Micah

Nevermind. I see what you mean now. There were a few replies that are missing now. Hmm.... Good question? Why for you BOD jerks deleting stuff? *POKE*

What?

That's the spirit! Was that so hard?

I was a member of the forum in 2004. You just don't remember that because there's no data from that time period. There is no "situation". It's a forum... that's it. It's not a religion... it's not a business... it's just a forum.

Can you give me examples that I can apologize for? And they had 2 years to make a backup. The experts are the ones who recommended we upgrade to vBulletin 5. The experts who know the software inside and out are why we are in this mess. I took a recommendation from said "experts" and here we are. I am a volunteer, as you pointed out. I don't have to stay. My passion to help seems to be misinterpreted as a thirst for power. I assure you, I would hand the reigns over at this very second if I thought that somebody competent would step into these shoes or if the forum was in a stable condition. I really don't like drama, whining, and making something it's not. When people sensationalize these problems and talk about it like it's life or death, it really makes me reconsider my dedication to the uptime of this server. That was definitely my first choice when I first realized this new site wasn't going to meet the needs (about 24 hours in), but like I mentioned before, it's not an option. vBulletin does not provide a downgrade path. There is a single downgrade path.. You are correct, there IS a way. Unfortunately, it requires a LOT of downtime... Days in fact.. And you don't retain everything. Passwords being one of the thing you lose; requiring every user to have to reset their password at the time of this switch. Attempted? Naww... Kevin (pledosophy) did a good job of convincing me that the bull**** was over here at PNWMAS and that I should stay where the users are, rather than try to give the users a different place to go - as my loyalty has always been to the people and sponsors, not the club. I'm a gun for hire and Kevin made the best speech. To the overly sensitive, it may seem like i'm constantly insulting people. To those people, I say lighten up and stay away from reddit or cable TV. Life is pretty short. Shorter if you stay stressed. You really need to take things with a grain of salt. The smiley face, because we're on the internet and that's how people communicate on the internet, seemed appropriate. Classy with a K doesn't seem any less silly. If anybody wants to talk with me over the phone, feel free to do so: 503-six-one-zero-8580. Try to smile, Micah

Kris...... when you talk, you hear yourself, right? I mean.... you understand that the words you say make almost no sense and that everybody sees this, right? The "data", as I pointed out prior to your response, was incorrect... so, seeing it wouldn't matter. You are correct in that it isn't as busy as before. However, the site before wasn't configured correctly either, so...... the "data" before wouldn't be accurate either. The participation of the community is down. I agree with you on this. And that the cure to the problem is to enable the community. Really, the cure to the "problem" is to let it heal organically. Rules, government, and legislature will not fix this. The community will fix itself if given a forum (the meaning of the word) it can participate in. This is the reason I'm here and the reason I'm passionate at all about administering this site. If I thought PNWMAS could solve problems with a method outside of enablement, you wouldn't know me. If you think I am a negative force in this hobby/forum/site/club whatever, please let me know. I'd love to know.

To be fair, the "who's online" feature has been broken.... Click Here So, you're "traffick" data may be inaccurate.

You'll be happy to know that tapatalk is fully supported on IPB (the next software). I have confirmed this with both tapatalk AND Invision Power.. In fact, tapatalk took it a step further to even call me on the phone... (Who talks on the phone anymore?!) They said "Invision is one of the companies we deal the most with. Xenforo and Inivision are the leaders in the forum world nowadays and we do our best to be fully supported by the leaders.". Explains why vBulletin may not be fully supported anymore.

Actually... If you click quote on all of the posts you want to quote, then scroll up to the top and then click "post", the post will have a (2) next to it with the appropriate number in it. That will quote all of the messages you have clicked... No clue why the reply at the bottom doesn't act the same. Software bug.

You just think you're soooo special......

Because when you convert to 5.x.x, the database schema AND data changes dramatically. vBulletin has not developed a regression path back to previous versions.

You realize you just cried.. yes? You saw the smiley face yes? I was saying it in jest. Just trying to lighten the mood. Honestly, the reason I haven't spent too much time fixing issues with this site is because in it's basic function and form, it's working. Limping along, but working. On a daily (and sometimes more) basis I have to make tweaks to keep this site running... I tried to limit the amount of time I spent on this. I spent my time, instead, to find a permanent solution that we can all lean on and feel confident with. Also, I haven't communicated this outside of the executive branch of PNWMAS because I needed to make sure valid options were being considered. False hope, in my opinion, is even more damaging than no hope. Thanks for sticking around though. Considering the amount of neglect our database was in, we're actually doing pretty amazing.

