Site update news ...

[gerryvz]

I made a couple of changes to the site today, with the advice and assistance of a new friend who is an expert programmer and an expert in XenForo forums. We met in person today when I was in Silicon Valley on a business trip. He is the author of quite a number of enhancements that this forum uses to make it more friendly and usable.

In any case, the three things that we did to make the forum more improved and usable are small, but significant:

1) We replaced the forum's default number-counting method to eliminate the "K" after the numbers, and replace it with the actual number. Meaning when you see the number of views that a particular sub-forum has, or the number of times a specific post has been viewed -- it no longer says "1.8k" but rather says "1,800" which is better and more helpful.

2) We replaced the forum's use of the "index.php" file name as part of the URL, to remove this so that URLs are now friendlier and a bit shorter than they used to be. This doesn't affect the forum itself -- just makes things a bit bitter.

3) We also now have the forum directing to the default "www.500eboard.co/forums" URL. Meaning, if you type in "500eboard.co/forums" it will automatically insert the "www." into the URL and send it to the forum's main page. Again this is more of a "helpful assistance" thing but it makes life a bit easier for folks who don't want or are too lazy to type in the "www' before the URL.

Looking forward........

I am going to be making some changes to the "ordering" of the forums as to how they display on the main forum home page. I will be moving some of the forum sections up which are the most viewed/watched forums so that they are at the top of the page and easier to find for folks .... less scrolling.

Look for this in the next week or two, perhaps sooner.

 

[Kyiv]

Gerry, wouldn't be bad if there was a function that allows members to make donations. You and Dave give a lot, but there is no way, for some of us who can't contribute to the technical knowledge base, to give something back, even if symbolically

 

[gerryvz]

On Friday evening, I did a slight upgrade to the Wiki software to version 4.1.0 Beta 4 Build 5. The Wiki was down for around 5 minutes, but the forum was not down nor was affected in any way.

 

[xfadmin]

As @gerryvz had mentioned in the past, there is a new capability that has been implemented in recent weeks, which should be of benefit to everyone.

This is the new "Quick Message" function, which allows you to dash off a quick message to another member, without having to open a full XenForo "conversation." Conversations are more flexible and full-featured, and you can add or delete people from a conversation. Conversations also are stored and can be closed and then re-opened in the future.

In the past, I have disabled the ability of members (site admins excepted) to add attachments/photos to conversation messages. I will change this and allow ALL members to add attachments to Conversations messages.

Quick Messages are short messages that can be sent only between two users. They are saved for a full year if the recipient does not read them, and they are deleted after 7 days if they have been read by the recipient. Quick Messages do not allow attachments to be added to the message, unfortunately.

There are two ways to access Quick Messages:

1) Using the little "paper airplane" icon beneath the name of the person you want to send the message to



and 2) Originating a Quick Message through your own "Name Menu" at the top of the screen, as shown below:



Enjoy your Quick Messaging !!!

 

[ace10]

Was messaged from another board user via the quick messenger. Found it to be kinda strange and lacking in the linearity of a proper email/PM string.

 

[xfadmin]

Achtung:

Some optimizations and "changing around" have been made on the forum's main page.

Specifically, the most utilized forums and sub-forums (the mechanical, technical and classifieds) are now at the top of the forum. The 400E/E420 sub-forums are still lower, and the "Welcome Center" sub-forums (including the Announcements & Admin, and Site Feedback Requests forums), are now at the BOTTOM of the forum display order. The "500E FAQ" sub-forum, which was never really ever used, was removed entirely.

We will be making additional tweaks to the navigation buttons at the top of every screen, eliminating the "Home" "Feeds" and "What's New" buttons as they are largely redundant. The "Forums" button will be the first button, followed by Wiki and Media, and then Members and Members Map. The navigation button changes will happen in the next few days.

The purpose for all of this is to streamline the site and to help visitors and members more quickly find the information they are looking for, by having it at the top of the forum rather than in the middle or bottom. And to remove clutter on the top navigation bar.

Thanks,
500Eboard Administration

 

[gerryvz]

Was messaged from another board user via the quick messenger. Found it to be kinda strange and lacking in the linearity of a proper email/PM string.

That's why it's called the "quick messenger" -- for dashing off a quick note to one other member. You have the option to use either Quick Messenger or Conversations. As Burger King said for many years, "Have it Your Way."

 

[ace10]

The "What's New" button allows one to easily revisit a recent thread which had activity, but has already been viewed and no longer appears in the "New Posts" result.

