Hi everyone! I have a major announcement here, along with some necessary actions for you, so please take note. Here's my story:
Last weekend at TONMOCON V in San Fran I got to meet a lot of great people -- so many old friends and faces, and many many new ones. I met two staffers face-to-face that I had never met before; we only knew each other online.
Intentionally, on Friday night I wanted to take Staff (and their guests) out for dinner so we could talk a bit about the site while breaking bread. I asked folks what bothered them most about TONMO, and found that we were all fairly aligned in our frustrations. It was an easy conversation, albeit somewhat painful.
After the incredibly successful presentations, tours, and meets & greets throughout the rest of that weekend, I came home with renewed drive to fix what is broken. I was thoroughly inspired by the seasoned cephalopod experts, and aspiring new enthusiasts, and it's easy to see that we all deserve a better platform on which to share our thoughts and ideas, and on which we can grow our discussions, understandings, and relationships.
So, to cut to the chase, we are changing out the underpinnings of TONMO.com, and will relaunch with new software. To give you a sense of TONMO history, which not many people know:
2000 - 2001: hand-coded site with Guestbook only
2001 - 2002: still hand-coded but with a couple open-source forum experiments
2002 - 2003: only partially hand-coded now, and the growing part of the site was powered by phpBB, a pretty cool open source forum platform, but limited in some respects
2003 - 2013: 10 years of vbulletin, on 3 different major incarnations of their platform, along with dozens of "add-ons" (still with some good old-fashioned hand-coding
)
2013 - Beyond: new Xenforo platform
I won't go on and on about all the reasons for the change, and why Xenforo is attractive, but I hope you'll see a marked improvement to TONMO.com soon, with this change.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU:
1) In a few days (more details as they are available), the site will close. Before that happens, you should a) make note of any threads you are subscribed to, and b) download any Private Messages you want to keep, because they will not migrate. You might also want to save your Avatar and any photos in your personal Album (if you use that feature), because I'm not 100% certain (yet) whether they will migrate -- let's assume not. Note that all posts, threads, forums, members, and existing attachments *will* migrate. I'll take care of migrating blogs and Articles, plus anything else straggling of value.
2) When the site comes back up, you'll be able to login as usual. All user accounts will be migrated.
3) PLEASE keep an eye on this thread (Subscribe to it!) because I will reply here with further details and updates on this plan.
Thank you in advance for your understanding during this transition. We think you'll agree that we'll come out the other end with more potential for TONMO than ever.
Please reply here with any questions, or reach out privately, thanks!
Last weekend at TONMOCON V in San Fran I got to meet a lot of great people -- so many old friends and faces, and many many new ones. I met two staffers face-to-face that I had never met before; we only knew each other online.
Intentionally, on Friday night I wanted to take Staff (and their guests) out for dinner so we could talk a bit about the site while breaking bread. I asked folks what bothered them most about TONMO, and found that we were all fairly aligned in our frustrations. It was an easy conversation, albeit somewhat painful.
After the incredibly successful presentations, tours, and meets & greets throughout the rest of that weekend, I came home with renewed drive to fix what is broken. I was thoroughly inspired by the seasoned cephalopod experts, and aspiring new enthusiasts, and it's easy to see that we all deserve a better platform on which to share our thoughts and ideas, and on which we can grow our discussions, understandings, and relationships.
So, to cut to the chase, we are changing out the underpinnings of TONMO.com, and will relaunch with new software. To give you a sense of TONMO history, which not many people know:
2000 - 2001: hand-coded site with Guestbook only
2001 - 2002: still hand-coded but with a couple open-source forum experiments
2002 - 2003: only partially hand-coded now, and the growing part of the site was powered by phpBB, a pretty cool open source forum platform, but limited in some respects
2003 - 2013: 10 years of vbulletin, on 3 different major incarnations of their platform, along with dozens of "add-ons" (still with some good old-fashioned hand-coding
)2013 - Beyond: new Xenforo platform
I won't go on and on about all the reasons for the change, and why Xenforo is attractive, but I hope you'll see a marked improvement to TONMO.com soon, with this change.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU:
1) In a few days (more details as they are available), the site will close. Before that happens, you should a) make note of any threads you are subscribed to, and b) download any Private Messages you want to keep, because they will not migrate. You might also want to save your Avatar and any photos in your personal Album (if you use that feature), because I'm not 100% certain (yet) whether they will migrate -- let's assume not. Note that all posts, threads, forums, members, and existing attachments *will* migrate. I'll take care of migrating blogs and Articles, plus anything else straggling of value.
2) When the site comes back up, you'll be able to login as usual. All user accounts will be migrated.
3) PLEASE keep an eye on this thread (Subscribe to it!
) because I will reply here with further details and updates on this plan.Thank you in advance for your understanding during this transition. We think you'll agree that we'll come out the other end with more potential for TONMO than ever.
Please reply here with any questions, or reach out privately, thanks!
