Oh well...

It has been an interesting 24 hours for me with lots of work and little sleep.

In a nutshell, here's what happened yesterday :

1130Z : old Forum taken to Read-Only state
1230Z : new Forum is installed
1245Z : first Automatic Forum Conversion failed
1330Z : alternative Automatic Forum Conversion used
1430Z : finetuning to the new Forum because many Settings did not make it over
1530Z : FTP Client suddenly begins transferring corrupt/incomplete data
1545Z : new Forum rendered unusable
1600Z : 2nd attempt to fix with two other FTP Clients
1630Z : important access restrictions cannot be set on the server for unknown reasons
1655Z : fiddling in and out of Forum Directories, old Forum Messages are deleted instead of the new Forum Messages - "human error"
1656Z : Seismic Institutes throughout Germany sense a highly localized 5.5 earthquake around this location
1700Z : old Forum is taken offline (InOp)
1715Z : Primary Harddrive failed - Installation damaged and LimOp
1730Z : desaster recovery in progress
1800Z : a single (!) functional most-recent Backup of the old Forum is rescued to a DVD-RW
2130Z : Primary Harddrive replaced, System recovery in progress
0230Z : Primary System is back up (LimOp)
0800Z : Completion of core assets on Primary System
1000Z : old Forum restoration in progress
1345Z : functionality checks completed, old Forum restored....

So if anyone wants to become a Forum Admin.... Think twice before you make that decision ;)

OMG so many bad things happened on one day  :o

So the board version keeps for now ?

Yes, definitely... At least until I can make sure the new Forum is 100% operational and all Settings are in place.

I'll likely try again end of this month :)

An advanced warning might be in order next time! ;)

The one thing you can ALWAYS count on with computers is ::):

"To ERR is HUMAN - But to foul things up COMPLETELY 'requires' a computer" ;D

...that and you can NEVER have enough backups! ;)

You did an AWESOME job considering the circumstances @Falcon! 8)

Sorry FalconFly I haven't been in that much. I'm still here, and still love my voodoo 3 3500 tv card, and the drivers you host, and your site here. I think it's nice the way it is.... unless you want to upgrade the script to catch sp@m b0ts. My old site got hit with them hard, and because I was just starting to learn php to use some scripts I found (I was made admin by another admin), I got booted from the server I shared the site with.... So I see if that's what you're doing if you're doing that. But your site still looks great. But Argh, programming, it's a pain, I remember my C++, always getting errors, missing programs... you know the deal. See you guys later.

Yeah, it was mainly for security (AntiSpam) and a load of nifty new Admin Options.

But other than that, it also offers lots of new Member Options that IMHO belong to a modern Forum.

Since the new Forum can work fully parallel to the existing one, people will be able to check it out without losing anything here in the old Forum.