Important Announcements > Announcements
Welcome to the new Gang of Five forum!
rhombus:
Welcome everyone to the new forum! :DD This has truly been a long and treacherous process for us admins as much in this process was not straightforward at all. Thankfully for us a programmer, James Gryphon, who had helped convert the Fiver's Honeycomb forum and the Redwall fan forum was willing to give us a hand. His tireless work are a big reason why the new forum is now available to us all. Though the forum still has a few modifications and fixes to go (most notably with image hosting and quotes) the forum is ready for prime time.
The New Forum
The new forum has all of the data from the old forum, excepting only user signatures, PMs, and avatars, which will need to be manually re-added. The old forum is still online at the moment at this link: http://s7.zetaboards.com/thegangoffive/index/ so feel free to transfer your data as appropriate.
Though we originally wanted to go with phpBB 3.0, that proved to be a bridge too far for us, so eventually we decided to make the forum in SMF 2.0. This is still a versatile and up-to-date code (2017 versus 2008 for Zetaboards) and it allows for security enhancements compared to Zetaboards. New features will most likely be added as we go along and become more acquainted to the underlying code.
The new forum is also now hosted on a paid VPS located in Dallas, Texas. Though this does cost a considerable amount of money it also grants us more freedom with our data. In particular we hope to have image hosting turned on in the next few days, which will free us from having to use image-sharing sites in the future. Additionally this new arrangement will allow us to make weekly backups of the forum in the future, which will secure our data in the event of calamity. With your continued support this arrangement should keep the forum going strong for years to come.
Paying for the New Forum
As we now own our own server this means no more free hosting and no more ads - we are in charge! That being said, as I have said, we are in charge, and now nobody is paying the piper for us, we have to do it. Currently we're looking at $50 per month to keep our forum in the best category when it comes to the hosting that is required. It sounds like a lot but it really isn't.
Look at it this way. $5 a month is very little actually for one person to consider donating. A standard meal at Mickey D's costs more than $5 these days. If you not into fast food, replace it with any other vice you have. I can almost guarantee any vice you have is more than $5, and you're probably enjoying those more than once a month to boot! To keep a nice, friendly, healthy community going, isn't it worth giving up just a little bit per month? If everyone chipped in, we'd be at that $50 without much hassle.
We are funding this through Patreon. rhombus will be the account manager and funds go into a special PayPal business account for the forum which directly funds our hosting fees and the cost of future improvements. Payments can be done through paypal if you choose. Right now we set it at two levels: $3.00 and $10.00 but you can basically give whatever you want. These levels will give you special badges to wear on the forum to show that you a proud contributor in keeping the forum online. Again, everybody working together and contributing will get us our hosting. Even $3.00 helps. Let's do this together. Together we survive. Dividing and unwilling, this time we definitely will fall.
Here is the link to our support page: https://www.patreon.com/user/overview?u=5609318
Going Forward
Though we have double-checked things there still will be some issues with the new forum, just as their was initially after our switch to Zetaboards. With that in mind, if you come across any special issues then please do not hesitate to let us admins know in the Forum Issues section. A special topic is set up there for conversion issues. It may take a few days to get the forum into a polished state, but rest assured that it is now functional. And, unlike the old Zetaboards forum which TapaTalk never fixed, this forum has a search feature that actually works.
Likewise, we will let you know when image hosting becomes possible on the forum. We hope to have that ready in the next few days.
Conclusion
Finally, we would like to thank you all for the patience and support that you all have shown during this difficult time. While numerous Zetaboards forums are now being discontinued due to the TapaTalk conversion, this forum stuck together and took the difficult action of migrating to a new home. Along the way we have received numerous helpful tips from members, and financial support to help us through this process. With such loyalty and dedication to this community, I have no doubts that this forum will look upon this move as the beginning of a new, more liberated future. Thank you all for your support! :)
~ Gang of Five Admin Team
Petrie:
For everyone that is reading this, a BIG THANK YOU needs to go to James Gryphon of the Redwalll Abbey community for his time and effort to get this working for us in addition to the forum staff here who have worked tirelessly to get this forum moved. Most have no idea how much work Nick, rhombus, and zero-point have put into this over the last week.
:cheers :cheers :cheers :cheers :cheers :cheers :cheers :cheers :cheers
Littlefoot505:
Looks good!! :Mo :celebrate :cheers
The only thing I’m noticing is a bunch of question marks where there should be apostrophes.
Flathead770:
It's great to see that the transfer is successful! :)littlefoot
To everyone who worked to get this done, you guys are heroes! :cheers
aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato):
Hi everyone! (I had to change my username, new forum doesn't allow ampersands in the username)
I'm liking this new forum. Is http://108.174.197.131/bb/index.php the permanent URL? Just want to know for bookmarking purposes
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