Okay, here's the deal:

This thought was spurred by the treehouse biting the dust for a couple days. I have webspace and a domain (http://www.alphabity.com). I would be happy to host a forum for us at http://treehouse.alphabity.com .

Pro:
- no advertisements
- no more spambots (we can control the registration process better than on a free board)
- ability to make a forum visible only to registered users (I think I can do this more precisely, but I'm not sure how yet)
- more detailed control of themes
- ability for each user to choose his or her own theme from a bunch of different ones
- possible tricks and treats, like creating a theme where the chat software is embedded directly into the page above the forum, so that it stays put while you browse around the forum, or a page like http://treehouse.alphabity.com/music where we can upload and stream our own music for each other
- I have 12 GB of space that I will happily offer for us to upload our own music
- If anyone wants e-mail addresses that end in "@alphabity.com" I would be happy to give those to you, although I have no clue why you would want one

Con:
- moving

The way this would work is this: At some pre-determined time (probably in the middle of night when nobody's browsing the forum), I will move all of the posts and users from this current forum (hereafter called "old treehouse") to the new location (now called "new treehouse"). We will then lock old treehouse. It will not be possible to post here after that time. Everyone will receive an automated PM from me on old treehouse with their new, randomly chosen password to new treehouse.

Ultimately, old treehouse will be frozen in time at the time I do the scan. You will be able to view the forum, log in, PM, and that's all. New treehouse will begin from that point. The only thing from old treehouse that will not make its way to new treehouse is our PMs, but you can still check those on the frozen old treehouse, so I don't see that being a terribly big problem.

All the people that are administrators or moderators right now would be administrators and moderators on the new forum.

Take a look at the place right now at http://treehouse.alphabity.com to see a test scan that I did on October 17th so you believe that all the content is there.

I think that we should discuss the idea in this thread, and you can all ask questions and everything, and once we feel like the discussion has ended, I'll make a new post and we can have an anonymous poll.

I've already mentioned the idea to Jared and Becky, just to see if it's such a ridiculous idea that I shouldn't even propose it, and they both expressed general approval.

Please ask questions!

i'm down! the spambots are getting really freakin' annoying. i don't have all the time in the world to change pussy pictures to pictures of cats.

YES

the default phpbb skin brings back memories of my first message board in 2003

it also brings back mammaries

EDIT: but i don't think, should we be able to, we should configure the board so you must be logged in to browse. that would bug me.

i know you can do it with individual forums, though (or, at least i'm pretty sure you can). so we could make one of those locked from the public eye and we could post all of our penis pictures in there.

You mean that the treehouse as a whole shouldn't be visible only to logged-in users?

I agree. When I say that we could make "a forum" visible only to logged-in users, I mean a forum like "sexonomics" or "Music." It would just be a new one like "treehouse privates." When I said I think that I could do it more precisely, I meant that I think I could make it available only to certain users (like users who have posted 10 times, or 50 times, or something like that).

Interesting idea. I'll follow suit with what ever the group consensus is. My only concerns, are:

1. I don't receive e-mail notifications from the Treehouse as it is right now, even though I have the instant notification checked to receive them.....I wouldn't want to miss the invitation over after the lock down of old Treehouse.

2. What would happen to our account registration #'s? Would we have to re-register to the new board with the temp password, or will you assign passwords in the order of our old registration #? IE, if I'm # 23 now, will I remain 23 in the new Treehouse?




Fare Thee Well,

DRG

to answer your 2nd, I believe everything would stay the same, we'd just receive temp. passwords. It'd be a good idea to change you email address to something you check if it's not already.


I have a question, though. Perhaps it would be possible not to lock this forum completely? A lot of people would probably not be alerted to the switch, and I'd like to leave info on how to get over there and retrieve their username(I can always change their password to something if they can't gget it.)

DRG:

#1. The alert for your temporary password would be in a PM, so no e-mail is necessary. You would, at the latest, just see it at your next treehouse visit. (By PM I mean "Private Message," the things you access by click on the Inbox in the upper right corner of your screen)

#2. If you were the 23rd user to join this forum, you're user #23 at the new place. All the member information is copied over. Your join date and post counts are copied over as well.

clouds:

I was imagining locking the forum with a big message for our beloved non-daily visitors that might miss this conversation. Another possibility would be to lock all the sub-forums that we use now and open a new one that's called "Instructions for move" with a message about what happened in there. We would not lock that one, so if anyone's confused or has problems they can post in there. We would leave my e-mail address in that as well, so nobody gets ignored if they don't visit the treehouse for 2 months and can't figure out what to do when they finally do come visit. (This won't happen to anyone, though. It's an extremely simple process.)

yeah, that's along the lines of what I was thinking.

Sounds good, thanks for the replies guys.

dave I'm up for this
treehouse 2.0!

i can't remember the treehouse's url, so i'd be in favor of this

The only way I can ever find this place is by doing a google search for "E6 Treehous". In my own meagre way, I can get behind this.

Moira, Figgly, Nathan, Dan, Rory, Connor, Colin, all the other people I'm forgetting?

Thoughts?

I've been voted off the island, I have no vote

I don't mind so long as everything transfers over okay.

Oh, don't be a ballsack.

:duckie:

I think we voted untalkative off the island... funny, considering he made this place. I hope he doesn't mind!

sure.

I wouldn't mind. I would certainly miss the current incarnation a little bit, but the spam is much more annoying than funny now.

I like the idea.
we get more control and what not.
I've actually thought about doing this a while back.
I almost even bought e6treehouse.net one day last year.

It's ok by me...I don't really think the spambots are that bad, but they could get worse, I guess.

Can my new username be SPAMBOT (all in caps?)

kidding

At least you won't be banned from the new one.

Should I still follow through with the anonymous poll, or should we take it as approved?

Also, any general preference as to when we do this? Should I do it the next chance I get, or should I wait a bit?

Maybe set a date, like november 1st.

From your explanation I can't really see the downside.

my opinion is do it, dave

I'll miss the spambots, if they only posted once a week or so I'd say let's stay here but they seem to be ramping up the spam.

go go powerangers!!

Can we airbrush out some of the meaner aspects of the forum in the switch? Quixotic's early contributions etc? :po3:

What does that mean?

I was playfully asking if we could beautify our forum, treating QG as one might a wrinkle on a magazine model.

Fill her with Botox?

...a perfect plan.

Oh, I thought of another wonderful reason to go to a new location. On phpBB boards, the search function WORKS.

Botox OD would be really weird

god i've missed so much lately. my life has actually been busy!

BUT YES DO IT!

Would you like me to spam you H-H?

I'll sign you up to a few hardcore sites at my earliest convenience. No need to thank me.

We have to move ASAP this spam is seriously starting to piss me off now :whydidyoubreakmymasonplate:

Oh yeah and if we do want our own domain name I have to renew my hosting this year and need to buy a couple of extra sites so might go for the 10 domain package deal, in which case I could get a Treehouse one. But I don't want to be maintaining it I'm bad enough at doing that with my own. Plus all this depends on whether I can afford to renew it or not :duff:

i guess we'll never know forumcat's true motivation for posting on the board

what about the people that post very rarely, like spikyfred, narashinga etc? will they be informed?