Please check out this NEW SITE
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Dear Fusor Forum Member,

This will be my last message for a few days, I'm going out of town tomorrow and it will be next week before I can get to a computer again. I'm not taking my laptop with me on this trip (it's supposed to be a vacation!) so I'll be relying on the kindness of strangers to go online...

In the meantime, I believe we have found a solution to the location problem that Intranets threw in our path last week. And, much to my suprise and delight, the solution is better than any of the alternatives that first presented themselves. Here's the plan:

First, a sincere word of thanks to member Ryan Edgar, who volunteered to help us set up our own site at < https://fusor.net >. Not only did Ryan volunteer to help with the engineering, he found the software to create a forum with features very much like those we enjoy at our present location. Then he went one step better: he has devised a way to replicate the discussion threads at our current location at the new location. And as if THAT wasn't enough, it turns out he had created a mirror of the OLD, original "songs.com" BBS - and he has restored that site to the new location. What more could we possibly ask for?

Well, I suppose you could ask for a site that has no advertising. And one that is not controlled by a third party that could decide to add advertising, or charge for the service, or just decide to close up shop. Or you could ask (well, I could ask) not to have to figure out a way to administer billing members for the cost.

This solution provides all those benefits as well. It's a no-brainer. So, here is the "migration plan" that I'm seeing from where I sit on Thursday, June 14, about 10PM CDT:

1) Please take a moment to visit the new forum at < https://fusor.net >. At that URL, you will find three links:

a) a link to the new forums
b) a link to a sample of a reconstructed 'old' forum
c) a link to the reconstituted songs.com fusion BBS (like seeing an old friend return from the dead!)

Please take a few minutes to experiment with the new forum format. We have some options to experiment with there, so if you have comments about how it works, post them to the "Administration" forum and we'll see if we can drum up a solution.

2) We are going to let the Intranets site die on June 30. So, wrap up any existing threads in the next week or so. Then start posting any new threads to the appropriate forums at the new site.

3) For the time being, we are going to leave all the forums at the new site "public" so that anybody can enter, look around, and post messages without registering.

4) About a week before the June 30 deadline, we are going tgo "lock down" the existing forums at Intranets so that they cannot receive any new posts. That will give Ryan a chance to "bundle up" all the existing threads and relocate them to the new site.

5) Come June 30, Intranets will shut the site down. By then we should be fully operative at the new location, with all of our old posts also securely reconstructed.

6) About two weeks later, we will ask that all users register. This is not intended to restrict the discourse in any way; it does however give us an effective way to address the entire membership when the need arises, as it has in this case.

I am sending this message to all forum members, and posting it to a couple of places on the existing Intranets site as well as the new site. Please feel free to offer any feedback that you think of and, preferably, post it to the new site (to get a little practice with its routines).

Perhaps the biggest advantage of this proposition - among many - is that the WE can decide a great deal about the format, instead of having it all prescibed for us by an third-party vendor. So please share any reservations or concerns you have about the new format and routines while we're still sorting out the new software.

While I'm out of contact, Richard Hull and Ryan can handle any questions or controversies that might arrive. I'll check in again next week, soon as I get near a computer. In the meantime, I really encourage you all to check out this new site. I think you'll be very pleased with the possibilities.

Thanks,

--PS


Created on Thursday, June 14, 2001 11:31 PM EDT by The Perfesser