Where Is The Forum Headed?

[Sleeping Bear]

Okay, simple question. Where is the forum headed? Who is/will be in charge? Have decisions been made yet?

We all need a 'go to' person when something happens and we really don't have that right now.

Ideas?

[ChazR]

I certaintly don't know who, but I DO know that this forum is a wonderful place. Bryan blessed us with it and it should live on. Please don't let it die.

[jhawk1000]

I certainly can not talk for those who control the forums destiny but I think that either the forum gets active once again or it will just go away. I get on the forum occasionally since I do not see much activity from some of the old timers. I do notice a core of faithful posters who continue to use the forum but activity is very low. I am as much at fault for not posting more but the death of Bryan kind of knocked me off my feet for a time. Linda and I spent a wonderful weekend a week or so before he was diagnosed. He never complained and was the perfect host as was Connie. I would like to see this forum re-energize and honor the hard work of Bryan, Connie and BJ. I think I need to be more active as well as others picking up the slack. After all, we who remain are the same as before Bryan's untimely leaving.

Mel

[JPS]

Although I also noticed that the activity is been going slow, I reckon I'm partly responsible for that... I haven't been shooting a lot recently -even though I got some nice new equipment: D700 and Nikon 14-24-, I reckon I have too much work to do to be able to grab a few hours to shoot :( !

Also, maybe the fact that it's WINTER -on my part of the world, at least- and that, due to the dull light we have most of the time, I am quite reluctant to GO OUT only for the sake of taking photographs, plus the fact that I am short of imagination for "inside" or "studio" shots, the result is that I haven't uploaded any image for quite a long time...

BUT...... my photographer's skill has increased (did it ?) mainly thanks to this forum, and like many of the old-timers, I definitively wouldn't want to see it closing down ! Thing is, even the newcomers don't upload many images, don't they ?

So, apart the fact that we don't know what are the "owners" plans, it's UP TO US, USERS, to do our best to keep the forum alive, and WORTH keeping it running !

In any case, I want to thank once again all the people who spent time and money to maintain the forum during all these years !

:)
Jean-Pierre

[easternherp]

I too am like several others and have slowed off recently. I have changed jobs and working patterns and family life make it harder to join in on the community. I try to log in regularly but haven't shot much recently.
I hope that this place will continue as I have found many on-line friends and this is one of the friendliest forums I have found. Please let it live.

[Auminer]

There have been a few ideas floating around, but nothing decided that I know about.

We're gonna need a contact or "go to" person for sure, but we also will need $$ for the server to run it on. Bryan run the forum on his server in his home and to my knowledge is still running from there. Thanks Connie!! If it were to need maintenance, suffered a DOS attack, or something as simple as getting unplugged, we would loose our forum.

We are walking on eggs.

It would be good for someone to contact Connie, maybe she has idea's, thoughts, suggestions?

For this forum to survive we need a few things to be done.
First off we need to have a way to contact each other if the forum went down. I would like to see a pool of email addresses collected in the very least. (secured from spam of course) This wouldn't be needed if #2 was in place, but it isn't...
We need a quality server and a URL. The Server will be costly to hold this forum together as we know it. There are many G's (Think Terabytes...) of photos hosted on this server.Of course someone that knows how to run and maintain it.Constructive discussion of our options...this could be happening right here.

[easternherp]

Perhaps we could start a thread and people could list their name on it and after a set period the first on the list could PM the next person and give them their email then they PM the next with both emails etc. etc.
Does this sound plausable?

[Melody]

Ok here we go again....

Here's a copy of a post from BJ (dec 30th)

Behind the scenes I have been working out a plan to move the site off of the server in Colorado to something hosted publicly. I will be discussing with Connie my plans in the weeks ahead.

As for crashes etc, with my last visit with Swampy we set up better backup procedures. If the power button needs to be pushed I have phone numbers I can call. I am also on the license for vBulletin.

My goal is to keep this site running in "Swampy's Way". What I would like to do is have a dedication page created which will be linked to from the main forum page. Please PM me with ideas.

Thank you all.. Lets keep this community together.

bj
__________________
blackjack

I don't recall if I read it here on the forum or in chat however I believe sometime in February Bryan's brother Rob and BJ were both going to be in Colorado to help take care of things. Now keep in mind BJ like many here has a full time job :)

I was looking into doing a chat room from my website server so that just in during transition we'd have somewhere to meet and get updates whatever... however I got busy and haven't got the info on it yet. If someone knows of an easy way to do that just let me know I saw several free software type programs however I'm pretty ignorant with install etc. We all know I know how to USE a chat area though LOL!

I know Connie has put the house up for sale that was discussed in chat... so I assume things are moving along... I'd say wait for BJ to give us an update :)

However just in case... I agree, a place to enter our e-mails for notifications would be great.


