PLEASE READ - New forum information

[Brad Miller]

Hello everyone!

Back in 1999 we added the forums to the website. Although the original forum software has been very reliable and served us well for over 20 years, that software has since become quite outdated.

Effective January 1, 2020 we switched over to new forum software. Unfortunately since there was no good way to import all of the previous user registrations, everyone who was registered before on the old software will need to re-register on our new software.

We will do our best to process new registrations swiftly in these first few weeks. As before our strict policy of “no fake names” will be in effect.

This new software offers a lot of improved useful features that was not possible with the old software. With anything new though, there will be a certain amount of learning curve involved (most likely on our side). Please bear with us as we adjust and tweak things.

Although all new posts from 2020 and beyond will be on the new software, you will still be able to access the ENTIRE archive from the last 20 years here in a “read only/no reply” state.

Thank you.

[Aaron Garman]

We can upload our own profile pics. Wow, welcome to the 21st century!

Glad to be aboard!

[John Wilson]

Hard Eight!!!!!!!!!!

[Sean Weitzel]

Looks great so far! Thanks for keeping this community fresh and invaluable for so long!

[David Ferguson]

Nice to see this update - while the old forums worked fine, not being able to upload pictures was annoying, and there were a couple of security issues I think. Thanks Brad!

[Kyle Mikolajczyk]

Custom profile pics!!! Thanks for the update and for keeping the old forums archived.

[Marcel Birgelen]

So, here we are, a new decade, a new forum. Will take a while to get used to, but it's nice to have many of those new features of "modern" forum software.

@Brad; two questions if I may:

1. There is a route to import UBB into vBulletin 4.2 and then upgrade to 5.5. Although the import isn't perfect, it would preserve user accounts and most posts in the same environment. Are there reasons you didn't go for this route?
2. Since everything is now running on super-modern software, any chance of putting an SSL certificate in front of it? Many browsers are already balking at posting stuff passwords over non-encrypted connections

[Peter Foyster]

Actually, the new decade starts in 2021. Just sayin' is all.

[Marcel Birgelen]

So, we can comment on posts now?

i don't know if this is a feature I'd keep enabled though, since it can seriously hurt the flow of an ongoing discussion.

Regarding the "decades" thing... there is a lot of confusion here, does it start on 0 or on 1? In general, we say stuff like "the twenties" or "the nineties", so it's more common to consider 2020 a new decade, part of the roaring (?) twenties of the 21st century... numbers and humans... an odd combination.

[Frank Cox]

The world needs more Comic Sans.

Apparently the font change doesn't show up when the message is actually posted to the forum, even though it appears while entering the message.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Trying the new comments feature here...

I'm glad Brad disabled the "alternate fonts" functionality, maybe it's possible to hide it from the editor too?

[Scott Norwood]

Happy new year! Thanks for keeping the archives.

[David Ferguson]

Indeed, thanks for keeping the old forum online, and with the same URLs so all the old links and Google indexes still work fine. One request if I may - on the old forum, if you didn't post enough, then you wouldn't be able to view members' profiles, including their emails. Might I suggest this restriction is taken away, as since none of us are able to post any more, eventually we'll be in the situation where nobody can see anyone's profiles, which would be a shame (especially for contacting less-active members, which I've found it very useful for!).

I'd also like to +1 Marcel's request about https - since passwords are sent by the forum, it would be a really good idea to have this. Let's Encrypt should make this very easy (and free!).

[Buck Wilson]

Well it was just a matter of time I suppose. Thanks for all you do to keep this wealth of information alive!!

[John Wilson]

What a time to be alive...thanks Brad!

I know you've always liked my profile pic so I've uploaded a brand new copy of it.

[Matt McBride]

The new forum looks great.

[Frank Cox]

I'm not a huge fan of the "comment" availability because now you have to read through all of the old stuff to be sure you don't miss anything new.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'm not a huge fan of the "comment" availability because now you have to read through all of the old stuff to be sure you don't miss anything new.

Agreed on that one. Don't know if it can be disabled though.

[Miguel Moreno]

Happy New Year to film Tech and all the members.
Hope this will be great year for all.

Thanks Brad , its good to be here : )