Important: We are moving

We will be changing servers within the next 7 days (my plan is this weekend). The main ways in which this will affect users are as follows:
<ul>[*]We won't be changing names, or ownership, or moderators or favourite colours. The changes are mainly to do with simply moving the files on the current server (a computer somewhere in the USA) to another server (another computer, I think somewhere in the USA too). The move is due to features, performance, cost effectiveness and attitude problems of the current provider (suspending the site repeatedly without warning and causing me and you a lot of angst). <LI>You may experience a period of time when most people will be either using the new or the old server, and you're on the other one. This is because the pointers to the servers (i.e. what tells the rest of the Internet where to look for the computer holding the current version of caudata.org) take a while to propagate around the world and point to the new place, so some people see the new version before others. <LI>The new server will no longer use this forum software for discussions. <LI>You may lose some messages you posted on the old forums because I will have transferred a slightly older copy of this forum to the new server. Rest assured, these posts will be restored within a few days of the transfer. <LI>This forum will become read only and all new discussions will be carried out in a Vbulletin forum. This should see improvements in many ways for everyone. <LI>Your usernames should be transferred. Passwords will likely be reset though. Your profile information may not transfer completely or correctly, so you will have to log in to your account on the new software, set your password and correct any problems with your profile. <LI>The reason I'm not importing the old messages to the new software is that I wish to preserve the inclusion of images in the current format. <LI>There will be a chat facility on the new server (much improved on the previous incarnation). It will use your forum usernames (and passwords once you set them). The chat won't be available until most of the users have updated their accounts on the new forum. <LI>Be aware that Caudata Culture will be moving too, though there will be no apparent visual change. <LI>Some people may lose their donor status when this switchover occurs. This will either be because you donated $5 four years ago and nothing since, or because you slipped through the cracks. Do contact me either way if you're worried about it. <LI>User Status will no longer be spammable to gain ranks. Your user status (with the exception of founders, moderators, some donors and site contributors) will not be carried over to the new software. <LI>If you so wish, we can set your join date on the new forum to the same one on the old forum, i.e. if you joined in December 2003, the new software will say April or May 2007. We can set it to December 2003 on the new software for you. <LI>I'm looking into providing a subscription service for donors who wish to donate steadily but not in huge amounts (say, a few $ a month or $15 every six months, etc, which you can cancel with the click of a button on paypal). <LI>Also, everything should be faster, snappier and leave a clean scent of lemon.[/list]

Feel free to ask questions.

The process sounds staight-forward. The clean scent of lemon will be a special touch .

From a technical standpoint i can think of a few things users can do to make the transfer smooth on their end too


Clearing Your Browser's Cache


Clear the Temporary Internet Files Folder on Browser Close

How To Clear the Internet Cache in Firefox 2

Clearing Cache other browsers

Flush DNS Cache Windows/Mac/Linux

also i think some people may run into problems with Favorites and internet shorcuts. Is there a redirect url in place to help with this? those who have the main http://www.caudata.org/forum saved vs the whole url with the perl cgi may have trouble with the new php url. also those with shortcuts to specific subforums may run into trouble too

Thank you Tony, that's a great list of helpful things to do when the change occurs. People ought not to do these things until the actual switch-over is announced in a few days. My post here is to let people know it's coming.

Tony, If we don't do these things, what will happen? I am NOT computer savy, should I be worried?

Doing what he says might make the changeover happen slightly faster for you than it would otherwise but there's nothing to worry about if you don't.

no those steps aren't required and neither will hurt any system settings. if any one is having trouble accessing the site after the move i'd definetly recommend trying these steps. by default your internet browser should be configured to update it's cache if new content is added to a website, sometimes it's slow to respond though. clearing out your cache once in a while is a good regimen to cure common browser problems and free disk space too

the dns flush will help resolve the new numerical address of caudata.org . there are other factors that will determine if this address will resolve even after running those command like if your ISP is slow to updates it's DNS server records or if your browsing behind a proxy server with old DNS records

that is greek to me

when you type in www.caudata.org your browser actually goes to 72.18.130.123, that's the IP address. The server that provides the information that www.caudata.org is equal to that IP address is called a DNS (domain name server). after we move there will be a different IP address that www.caudata.org will point to. Tony described a way to ensure your browser goes to the new IP address and not still the old one.

more on-topic, we will still be practicing uploading images to the site itself instead of external hosting? (I think this is a good idea for what goes on here.)

Jonathan - yes sir.

Will links to other threads still work when the forum moves to the new database? I’m thinking the new forum database will give the thread a different URL and the link within the migrated thread will become redundant.

On a similar and more obvious note the structure of http://www.caudata.org/cc/ will need to remain the same as there are thousands of links to articles there.

(Message edited by aartse_tuyn on April 26, 2007)

Mark - all that will remain the same and continue to work, don't panic.

Does buying a sweatshirt and calander count as a donation? I thought that it did.

No, it's not a donation.