EVERYONE READ: Why the change?

[rustybayonet]

I thought the forum setup was great. Like a 1911 it worked with no problems and looked good too.

Some glock owner thought if I change the barrel, the sights, the guide rod the forum will be better? And then tell us how great glock is.

[BritinUSA]

Old software was out of date.

[Kraj]

Brian switched over to having someone else host the fourm instead of doing it himself and in order to do that the fourm had to update

[benos]

That is not correct. The old forums were running in IP's cloud just fine in the latest 3.x.x version. 

A lot of you will remember that recently the forums were shut down on two different occasions by google due to a "phishing" warning. In reality nothing was "wrong" with the forums on either occasion. But if google detects and connects enough potential or possible warnings together, they can block the site without me being able to do anything about it. As the one responsible for the forums - they are my baby. You cannot imagine how much stress those bans cause me. 

For both google bans... working with Invision Power to get them lifted, they recommended that upgrading to the latest version of their software would be HUGE. For the first ban, at that time my workload was already over the top due to my site and web store upgrade, and having all that move to a new server. And since I know a major upgrade will massively increase my workload due to the million emails, PMs, and posts I will have to deal with .... "I lost my password," "This doesn't work," "That doesn't work," "This isn't where it used to be" - I passed on the upgrade at that time. 

But I was fairly well caught up by the time of the second ban, so I told IP to do the upgrade.

Bottom line - if you - meaning each member - appreciates the forums and enjoys regularly participating in them... When a new version of IP's software is released, we have to upgrade (at some point in the not too distant future) because the old software will become unsupported. If we are running on unsupported software, the risk of the forums crashing or being hacked beyond repair is extremely real. It will happen, at some point. So we have to upgrade. There is no other choice.

Last, please remember - the vast wealth of helpful information contained in the forums is free to all members. So for those few who can't seem to refrain from complaining about the upgrade in nearly every post - that becomes very tiresome. 

[Bkreutz]

And then there are people who just like to complain. I think the new format is just "different" I'm getting used to it and I'm not especially computer literate.

[BritinUSA]

2 hours ago, benos said:

Last, please remember - the vast wealth of helpful information contained in the forums is free to all members. So for those few who can't seem to refrain from complaining about the upgrade in nearly every post - that becomes very tiresome. 

Sadly, people complaining about free internet services seems to be the new normal. Many of them have no concept of the amount of work it takes to keep things running and working with the plethora of various operating systems, browsers and devices that now exist.

Personally. I like new layout; It looks the same on my iPad as it does on my MacBook. It took a little while to customize my activity to show the layout that I wanted but now it's done I don't miss the old layout at all.

Thanks Brian, for providing us with a means to share information about the sport that we all love.

[RangerTrace]

I think as humans, we all dread change and learning something new.  We enjoy being in our comfortable routines.   Unfortunately, computer technology will always outgrow our comfort zone.  It's happened to me at work more than I like to think about and just recently happened in a big way.

With that said, we will all become more familiar with the new forum setup and when that happens, the enjoyment we once felt will return.

[Sarge]

11 hours ago, RangerTrace said:

I think as humans, we all dread change and learning something new.  We enjoy being in our comfortable routines.   Unfortunately, computer technology will always outgrow our comfort zone.  It's happened to me at work more than I like to think about and just recently happened in a big way.

With that said, we will all become more familiar with the new forum setup and when that happens, the enjoyment we once felt will return.

And then , a week later, boom!

another change!

its not so much the changes, as it is the lack of any tutorial on how to navigate such a drastic

"upgrade"

[Kletus]

The only thing guaranteed not to change... is that eventually... everything will change.   Thanks for providing this free corner of the internet for us new competition shooters to learn as much as we can.   I greatly appreciate it.