Is there another way to see the recent activity regardless of viewed status?

 

[ace10]

That's why it's called the "quick messenger" -- for dashing off a quick note to one other member. You have the option to use either Quick Messenger or Conversations. As Burger King said for many years, "Have it Your Way."

Where do the quick messenger "messages" go after they have been read?

 

[gerryvz]

Where do the quick messenger "messages" go after they have been read?

As mentioned previously, Quick Messages, once read, are stored and then automatically deleted after seven days by a system process. Unread Quick Messages are kept for 365 days, then auto-deleted; or if read during that 365-day period, are then auto-deleted after 7 days.

Quick Messages both sent and received can be accessed through the Quick Messages panel, as shown below. You access Quick Messages by clicking your name in the Navigation Bar at the top of every screen, and selecting "Quick messages" in the drop-down menu.

 

[ace10]

I know that there is a setting for Quick Message alerts, but is there a way to turn off the functionality at the user level? So that it forces a forum member to send a PM?

I guess I really don't understand the point of QM. Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things.

 

[gerryvz]

No, it can't be turned off unless for a broad class of forum members (such as all registered members). If you don't understand it, don't use it. It's a "quick" message, intended for short messages. And it also isn't retained forever like Conversations are (which adds to the size of the database).

A lot of folks have difficulty getting their heads around Conversations, because it's different from the old "PM" thing that the vBulletin site had. And by the way, a LOT of XenForo forums that have converted from vBulletin have had these conversations as their members don't quite get it.

Think of Conversations as an evolution of the old PM concept, which is modeled after e-mail. Conversations are much more robust than PMs were, because you can add and remove people, exit yourself (either temporarily or permanently) and so on. Think of a Conversation as an ongoing thing that is picked up and suspended and reconstituted again at a later date if desired.

When all participants in a Conversation leave it (you have to manually do this if you wish to), then the conversation is deleted from the database. Otherwise it stays in the DB as long as there are active participants in it.

A quick message is a lightweight communication ONLY between two members, very short-term in nature, and not permanent. It's sort of a lightweight PM.

Here's some information about Conversations vs. the "old" PMs....

XenForo-Personal Conversations vs. vB-Personal Messages | Recumbent Riders International

PM's, or Private Messages, on almost every discussion board are split apart into individual, unrelated, non-indexed messages. Such that, you have an...

www.recumbentriders.org

 

[gerryvz]

XenForo has released version 2.1.6 of the forum software, along with new versions of the Media Gallery and Enhanced Search modules.

I plan to bring the forum down for approximately 10-15 minutes, later this afternoon, to upload and install these modules. These are primarily bug-fix patches, and there is no significant new functionality to the forum capabilities. This "down-time" will be around 5:00 PM EST / 2:00 PM PST. You will see the normal/typical "DO NOT WIG OR GO POSTAL" banner displayed when the upgrade is happening.

XenForo also has noted that they are hard at work on version 2.2 of the forum software, which will have some new and interesting features and capabilities. Though....they've been pretty vague to date on what they are.

I expect that version 2.2 will probably be launching in the spring of 2020 -- definitely by mid-year. Of course, I will keep folks updated on how it is progressing. Since it is a significant upgrade, I will probably hold off on updating the forum until I know that all of our "add-on" modules and the forum "skins" are fully compatible with the new software.

Between now and then, I do expect XenForo to release a couple of more bug-fixes. They seem to be issing them about every 60 days or so, with a high degree of consistency.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[Jlaa]

The "What's New" button allows one to easily revisit a recent thread which had activity, but has already been viewed and no longer appears in the "New Posts" result.

Is there another way to see the recent activity regardless of viewed status?

Yes! I regularly use the "What's New" button as well.

 

[gsxr]

I have the "New posts" link in my Favorites bar. Is there a different link for "What's new"?

https://www.500eboard.co/forums/whats-new/posts/

 

[Jlaa]

This is the "What's new" button that I see (From the main black menu bar) ... it is easy b/c its on the main bar.




This is what I see when I click on your link ---- it seems to be a submenu under "forums"?

 

[gsxr]

D'oh - got it!

"What's New" is a top-level menu that I never noticed. Clicking on it shows both "Latest posts", and also "Latest profile posts".

The link I use is in the drop-down menu underneath What's New, and mine only shows new posts; more specifically threads with new posts since my last visit.

