In response to questions and concerns regarding the upgrades here,
Those of us involved in running this site are well aware of the growing pains.
The fact is, we cannot continue to run old versions forever because things are no longer supported by the software companies. We were once again way behind in our updates and were notified by xenForo (the platform we run on) that they were no longer going to support the old version. Think of it as your phone software constantly being updated and some of your apps quit working unless the app authors keep up with the changes. Other social media platforms constantly change. I am sure if I were ever to go back to facebook, it would be unrecognizable compared to what I left 8 years ago.
Another awesome site we all know... Smokstak recently changed from vBulletin to xenForo. Many there complained about the changes there too (I visit with Harry on the phone from time to time) but they all adjusted.
The difference between a site like Harry's compared to ours is that Harry has really learned this stuff well. I have not! I hired xenForo to do the upgrade for me, but they ran into issues with our hosting company and could not get them resolved. Not their fault. When the hosting company started asking me and my brother questions as to what was wrong, and xenForo trying to relate to us what was wrong, they may as well have been speaking Norwegian to me as I (nor Stephen) had not a clue what they were talking about.
It was then I had to bring Tim Dachtera into the game. He is better equipped to handle the issues we were having. I hated to bother Tim as I know he has his hands more than full with other projects (many WMSTR related) and he didn't need any more work. None the less, he graciously agreed to help.
Tim knows what is wrong, but he is trying to work with our hosting company to explain what is needed to fix it but they are not grasping why this is an issue so examples are now being sent to them, We will get this sorted out, and then the site will look and act familiar enough that those who use it regularly will have no problem sorting it out.
As far as the Facebook competition some are concerned about... We are not Facebook. In my mind that is a good thing, but with todays demographics people are addicted to Facebook and that is never going to change, at least not any time soon. I look at this forum as the place to share with other like minded people without all of the flipping drama that comes with Facebook. I was made aware this morning of a lot more WMSTR related drama happening over there this morning that I could care less about! Should anything like that ever show up on these pages, to would disappear as soon as one of the mods were made aware of it.
In the mean time, this site will stay here until the WMSTR board decides to stop supporting it. That may indeed happen sometime, but I sure hope not. We have a lot of control over what happens here and can keep things on topic and civil.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and ask for your patience as we get the last few bugs worked out.