I feel sorry for the admins of the sites of hobbies you are ACTUALLY INVOLVED IN.

We actually did that with the current iteration as well. Unfortunately 99% of the problems we're facing are due to server load, which was impossible to replicate without making it live.... and once it goes live, there's no going back. That's why this time I'll be making this a public beta... encouraging people to hit it HARD... I'll also be running a couple of automation scripts against it from remote sources to simulate traffic/load.

It should be noted as well that last night, vBulletin released a bunch of fixes for our current software. None of the fixes address performance. Auto-subscribe to content you participate in is fixed though... Soon they'll have all of the advertised features working - just in time to release the next buggy version.

The site upgrade from 4.2.2 to 5.1.3 was an abysmal failure. vBulletin promised new features, fixed bugs and greater performance. We received the contrary in amounts that could not have been anticipated without an active user-load. High memory and CPU usage, memory leaks, features that just plain do not work, other features that only break under load, new features that were never finished, and it performs FAR worse than the last version. vBulletin as a company has failed to create a product that evolves positively. vBulletin.org runs 3.6.12 - That should have been a clear indicator that they cannot even adopt their own software. It was not, and I apologize greatly for this lapse in judgment. I am, however, no longer bound by the legacy left to me by previous administrators; nor the promises of a hypocritical software company. At the time, upgrading to the latest vBulletin software was the clear choice as the data migration is seamless and only takes a couple hours. I investigated migrating to other forum software solutions; all of which required significant amounts of downtime to migrate and there would have been an even greater difference in interface continuity. Hindsight is 20/20, but what this experience has taught us is that the old version was plenty - it just needed a facelift. Unfortunately, there is no migration path back to 4.2.2. Fortunately and unfortunately there is a way out - only one way out. Invision Power Board is the product of choice for moving forward. Other forums in our hobby run it as well - notably, http://www.nano-reef.com. IPB supports migrations from vBulletin 5.1.3 and has a nifty hosted solution which will reduce the load on our team considerably. We will no longer have to worry about the uptime, software patching, server patching, site attacks, backups, etc. They handle all of this. It's also a cost effective solution - 20,30 and 45 bucks per month based on actual usage. We're currently spending 40/year; not including software fees. This solution seems ideal, affordable, and way too good to be true. That said, we're going to buy a month worth - get it up and running, import a backup of our data and let you guys at it (Obviously not in place of the existing server, but as a development copy). After we've determined it's snappy, looks good and everybody is happy with it. We'll schedule a time and switch everything over. Once that's done - we can decommission our current hosting solution. Seems like a lot of work, but really, it's far less than I do keeping the lights of our current site on in any given week. Once I have this test iteration deployed, I will publish the link, encouraging everybody to hit it hard. We can create a thread on the test forum with bugs and such. Hopefully nothing too severe. I am very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused everybody but I ensure you that I am dedicated to getting this site to a stable and extremely usable state. Thanks, Micah

Closing this thread. This is a ton of great input - but big change is coming. Stay tuned. If you have further issues that seem somewhat important, shoot me a PM and I'll see what I can do.

Yeesh! Luckily when an MP40 falls off, it just lands gently on the bottom. I can only imagine a WP60 pumping sandy death all over a tank. Glad everything is okay!

Yes, please go to: http://www.pnwmas.org/settings/notifications This will allow you to change your notification preferences.

The trick is to click on the message first. Then reply to it.

Please direct any screenshots or support information to https://support.tapatalk.com/forums/vbulletin-discussion.53/

So, here's the deal with tapatalk. All you can do is click "Enable". Once it's enabled, there are like... two options you can control and one of them is if I (the admin) want to be emailed about special offers.. So, if there's something wrong with Tapatalk... it's only tapatalks problem. If a feature is missing inside of tapatalk that once existed, it's because tapatalk doesn't properly support this version of forum software. If you can see anything on our forum within tapatalk, then it is configured properly on our end. I've tried to get things working lately. I've had their support disable and reenable push notifications only to find out that push notifications aren't supported yet on this version of forum software, but that it's coming very soon. So, again, the only control I have is to switch forum software... (Which is being strongly considered)

Do they have to be live?

Edited your topic title. Removed the original price. It may scare people away. You're approaching an appealing price.

Big Dave - lucky!