 

[gerryvz]

XenForo has released version 2.1.6 of the forum software, along with new versions of the Media Gallery and Enhanced Search modules.

I plan to bring the forum down for approximately 10-15 minutes, later this afternoon, to upload and install these modules. These are primarily bug-fix patches, and there is no significant new functionality to the forum capabilities. This "down-time" will be around 5:00 PM EST / 2:00 PM PST. You will see the normal/typical "DO NOT WIG OR GO POSTAL" banner displayed when the upgrade is happening.

XenForo also has noted that they are hard at work on version 2.2 of the forum software, which will have some new and interesting features and capabilities. Though....they've been pretty vague to date on what they are.

I expect that version 2.2 will probably be launching in the spring of 2020 -- definitely by mid-year. Of course, I will keep folks updated on how it is progressing. Since it is a significant upgrade, I will probably hold off on updating the forum until I know that all of our "add-on" modules and the forum "skins" are fully compatible with the new software.

Between now and then, I do expect XenForo to release a couple of more bug-fixes. They seem to be issing them about every 60 days or so, with a high degree of consistency.

Cheers,
Gerry

There is also a significant Linux system update, primarily for php and the Elasticsearch engine, which was released today. I will also be downloading and applying these system patches after I update the XenForo software, and then rebooting the server to apply all of them, as a last step.

These types of system updates are released around once or twice a month.

I do not anticipate any additional system downtime (10-15 minutes, total) from what I stated earlier, as the result of these additional software installations later today.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

All software has been updated, and all is well.

Total forum down-time: 17 minutes.

 

[gerryvz]

A new and subtle "tweak" for those of you interested.

On all of the forum's "FOR SALE" related sub-forums, the forum display screen now shows a 'thumbnail' photo from the specific thread's attachments.

See photo below:

 

[gerryvz]

COMING SOON:

The First Annual 500Eboard Photo Contest!

This contest will allow members to upload their favorite 500E-related photos for the contest, and then other members can vote on their favorite photos. At the end of the contest, the winner will receive a special 500E-related prize.

 

[gerryvz]

We will be kicking off the Photo Contest on February 10th. During the period from Feb. 10-28, you guys will be able to upload photos for the contest. Voting will take place during the March 1-31 period. Results will be announced on April 1.



I also this morning simplified the "Navigation Bar" under the top banner logo, by removing a few redundant and/or non-used buttons.

Going forward, we'll have the buttons for FORUMS, WIKI, MEDIA, WHAT'S NEW, and MEMBERS MAP for folks to navigate the site.

Also, as a tip, if you EVER need to get back to the main screen / forum list, you can just click once on the site's "banner image" at the top of the screen, and it will bring you to the main forum listing.

Next up -- and this has been a long-standing request initiated by our resident Mercedes Flopper, @alabbasi, we will be creating and adding a new "Home Page" for the site in the very near future. This means that when you type in "https://www.500eboard.co" you will get a "real" home page instead of a server error message telling you that access is blocked to the site. Same thing if you type in "500Eboard" -- you will get routed to the new home page. Basically you can think of this upcomign home page as the "doormat" for the site -- to welcome people in to go to the forums, and other goodies that are coming shortly......stay tuned.

 

[alabbasi]

Next up -- and this has been a long-standing request initiated by our resident Mercedes Flopper, @alabbasi, we will be creating and adding a new "Home Page" for the site in the very near future.

Fantastic, and I have the perfect photo that I use to unlock my phone.

 

[036]

Very nice idea. Got some sweet pics.

 

[gerryvz]

We have a new feature that is a slight tweak, to make the forum a bit more "liveable" when displaying posts with a lot of images attached.

I've modified the behavior of how images are attached, so that they are displayed in a vertical listing of thunbnails, rather than a large horizontally displayed block of images or documents.

The photos below display the "new" attachment display behavior.

You need to know one thing (as it has always been when clicking on attached images in XenForo):

a) If you want to display the image in the "lightbox," which is the black screen that allows you to move between one image to the next, CLICK ON THE IMAGE THUMBNAIL.

b) If you want to display the image in a separate window, as a single image, CLICK ON THE FILE NAME OF THE IMAGE.

 

[gerryvz]

Here's the contrast between the "old" and the "new" displays of attached images.

This is the "default" XF behavior when listing images:




This is the "old" vBulletin behavior when listing images:




You can see the "new" behavior in the post above. It is much more compact and looks more like things did in vBulletin.

