08.25.08
Out for a test drive.
I contacted several members of the forum today and asked them to take the new model of the poetry forum out for a test drive. From the feed back, no one was against it. My dear friend Larina, an administrator at the Poets org Poetry Forum and editor of The Externalist, recommended this forum software to me when I first discussed the prospect of starting a new poetry forum with her the end of June. I had decided on the brand of software that I am currently using because it is the same software used at the Poets org Poetry Forum, one I am very familiar with. After a month or so, I began to consider the possibility of expanding the forum and this new software has greater functionality and is more versatile and user friendly.
After dinner this evening, Daniel and I discussed the progress of the new forum test model and it seems to be working well. I’m sure there will be a few bugs to work out, but it’s not nearly as complicated on the administration end as I thought it would be. On the user end, it’s really quite easy and nice to work with. As with so many new things, there will be a learning curve involved, but the process of posting threads is almost intuitive so I don’t anticipate too much difficulty on everyone’s part. Tomorrow I’ll post an announcement on the current forum and invite the members to give it a whirl.
Once we go live, the transition process will probably take the better part of a day because we’ll have to start from scratch when we import all the data from the present forum into the new software. Unfortunately, we can’t add the changes and additions that have been made on the old forum to what we imported this past Saturday. Daniel has saved all the unique scripts he wrote and he’s been through the code so many times, he’s very familiar with what is involved. I’m fortunate in the fact that he loves to do this kind of work. I asked him over the weekend if he’d like to put the project off for a bit, but he told me he was having a great time doing it.
O.P.W.