Melody

[Sleeping Bear]

Well, good. My post has had the desired effect in that we are now planning on where to 'meet' when things change around here.

There may be plans in the works and if they are they are being kept very quiet, which is fine to a point.

Maybe it's time to get the plans, if any, out in the open and perhaps the expense involved in the change can be absorbed by many of us who wish this site to continue.

I for one would have no problem in contributing $ to keep the site and someone running it.

It's had to make decisions when out of the loop, though.

Group hug, baby.:grouphug: Thanks Swampy for giving me a Sleeping Bear Group Hug Smilie. We'll keep the site going and growing as you wanted.

[MikePL]

How many gigabytes are exactly needed? I can't imagine there are terabutes as there are not enough photo posters on this forum to fill up so much space. If a hosting company is needed, then I can recommend the one I use (lunarpages.com). I've been with them for over 6 years without a single problem. But their space is up to 1,5TB. Is that enough? Price is around $96 per year.

When the forum gets moved it is easy to set up a temporary forum. I can set one up if required.

Oh and my mail is michal 'you-know-what-goes-here' jedrak.com just in case there's a crash.

If a website needs to be created then I can also be helpful. I did all my sites myself and have a few.

[blackjack]

I don't have dates since my full time job which Melody mentioned prevents me from having free time to travel to Colorado. I had originally planned to fly out there, pick up the server and fly back in February, but those plans are postponed.

The plan (order of steps not set in stone)
1) Move the server for easier migration

2) Migrate the forums, review, and additional web to the hosting company which already hosts bryanmaine.com. During migration I have considered making a redirect of theswampbbs.com domain to s2pro.com or fmount.com. Both domains will remain active, but would like to retire theswampbbs.com from forum duties so it may be used by the Maine family if they choose. This will be the biggest step considering the size of the mysql database. The total disk required to run the forum is under 20GB. But moving the mysql data files up to the host will take awhile. (read days)

3) Look for more moderators/admin if required. I leave it up to the community to elect who you would like to moderator the different parts of the forum.

4) Need to start a discussion on what you would like out of this forum.

5) At some point, probably not this year, will need to find someone who would be willing to take over the ownership of the forum. This will include handling the costs associated with hosting, domain, forum license, etc.

This process starts when I am able pick up the server to prep it for migration. Until then, continue using the site. It's not going away. If it were to crash I will know since I have monitors that will alert me.

As for who's the go to guy.. That will be me for the time being.

bj

[easternherp]

Thanks for the update.

[JPS]

Thanks a lot for the efforts, BJ !

....and many thanks in advance for the efforts to come :p !

:tongue2:
J-P.

[Auminer]

Many Thanks for filling us in BJ, don't know where we would be without ya! Well, on second thought, I do...

[photoworks]

No words to say...
Thank you BJ :clap:

[Sleeping Bear]

Thanks BJ, that's what all of us were looking for, an update on what's going on.

Thanks for being the 'go-to-guy' as well, I appreciate your work. I noticed that you do not have an email on your profile so that we can contact you just in case we get locked out of the forum (has happened to me and others) by some burp of the software.

Thanks again for your work to keep the family together.:righton:

[Wichita Wayne]

I have spent the winter trying to catch the Bald Eagles at the two lakes near my home and have not had much luck. Bird photography is new to me so I am still in the "yuck" phase. However when Spring gets here I should be taking a lot more pictures and will probably be back to my old self on the forum. BJ looks like he has a good plan and I hope all of it works out. Thanks to him and his helpers for keeping things going.

[Serge]

Just found this thread, and like others, have been less active
mainly due to being more bussy.
Working two extra nights just to keep my mortgage going, have been elected to head our Scout Group and all the paperwork that that entails etc.
But still support the Spirit started with this Family, now in my 6th year here and would like to see it keep going, so thanks to BJ and everyone!

[blackjack]

Just a quick heads up... I am flying to Colorado today and will be moving the forum server on Monday. There will be an outage as the server is in transit

[Melody]

Just a quick heads up... I am flying to Colorado today and will be moving the forum server on Monday. There will be an outage as the server is in transit

Such a guy!!! Thank You!!

Leaving 80 degree temps and sunshine to head to Colorado and SNOW!!! Just checked the weather there... Be safe...



Melody

[Sleeping Bear]

Just a quick heads up... I am flying to Colorado today and will be moving the forum server on Monday. There will be an outage as the server is in transit

Thanks BJ. Say hello to Connie for all of us.

Don't worry about the snow, the worst of it has already fallen and the forecast is just for a little bit of snow today. The roads should be nice and clear.

[Tom V]

Thanks in advance Blackjack!

[Auminer]

Can't THANK YOU enough BJ! :righton: