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View Full Version : Website maintenance Aug/Sept 2010



Ellsworth
08-22-2010, 07:28 PM
We have been working diligently on the next website update. Everything should be ready to roll out sometime within the next 7 to 14 days. Once we have a firm date I'll let you all know asap.
We have been rigorously beta testing the site update on our test server. A lot of bugs have already been fixed on the new site, and we will surely catch and fix more before the roll out.
When we go live there will still be some bugs present. It's just impossible to roll out a 'perfect' update when working with such a large customized website. Your patience and help with the website update process will be greatly appreciated.
The website will remain largely unchanged, but there will be a few significant differences. For instance, we're switching to a fixed width format. That's pretty much industry standard now, and it should fix the 'floating box' issue that some people experience (especially on laptops or small monitors). Also our photo galleries will be in a totally different format. We're still exploring options but our goal is to allow people to browse larger versions of the pictures more rapidly. The forums will probably look a little different too (the quote box might be shaded, the member badge might be on the right). The color scheme will remain the same, and the general layout of the site and forums will be unchanged.
After this update things might look a little different, but not by too much. Don't worry, we'll try to not shock you ;)
After this we will have one more update sometime this fall to get us current. Once we're all done with this phase of catching up on the updates, we'll be having a free member's only raffle as our way of saying thanks for putting up with the website's 'construction dust.' You can get a preview of prizes in <a href="http://www.loghomebuilders.org/image-galleries/lhba/online-raffle-prizes">the prize gallery</a> (and we'll be adding more later). We'll have an online sign up form, which we'll publish once the updates are all done.
So thanks again for your patience and cooperation... and for being the best bunch of folks on the whole WWW.

Ellsworth
08-31-2010, 10:17 PM
Just an FYI: Things seem to be progressing well, and the update should roll out to the live site sometime within the next two weeks.
We'll post another notice a few days ahead of the event, once we have a firm date/time.

Ellsworth
09-15-2010, 09:27 PM
We have website maintenance scheduled for this Sunday (9/19). The website will probably be down for most of that day.
Don't panic if things look a bit different, or if you see a bug or two... just like last time it will probably take a couple of weeks to get everything tweaked and fixed, so it hums along smoothly again.

Ellsworth
09-19-2010, 10:24 PM
Well that hard work is done... now comes the next round of hard work. ;)

But seriously, the site update went very smoothly today. We were down for only about 3 hours, which was a lot better than expected. The database is rock solid, we're not getting any errors, in general things look great.

We do have some bugs to fix, but we knew that would happen. For instance the quote feature is having some problems, the store isn't up, there's an Avatar issue on the first posts of threads, et cetera. We've got a list and we're knocking it out as fast as possible.

Things look a little different, and that might be a shock for some people. We kept as much as possible the same, but slight changes to the overall look of the site were unavoidable. Hopefully everyone still feels the good old 'LHBA vibe' even though things look a little different.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for your patience, and sorry for the 'digital sawdust' kicking around the site. We'll get it all swept up as soon as we can :)

Timber
09-20-2010, 05:51 PM
Is the search site not up? i did not notice it on the site hopefully that will be up and running too

Ellsworth
09-20-2010, 06:00 PM
Is the search site not up? i did not notice it on the site hopefully that will be up and running too

The search feature should be working fine. It at the top right of your screen. There's also the advanced search option, that you can select once you're on the search screen (http://www.loghomebuilders.org/search).

Timber
09-20-2010, 06:30 PM
your link works but the feature is not showing up on my screen
shows NEWS GALLERY FORUMS FAQ ARTICLES ABOUT US................................................ .................................................. ................
.................................................. ................STORE
the link you posted does take me to it though

Ellsworth
09-20-2010, 08:08 PM
your link works but the feature is not showing up on my screen
shows NEWS GALLERY FORUMS FAQ ARTICLES ABOUT US STORE
the link you posted does take me to it though
Above those tabs there are additional links.

If you are logged in the links are "search" "contact us" "profile" "log out." If you are not logged in, then they are "search" "contact us" "login."

mickeywingnut
09-21-2010, 07:43 AM
Where can I find what I think was called the "recent posts" link which was on the lower LEFT of the screen?
-Joel

panderson03
09-21-2010, 08:04 AM
I found it when I click 'profile' in the upper RIGHT hand of the screen ... in really small print...):)

Ellsworth
12-04-2010, 03:08 PM
After this we will have one more update sometime this fall to get us current. Once we're all done with this phase of catching up on the updates, we'll be having a free member's only raffle as our way of saying thanks for putting up with the website's 'construction dust.' You can get a preview of prizes in <a href="http://www.loghomebuilders.org/image-galleries/lhba/online-raffle-prizes">the prize gallery</a> (and we'll be adding more later). We'll have an online sign up form, which we'll publish once the updates are all done.
We haven't forgotten about the free Members only raffle. It's going to be delayed a little while until we get the new forum up and running.
With past raffles we used posts in a thread to assign numbers, and emails to info to assign numbers. Both methods were a bit cumbersome, so we were looking forward to using an online form this time around.
Because of the impending switch to vBulletin, if we started the raffle now we'd end up using two different online forms (one with the current software, and one with the new software). Waiting to start it till we're on the new forum will just makes things a lot easier.
I do apologize for the delay.
On the upside, the delay has enabled us to take advantage of both Black Friday and pre-Christmas sales (w00t!). So we have added some more awesome prizes, like a HF Demo hammer.
Regarding the LHBA hats, they should be in stock sometime around December 10th (barring any unforeseen problems popping up).
We should also have DeWALT bits back in stock by mid-December.