 

[gerryvz]

Folks:

I want to formally announce a new site feature -- a new Chat capability. This is an informal chat room for folks to use as they please, mainly as a public bulletin board.

The Chat area is accessible via the menu bar at the top of your screen. It's also at this URL: https://www.500eboard.co/forums/chat/

Enjoy !

 

[maw1124]

Thanks for your leadership, GVZ. These explanations are helpful.

Cheers,

maw

 

[gerryvz]

Thanks for your leadership, GVZ. These explanations are helpful.

Cheers,

maw

We have a couple of new smilies on the forum.

One is of @gsxr reading his Windows 95-based EPC, and is triggered with : gsxrepc: (less the space)



The other one is in honor of Michael Jackson, and is triggered with : mj: (less the space)

 

[gerryvz]

I have added photo illustrations of each color of 500E/E500, that I have record of, to the Wiki entry on colors.

You can find the page here: https://www.500eboard.co/forums/wiki/?title=500E-Paint-Codes

If you click on each thumbnail, it will expand to a full size photograph. This should be helpful in identifying specific colors, and the differences between them. I'm still chasing down the last few colors.

 

[gerryvz]

We have a new smilie. I expect to use it a fair bit ........

 

[gsxr]

awww, it isn't animated?

 

[gerryvz]

As of this afternoon, I have added a 15th site logo banner. This rotates randomly with the other 14 banner images when the site window is loaded, or refreshed.

Here's the new banner:

 

[gerryvz]

I made a slight tweak this morning, so that "sticky" threads (threads that are permanently located at the top of any sub-forum) are highlighted with a light-purple color, to separate them from the "normal" threads in the sub-forum.

This provides a visual marker that tells you that the thread is sticky and thus .... important/notable.

 

[maw1124]

As of this afternoon, I have added a 15th site logo banner. This rotates randomly with the other 14 banner images when the site window is loaded, or refreshed.

Here's the new banner:

View attachment 95659

This one showed up on my screen this morning. Looks good! Thanks GVZ for all you do here.

Cheers,

maw

 

[gerryvz]

Glad you saw it. It was a bit of a whim to create a new banner ... but what the heck ?!?!?

 

[gerryvz]

An update for folks -- in the next couple of weeks (likely in about a week) we will have completed one of the major outstanding items from the original migration from vBulletin to XenForo -- the translation of the "Thanks" received on the old forum by each member, to add to each corresponding member on the new forum as a "Thumbs Up"

Stay tuned on this. It's a very very complex thing to do, and I've been working on it for a long time. And finally close to getting it done.

 

[gsxr]

Gerry, is there an option to display full-size thumbnails (instead of tiny thumbnails) for attached images? The list is a bit of a pain, having to click each and wait for them to open each in a new window...

 

[gerryvz]

Gerry, is there an option to display full-size thumbnails (instead of tiny thumbnails) for attached images? The list is a bit of a pain, having to click each and wait for them to open each in a new window...

View attachment 95761

If you click on any thumbnail image itself, then it will open in the lightbox so you can flip between images with the arrow.

if you click on the name of the image, then it will open by itself in a new window.

 

[gerryvz]

If you click on any thumbnail image itself, then it will open in the lightbox so you can flip between images with the arrow.

if you click on the name of the image, then it will open by itself in a new window.

Well, is it working OK for you now ... clicking on the IMAGE rather than the FILENAME ?!?!?

 

[Efraim]

Here's the new banner:
View attachment 95659

Cool! I notied this. The car is the same as in offical marketing picture. Never seen this before. Did MB open more their picture archives?

 

[gerryvz]

Gerry, is there an option to display full-size thumbnails (instead of tiny thumbnails) for attached images? The list is a bit of a pain, having to click each and wait for them to open each in a new window...

View attachment 95761

If you click on any thumbnail image itself, then it will open in the lightbox so you can flip between images with the arrow.

if you click on the name of the image, then it will open by itself in a new window.

@gsxr, is there an option to display images using a lightbox on the w124performance.com web site? The lists in individual file folders are a bit of a pain, having to click each and wait for them to open each in a new window...

 

[gerryvz]

Today (Sunday, March 29, 2020), approximately 5:00 PM EDT (2:00 PM PDT), I will be taking the forum off-line for approximately 5-10 minutes to work on the "integration" of the vBulletin "Likes" with the exising new XenForo "Likes" system. This is one of the last outstanding pieces (and member requests) in the migration process.

Much of this off-line time will be because I will perform a full database dump (backup) before I add and then execute the code required to perform the migration.

