MAJOR TONMO ANNOUNCEMENT: Please Read.

tonmo

Cthulhu
Staff member
Site Owner
Joined
May 30, 2000
Messages
11,265
Location
Pennsylvania
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 :smile:)
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! :smile:) 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!
 
Hey Tony,

I just want to chime in here to say thank you for running such a great site, and I am very pleased to hear that there are improvements in the works - the most recent incarnation of the tonmo interface has not been my favorite..... So I'm really happy there is something new and awesome coming!

You run a great community, and although I've never had the chance to come to a tonmocon, or to have met you or many of the members, I really appreciate the work you do and the community you've built around this site.

Any clues on how long the site will be down?
 
Thanks so much Robyn! I'm really appreciative of all the members who have stuck with us through thick and thin, and you are certainly chief among them. I would LOVE for you to present at TONMOCON VI (or at least attend :smile:), it is gearing toward an east coast event, possibly Florida?

I'm told the migration could take 1 to 3 days, but me (and some staff) will have some work to do to get it ready for prime time. I hope to keep it within the 3-day window but should learn more this weekend.
 
tonmo said:
Thanks so much Robyn! I'm really appreciative of all the members who have stuck with us through thick and thin, and you are certainly chief among them. I would LOVE for you to present at TONMOCON VI (or at least attend :smile:), it is gearing toward an east coast event, possibly Florida?

I'm told the migration could take 1 to 3 days, but me (and some staff) will have some work to do to get it ready for prime time. I hope to keep it within the 3-day window but should learn more this weekend.
Florida is definitely more do-able than the West Coast or Northeast (I am in Houston) - keep me posted! The pics from this year look awesome and I am envious!
Fingers crossed for a smooth transition to the new site.
 
Oh, by the way, we didn't break bread. We did break fortune cookies, though :smile: ...I stayed to pay the check while the others headed to the bar to secure our area (I asked them to go ahead so that we would be prompt with the bar), but I understand folks took their fortunes with them. I haven't shared my fortune, but stuck it in my wallet because I liked it... and it turned out to be true, such a great event!

 

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Hey Tony

Great stuff. Been away for a while, but congrats on another successful TONMOCon and further site improvements. Came by this from your FB post, as I've got some PM's I'd like to save from years ago. Is there a built-in 'download message' function I'm missing or is the only option copy & paste the text?

Many thanks, and can't wait to see the new site.
Cheers
 
From what I can tell, you have to copy and paste, unfortunately. Just one item on a long list of reasons why we want to change platforms :smile:. Great to hear from you!
 
I have stopped new user registrations until the new site is up. I am getting close to CLOSING these forums for a few days... Possibly as soon as today. back up anything important to you, as mentioned above... There are some things we'll still be able to retrieve post-migration as well (avatars, etc.).
 
Thanks for the reminder Tony,
Just backed up my private messages! Can't wait to see the new platform, this one seems a bit unwieldy. Will have to search for a new avatar anyway, so I figured it wasn't worth trying to find my original cuttlefish one...
 

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