Spirit Keeping & Paranormal Collecting Forum

It's been awhile since we had an update because it's been quite literally since last June that we've been working with several different developers to get this Forum software updated. As of last week the hardware has been completed, and now they are working on the software. Which means an updated skin as well to conform with the new version of the software. We are looking at several skins at this time.

In relation to these items:
- Chat should not be impacted, but there will be security updates that will not allow newly registered users to participate in chat. This should reduce the trolls

- Private Messages will remain for tenured members only, and the issues related to missing messages, unreadable messages, etc should be resolved as well.

Unfortunately, over the last 10 years this Forum has been open we've done a lot of modifications, and at one point we had a social media platform integrated with this Forum a long time ago and those defunct plug-ins have greatly been a detriment. An entirely fresh install with reinsertion of presently used modifications has had to take place.

This meant a much-beleaguered effort to make sure nothing was lost in the update, then a change of developers because the previous developer just disappeared and stopped responding, and the change meant a whole new developer trying to figure out what the previous developer did & where he left off, and finally the update we all waited for.

We hope to have the new skin & the new software going by the end of the month, but given we are not the people in control, we have to defer to their timeline.

I'm sure there have been a billion conspiracy theories circulating in the last year, but unfortunately there's nothing exciting, just the unrelenting nonsense of dealing with developers and getting software updated. We've been going through the same thing with the shop's software update which is now 6 months into back & forth on its design and implementation. As much as we all love a good conspiracy, in this case it's just boring technical stuff & the bailing of a developer mid-project.

Hang in there guys, it will all get done, and at the end of this both the Forum & Shop should be up-to-speed with the 21st century LOL

Nice, good to hear. I for one look forward to the new look and feel.

Thanks for keeping us posted Magnolia.

creepyhollows wrote: As of last week the hardware has been completed, and now they are working on the software.

1sp

You would think that in the year 2018 the dev's would have chosen to rather go with AWS or Azure (or something similar). That way hardware or power failure is taken care of, upgrading to more powerful hardware is a matter of a few clicks (and your own budget approval), or downgrading if you choose to. You don't have to worry about your servers getting old, because you are effectively just renting. You would be in the best data centers this planet has to offer.

Wooo! I look forward to it! Minor question - will pictures be somewhat easier to post on some topics for visual?

Oh, that’s cool! Looking forward to new updates

Is there any possibility that old PMs will be restored? I had some spirit info in mine that I would love to regain access to.

PMs will come back?! These are some really niiiiice updates, looking forward to them!

Yaay! It's finally happening.

1s Woo! Forum update!

I hope to have a much better idea of where we are today with everything, and I can't say how in-depth the upgrade of the cosmetic portion of the Forum will be yet, but some of the options that were disabled during the upgrade should be back, or already be back.

I will say that with the PMs, there were issues with the previous version of the software deleting messages, blocking messages from being read, or showing phantom messages that never came into the box. I was told that was part due to the fact we had an integrated piece of social software many years ago that had its own "inbox" system and when we took out the other piece of software it caused disconnects.

I have not seen the PM system in action since the upgrade, and hopefully everything that was there before is there now