It may or may not work; if it does, great. If it doesn't, fine, I'll bring the forum back on-line and work on fixing the code to try it again in the near future.

Cheers,
Gerry

 

[gerryvz]

An update for folks -- in the next couple of weeks (likely in about a week) we will have completed one of the major outstanding items from the original migration from vBulletin to XenForo -- the translation of the "Thanks" received on the old forum by each member, to add to each corresponding member on the new forum as a "Thumbs Up"

Stay tuned on this. It's a very very complex thing to do, and I've been working on it for a long time. And finally close to getting it done.

Today (Sunday, March 29, 2020), approximately 5:00 PM EDT (2:00 PM PDT), I will be taking the forum off-line for approximately 5-10 minutes to work on the "integration" of the vBulletin "Likes" with the exising new XenForo "Likes" system. This is one of the last outstanding pieces (and member requests) in the migration process.

Much of this off-line time will be because I will perform a full database dump (backup) before I add and then execute the code required to perform the migration.

It may or may not work; if it does, great. If it doesn't, fine, I'll bring the forum back on-line and work on fixing the code to try it again in the near future.

Cheers,
Gerry

You may have seen this image, for several hours today.



Here is why:

Today, the forum was off-line for about three hours and 50 minutes. The reason for this was a very complex migration and integration of the "Likes" from the old vBulletin forum to the new forum.

This was an extremely complicated task from a technical standpoint, and one that I have worked on, on and off, over the past year. There were some snags that I ran into in doing this, starting yesterday (where the forum was off-line for about 20 minutes total while I was working on this) and continuing today. The snags involved the forum's database, and an incomplete migration.

It took ten tries to complete this migration of the "Thanks" from the old database -- you can see ten different new database tables created in the forum's main database, one for each attempt. Finally, on the 10th try, I was able to complete the integration of the old forum's "Thanks" with everyone's existing "Likes" count.

There were 61,557 "Thanks" on the old forum that were imported into this forum's database.






On the left side of the database management screen shot, you can see the old "vbulletin" database that ran the old vBulletin forum, as well as a new "xenforo1" database.

The "xenforo1" database is actually the old database that ran the forum, up until 12:00 noon today. This database was copied and renamed from "xenforo" to "xenforo1," and a new empty/blank "xenforo" database was created. Then, the database with the migrated "Thanks" (you can see it at the top, called "clients_500eboard_co" was imported into the blank "xenforo" database, and this became the new database that underpins the forum.

This took some time to do (the size of the "xenforo" and "xenforo1" databases is around 650 MB), and everything had to be properly vetted and tested after the migration was complete. If the database was corrupted in any way, then the whole process would be for naught.

And even this process took several tries, but I finally was able to get it right.

This morning, before I started the migration, I took the "Likes" stats for a few folks on the forum. I took them during the failed migration #1, above. And then I took the stats again after migration #10, which worked. Here are the "Thanks" stats for these individuals -- before, during and after the migration. So you can see that the migration re-added significant numbers of thanks for the folks who had them.

500Eboard Member	Thanks with 500Eboard only (before migration)	Thanks total after botched migration #1	Total thanks after successful migration (#10)
@gsxr	4508	7837	14421
@Glen	309	1022	1533
@2phast	395	553	10042
@JC220	2116	2771	5120
@5thscaleracer	137	237	313
@gerryvz	5607	8256	15151
@Trae	118	478	1006

Thanks to everyone for putting up with a long day of the forum being down. While nothing was in jeopardy nor was any information lost, it was a lot of work to make the migration of the "Thanks" from the old forum happen on this new forum.

We can check off one more big item that was outstanding from the migration a year ago.

 

[gerryvz]

We have a new reaction that is tailored to the needs of folks on this forum -- see if you can guess what it is:

 

[nocfn]

Informative

 

[gerryvz]

As @gerryvz had mentioned in the past, there is a new capability that has been implemented in recent weeks, which should be of benefit to everyone.

This is the new "Quick Message" function, which allows you to dash off a quick message to another member, without having to open a full XenForo "conversation." Conversations are more flexible and full-featured, and you can add or delete people from a conversation. Conversations also are stored and can be closed and then re-opened in the future.

In the past, I have disabled the ability of members (site admins excepted) to add attachments/photos to conversation messages. I will change this and allow ALL members to add attachments to Conversations messages.

