As we've been hinting at for a long time, our new forum software will be deployed tomorrow. We've spent a year (on and off) preparing and testing the migration, which takes about 15 hours to copy our 500gb database and another few hours to configure. Most of the copying will be done overnight tonight. We've tested that process five times. We've had a few hiccups to work out, including tracking down and deleting corrupt attachment images from a database of more than 500,000 photos. But after five trial runs, we're confident that everything will go smoothly now that we're doing a live migration.
This will be the 6th major forum software update in our 23 years online, but the first since 2011. Most of you are probably familiar with this current design because we haven't changed it in so long. Most members like it the way it is and we've tried to keep the new look somewhat familiar in light of that preference.
Those of you who have been using some of our other sites like LawnMowerForum.com, WeldingSite.com, or FarmChat.com will find the new layout to be very similar. We've become familiar with the platform on those sites and can say that it is far superior in terms of presenting content and keeping track of threads.
In time, this new software will allow us to add some new features that will be exclusive to TBN.
The TBN iphone and android apps will remain the same so those of you who use those (myself included) won't see any difference in your experience.
For those of you curious about what TBN will look like tomorrow, here are some screen shots of the new design.
This will be the 6th major forum software update in our 23 years online, but the first since 2011. Most of you are probably familiar with this current design because we haven't changed it in so long. Most members like it the way it is and we've tried to keep the new look somewhat familiar in light of that preference.
Those of you who have been using some of our other sites like LawnMowerForum.com, WeldingSite.com, or FarmChat.com will find the new layout to be very similar. We've become familiar with the platform on those sites and can say that it is far superior in terms of presenting content and keeping track of threads.
In time, this new software will allow us to add some new features that will be exclusive to TBN.
The TBN iphone and android apps will remain the same so those of you who use those (myself included) won't see any difference in your experience.
For those of you curious about what TBN will look like tomorrow, here are some screen shots of the new design.
