An Announcement....

Discussions about all things to do with buses, trucks, and the homes made within them.

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Sharkey
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An Announcement....

Post by Sharkey »

..... wil be made soon (this weekend some time) about the forum, it's future and other interesting developments.

This is a read-only topic, but after the announcement, it likely will be unlocked for comments.
Sharkey
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Post by Sharkey »

So, before it gets too late, here's the announcement:

I'm pleased to announce that effective immediately, I am stepping down as Administrator of the forum.

No, wait, that's not very upbeat. Try again:

I'm pleased to announce that effective immediately, Stuart Crawford (stuartcnz) will assume the duties of forum Administrator.

Many of you have been wondering what the future of the forum would bring, and I'm happy to say that Stuart and I have reached a gentlemen's agreement to turn the day-to-day activities of the forum over to him on a permanent basis. Stuart has the technical skills to keep the forum running, and he also has a strong desire to see the community here build and thrive. He has plans to - well, I'll let him tell you about that.

I'll be working in the background to help with coding and getting Stuart up to speed on forum technicalities, as well as see to it that many of the features you as users enjoyed on the "old" forum are returned to working order.

I do have to stress that the recent changes to the appearance and functionality of the forum has NOT been the fault of Stuart. Seven years of code changes to install features and spam prevention had made the software become unstable, particularly on the admin backend. The only reasonable method of transferring the forum database over was to do a clean install of stock-standard forum software. Now that the most recent and effective spam preventions work so well, the bits of code that were making the forum a bit wonky will no longer be needed, and they will not be replaced in the new modified code.

Also let me make it very clear that NO FORUM CONTENT HAS BEEN DELETED during this process. Well, except for those thousands of topic posts and threads that got bombed by Osama bin Moderator, but those are going to be restored, per the results of the poll that was conducted. Some forum categories (Buy/Sell/Trade, Guest Book, etc) have been moved to a non-public area, but the information is still intact. The posts contained in those forum categories will be reviewed for relevance and perhaps some of it moved back into public view.

Hopefully, these changes will appeal to all forum users and maybe even entice some of those who recently left to come back and be friendly again.

As for myself, I'm going to spend my ever-frequently-less time online posting the "Best Of" my own forum posts up as weblog entries on my web site. The process is barely begun, and probably will be ongoing into the winter months. You can find the start of the process here.

Finally, I hope that all of you will welcome Stuart as the new Administrator, and give him some slack time as he builds the forum and moves it forward into new greatness. Although he's probably sleeping as I write this, perhaps after he has had his toast and Vegemite, he'll step up to the microphone to say a few words, then wield the awesome power of his new Administrator's wand and open this topic for comments.

Or not, I can't say that I know much of anything useful anymore.
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stuartcnz
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Post by stuartcnz »

Thank you for the welcome Sharkey, and a very big thank you for all of the time and effort that you have put in to building this forum, over the years.

I hope we continue to see you in here, as and how the mood takes you. Your personal knowledge on a wide range of topics has been an incredible asset to this forum.
Dusty
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Post by Dusty »

COOL 8)
58 Bedford House
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stuartcnz
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Post by stuartcnz »

I guess I should say a little bit about my intentions for the future of the forum.

To start with, my first goal is to bring back the forum to the state of pre 7/19. So until the full database restore, you probably won't notice much if any change to how it is now.

There is a huge treasure trove of knowledge buried in the archives, which I want to preserve. So any modification's that I make will be done with the motto "Slowly but Surely".

Once we get the lost forums restored, I will start working on getting chat working again.

Only after that is done and stable, will I start working towards shifting the forum onto a more modern platform, that the knew servers are set up to handle. At that point I will look at prettying up the look of the forum.

