OVAS Forum Software Upgrade

[OVAS-Webmaster]

The conversion of the OVAS forum software from SMF 1.1 RC3 to SMF 1.1.13 is ready to move forward.  Sometime during the next couple of weeks, the entire forum will be taken off-line for a day or so and the software upgraded to the most current stable version of the SMF software.  This will not be the most current version of the SMF software, SMF 2.0 RC5 is available, but I don't want to upgrade to a non-production version of the software until it has been tested a bit more.

Some things will change
The biggest change will be to the look of the forum.  Gone will be the tired old default forum look and the new forum will look more like our homepage.  Another big change is the web address of the forum will change - unfortunately some of the links in existing posts won't work any longer, but we may fix some of them if needed.

Other changes

*  One improvement will be the inclusion of images with the For Sale classified board (see image below).
*  There will be RSS links to the boards
*  Other small cosmetic changes.

Some things will be missing
The current forum picture Gallery will not be part of the upgrade.  Once the forum software upgrade is done and working for awhile without any issues then I will look at moving the Gallery and all the pictures over.  The same goes with FlashChat.

Most things will stay the same
All in all, most things will remain the same.  The basic functionality remains so there will be no learning curve.  We will not loose any posts in the upgrade process.

Further information will be made available before the switch takes place.

[magnosis]

Sweet !

Thanks for taking care of all that   I've been a software engineer for over 12 years, and I've been acting as IT mgr for a while at an old job.  Despite my experience with software, I always get nervous when upgrading versions.  Aaah them programmers, can you ever fully trust their code ... 

[sas]

Topic starter is a great icon as well. thanks, makes life easier .