Quick Messages are short messages that can be sent only between two users. They are saved for a full year if the recipient does not read them, and they are deleted after 7 days if they have been read by the recipient. Quick Messages do not allow attachments to be added to the message, unfortunately.

There are two ways to access Quick Messages:

1) Using the little "paper airplane" icon beneath the name of the person you want to send the message to
View attachment 91333


and 2) Originating a Quick Message through your own "Name Menu" at the top of the screen, as shown below:
View attachment 91334


Enjoy your Quick Messaging !!!

A new version of the Quick Message add-on was released this morning, so I updated / upgraded the existing one. Per the developer, here are the changes:

Added features:

• the send a quick message to a user from the message user info block now supports placing the icon beside the user name.
• option added to display the list of all quick messages sent and received above or below the conversation list. This can be turned off.
• option added to have the quick message centre link to be displayed at the top of most pages. This uses the fa-icon only. Members can now view/send quick messages from just about anywhere.

There some new enhancements that are notable, and that I'll highlight here:

First of all, if you go to your "Conversations" list page (select "Show All..." at the bottom of the drop-down menu when you click on the envelope at the top of your screen), you will see a new bar at the top of that Conversation page, with an arrow, that allows you to show all of the Quick Message conversations:




If you click on that arrow, the Quick Message list will expand. It's collapsed by default.

Second, there is now a new "paper airplane" icon at the top of the screen, so you can easily get into a Quick Message as needed, from pretty much anywhere.







For those folks who are scratching their head as to the difference between a Quick Message and a Conversation .... a QM is basically a quick one-to-one private note between two people. It goes away by itself a week after it's been read. It's informal, quick, easy.

A Conversation is more formal, more along the lines of a "PM" from the old forum. It's more permanent, and you can add people or delete people from a Conversation. You can leave a conversation if you want to (effectively deleting it from your list, but not from the forum's database). I often add people to Conversations that people strike up with me, because I don't have the answer or would like the additional perspective of other forum members as part of it.

A Quick Message is good (for example) for trading PayPal information for a parts transaction, or for an informal question.

Hope this helps ! Enjoy !

 

[gerryvz]

It looks like either today or tomorrow, the forum will hit a milestone of 200,000 posts. When we get to the 250,000+ range, the forum will become (by forum standards) more at the bottom of the smaller "mid-sized" forum range. The threshhold for being considered a "large" forum would be 1,000,000 posts.

The largest XenForo forum that I know of, has more than 126 million posts. That is A LOT of data. I can't imagine the size of the database behind that forum, but extrapolating from the size of this forum's database, it would be somewhere around 250-300 GIGABYTES in size (as compared to this forum's 450 MEGABYTE database).

 

[gerryvz]

It looks like either today or tomorrow, the forum will hit a milestone of 200,000 posts. When we get to the 250,000+ range, the forum will become (by forum standards) more at the bottom of the smaller "mid-sized" forum range. The threshhold for being considered a "large" forum would be 1,000,000 posts.

The largest XenForo forum that I know of, has more than 126 million posts. That is A LOT of data. I can't imagine the size of the database behind that forum, but extrapolating from the size of this forum's database, it would be somewhere around 250-300 GIGABYTES in size (as compared to this forum's 450 MEGABYTE database).

Looks like Zwilling gets the honors for the 200,000th post !!

 

[gerryvz]

Over the weekend, I'll be updating the "skin" that the forum uses (which is called "Flat Awesome +" with a new version that the developer released last night. This is the first major release of the skin since before I migrated the forum over to XenForo a little over a year ago.

I know that the vast majority of you use the "default" XenForo look and feel (though you can specify to use Flat Awesome at the bottom of any screen). I will be flipping this over so that the "default" look and feel will be Flat Awesome after the migration -- though you will still totally have the option of using the default style if you want to.

I don't expect the forum will be down for the upgrade of the Flat Awesome skin, and if things don't look right, I'll revert it back and have a chat with the developer about any incompatibilities that crop up. But I expect things to go very smoothly. I know that the developer has been working on this upgrade for the past year (he's been promising itd imminent release repeatedly since September). He's a great guy, so if there are any issues I am 100% confident he'll resolve them straightaway.

I'm going to wait a day or two (over the weekend) to do anything to see if any show-stoppers pop up from other folks today and tomorrow.

Anyway, just wanted to give you guys a heads up that this change is coming. It shouldn't be much of a change, and hopefully an improvement in both the look and feel, and usability, of the site.

Cheers,
Gerry