So the hope is to move over to the new site sometimes before the end of the month (I still don’t have an exact date for you, but I should have it soon). The new page will be linked off the teen page through the same link that goes to this page now, so it should be easy to find. Unfortunately, though, we were unable to transfer over the forum data like we thought we could. So, this means that the posts from this page will not be able to carry over to the new forum… and the ranks won’t carry over either. In essence we are kind of starting over new. I know, I’m sorry about this. We’ve tried our best but our new drupal site doesn’t mesh with the phpbb of this one. However, what I am going to do is leave this old forum up for people to look at. It’ll be locked against new content when we transfer over, but you’ll still be able to look at old stuff. I know, I know. That’s not quite the same… but it’s the best we can do. I’m sad about it too. As for ranks, I think we should be able to give people who posted on this site a little something when we transfer to the new one…sort of manually tweak it. We are still figuring ranks out right now; they might be done a little different than before, but I’ll let you know. Also, people are going to have to create new accounts (or use their library ones if they already have one) and upload their avatars and signatures like new. (P.S. You'll still be able to participate even if you do not have a library card). One thing with this though is that while we should be able to transfer over all the gallery images from before just fine, there are going to be a few issues with making sure we attribute everything to the right people if they choose new account names, etc.…we should be able to figure something out, but it’ll just take a little time.
In many ways, unfortunately, this new site is going to seem like a downgrade at first. It’s because we are building it from the ground up. When we transfer over kind of think of it as like a beta test. We are still working on a lot of features that will come out, but it’ll take time; they are not ready yet. For instance, when we go live we are not going to have an ‘official’ gallery yet. For the time being what we are going to do is use a post thread and post images/art directly into it for people to comment on, etc., which should work for the time being. But, eventually, we will have a gallery. So then why are we taking this step backwards you ask? The main reason is really not so much to do with the funds we pay to forumotion for our gallery storage space -though that has been a slight inconvenience. The main reason has to do more with the fact that we want to integrate the animanga forum with the main library webpage. This will mean that when you view stuff about the animanga dates you will also see stuff about other teen events like video game tournaments and bizarre puppet crafts we think up (o.k. this last one I kind of made up- but, um, actually now that I think about it…it is totally the type of thing we would do.). It’ll mean that you can reserve a book and chat on the forum at the same time. It’ll mean that a wider range of people will know about the animanga forum and possibly take part in it. So, for the time being, I ask that you be patient. The new forum will not be as tricked-out as this one at first. It’s a trade off, but one that will hopefully lead to something better in the long run. I thank you guys for your understanding and patience on this-I know this is a little sudden- and please give us lots of feedback about our new site so we know what to fix and what is broken and what we should change as we progress along.
Thu Apr 16, 2009 11:58 pm
