Well, our messageboards are in new territory today. In order to revert us to full functionality -- ads displaying, ability to post and reply, ability to upload photos, ability to search -- I am probably going to have to configure a whole new forum, which will not resemble the structure you are all used to, but which will more closely resemble every other forum on the internet. We're working on several last-ditch fixes, but some sort of reckoning is coming soon.
In the meantime, you should be able to post messages, and call photos that have URLs, but posting and searching features will remain broken for the time being.
I do appreciate everyone's patience. We've been mostly trouble-free for almost 22 years now, and change is now almost inevitable.
This site is my gift to you; if you want to help out, consider a donation or sign up on PayPal for our Recurring Donations program.
As for preserving our archives, *that* will cost something. All of our archives still exist in some form. Most of them prior to 2011 are zipped up in a big tarball on our server, where the current and archive scripts can't see them. One of the disadvantages of this forum is that each message is saved as a file, rather than as a cell in a single file (database). The result is that we have to keep retiring older messages to make room for the new ones. Because of the way we go about that, our archives indexes (indices) are full of holes. If I ever wanted to archive everything we've ever posted here, I would still have to run all the scripts to deliver the messages, and I'd need a folder big enough for close to a million and a half messages. All too much for my brain or my appetite for challenge at this point.
Archives are a funny thing, in the sense that there are people who enjoy rummaging around to see what they can find on a given topic, and then there are those who prefer the here and now of real time posting and replying. I've always been in the latter camp.
As for porting all our history onto another forum platform, that would also be a huge undertaking, requiring unzipping and sorting out all the archived messages and writing new scripts that would move them into a big database. That would be the absolute best way to keep WoodCentral for posterity. I personally wouldn't be able to do it, and I don't know where to find someone I can hire, so it will remain moot for now.
As of yesterday, my tireless web gurus and coders have stabilized the major issues we experienced this past week, so we don't have to rush to judgment. If/when I do, I'll be able to put together some cost figures and then we can have a bake sale or something.
I do appreciate your thoughtfulness.
Ellis
PS. I came across a copy of a disk I produced a long time ago called "WoodCentral: The First Five Years." It actually has all the messages from that early period in a stand-alone delivery application. All the ads are broken now but it's still an interesting piece of site history. If anyone is interested, I can get someone to dub off some copies for sale.