In the mean time, I have opened up another portal into the forum. http://nomadichome.org/forum/ This has been done with a quick and dirty piece of code, but should get you there for now, otherwise keep using the [url]http://********.org[/url] URL for now. It is now http://www.nomadicista.org
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somewhereinusa
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Post by somewhereinusa »

Welcome as admin. :D
Guest

Post by Guest »

Welcome Stuart, and thanks Sharkey for the many pages of useful info I've spent many hours reading after finding the forum a couple years or so ago. Several things have kept me from hanging out here as much the last few weeks, and it seems that some things in my life are demanding more and more of my time, so I'm not sure how often I'll be able to stop by. Hafta take it as it comes.
Thanks again,
Stan
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Post by kouka »

Thank-you both for making this work. It would terrible if the forum was ever lost permanently!
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Lostranger
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An Announcement....

Post by Lostranger »

Welcome, Stuart. Thanks for taking on what I consider to be important work. Mr. Sharkey has been an asset to us this past year as we have negotiated major redirection. I'm glad you're willing to take the helm, and you certainly have our best wishes. I have already learned to appreciate your input to the forum.

Sharkey, you have my respect. This site epitomizes what I think the internet community should be: Not a place to hawk schemes and diet fads and Chinese-made crap, but a forum for real information and inspiration from and for real people. My wife and I are grateful for the time and effort it took to get this thing up and keep it going. You are a man of both skill and humility, and I like that combination. Please don't hide your knowledge under a basket.

Best of luck and prospects to you both.

Jim in NC
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Post by Stealth Camper »

Sharkey,
I sent my thanks in an email a few days ago. I repeat; Thank you!!

Stuart,
Greetings and Salivations!! Always interesting to hear from you. Glad to see you taking this on!
dburt
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Post by dburt »

This appears to be good news! I hope we can get back to the old forum format, which was familiar and easy to find one's way around in. I am glad Stuart has 'volunteered' for this rather large task. I am just glad someone can pull this off and get us all back to normal- whatever that is for some of us :lol:
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Post by yoeddynz »

i had discovered the old forum quite late and hadn't had a decent look about it yet. I'm glad stu has stepped up to take the reins. Cheers sharky for the efforts so far. Keep the very helpful info coming!
It has always surprised me at the lack of forums dedicated to building and living in, housetrucks and buses.
Stu had started a forum on htnz but it never really took off sadly. This always suprises me given the amount of house trucks and buses in nz.
I hope this forum really takes off, as much as i am always hoping that people around the world will continue to build beautiful houses on wheels out of wood and metal - not plastic! :-)

Cheers,
Alex.
Merlin - Aus

Thanks

Post by Merlin - Aus »

Hi Stuart,
I for one am extremely relieved that someone has kept Mr Sharkey alive. I thought we were homeless. After that near death experience I will make the effort to post on my build* and any relevant info from Aus. When things settle down a bit can some one explain how to transfer photos from Photo bucket, (make sure you type real slow :D).
Thanks a million
Charlie.
* 5.9 metre + luton peak , aluminium frame and skin (building from scratch)
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stuartcnz
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Re: Thanks

Post by stuartcnz »

Merlin - Aus wrote:When things settle down a bit can some one explain how to transfer photos from Photo bucket, (make sure you type real slow :D).
Here is an explanation for posting photo's from tinypic http://www.mrsharkey.org/viewtopic.php?t=1565

You can probably use the info from that thread to work out how to do it from Photo Bucket. If not someone else may pipe in?
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Headache
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Post by Headache »

Stuart and Sharkey both have my eternal gratitude for this. As a former moderator on a vbulletin/php built website and forums I have only an inkling of the vast amount of work it can take to properly manage and implement anything when playing amongst the databases.

I'm so glad the two of you worked something out and Sharkey's is continuing on. I'm also glad to see that Sharkey himself is also continuing on as I was afraid that he was going to slip out quietly despite our emotional protestations. Sharkey you and your brethren who started this "movement" almost FORTY years ago are the catalysts and mentors for those of us stepping into it now. Even though you may think you haven't much else to contribute you may want to rethink that. I'm sure that there will be many times where nothing beats advice from "the man".

Thank you both, over and over again. :D
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