Version Twenty

[Gremlin]

Historically, I do something to update the site in general twice a year, usually at the beginning of January and again at the beginning of July.

Interestingly, there's not a lot to update this time, in two weeks, apart from killing off a couple of deadlinks left over from the old server [the chatroom, for example, isn't working now that we're back in Unix]; designwise, I'm okay with the site as it is.

Unfortunantely, the site itself is less pleased.

As much as I'd tried to move the site entirely over from the old server [and the one before that, and before that, and so on, back to 1997], some things never fully worked. Including the board. Which is why the board got blanked in January and people are still showing up and registering again after their accounts were wiped out.

The bad news is that, even now, with additional changes to the server we're still on, a few things are sucking here. And I'm not sure there's going to be a way to fix things without blanking the whole damned board again.

Depending on what proves possible in a couple weeks, when I delete the site entirely and start rewriting it, one of three things is likely to happen:

The board will remain the same, but be fixed
The board will get blanked and be fixed, but the user accounts will remain active
The board will get blanked and fixed, and everyone will have to register yet the hell again

I'm not, at the moment, factoring that the board might not be fixed. Killing the thing and reinstalling it to work correctly with the updates to the server should allow the board to be here. The only question is whether the board will start off again with zero posts and zero users. I'm hoping not, but that would be slightly better than keeping the board with all its current problems.

For those who haven't seen any problems yet: the most obvious to the average user are that the quote function isn't working correctly, and the search function isn't working at all. There are other problems, but they're all in the backend.

So. In a couple weeks, I'll be clearing out the server and starting the hell over. If I can keep the board while making it work, I will; if not, be ready to register again and fill up the new one in July....