also notice that sometimes my signature does not show up in my posts. I have my "Show Signature" box checked in my profile as default and it still doesn't show up all the time. I never use "Quick Reply" either.

Thank you for pointing that email issue out.

That is a script modification I had previously made which I forgot to make again after the move. I will take care of that as soon as I can remember where and in which script I made the change - should be done later today

As for the signature issue - I see your sigs in your posts - can you direct me to a post where your sig is not showing?