Major forum upgrade coming soon!

[1966Mustang]

Hi Folks,

I am pleased to announce that we will be moving ahead with a major forum upgrade. The software that has been chosen is xenForo. Some popular sites that are using xenforo are:
The H.A.M.B: https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/
IH8MUD: https://forum.ih8mud.com
AVForums: https://www.avforums.com/forums/

The testing site can be poked around in now at: http://dev.fordsix.com
Your regular user/password should work.

Some major features:
- User Media Galleries
- Drag and Drop Image Attaching
- Options for Social Logins/Authentication
- Modern look and feel
- Built for Better Search Engine results/ranks
- An integrated area for the Classic Inlines Tech Articles. - Ability to edit/add more!

Problems you may encounter:
- There may be issues with your privileges, I am sorting those out.
- If the site is unavailable it is because I am configuring or running through the migration process.
- Gremlins (the computer kind, not the AMC kind)
- It may be slow (that's going to change when we go live)
- Your avatar may be missing.
- Some smilies may be missing - :
- Some attachments may be missing - they look all there to me.

I will have an update when the upgrade will be scheduled, but I am shooting to be done around Jan 1. That may be a bit optimistic, but we shall see.

Also... The financial contributions to our community efforts here over the years - and especially over the past couple days have certainly lit a fire to get this done. I don't know how to say thanks, other than to improve all of this of all of you!
So - Thanks. This is by far the best online community I am a part of. We should all get together sometime...

If you have a concern, or if things are missing, please let me know!

Thanks,

Perry

[THE FRENCHTOWN FLYER]

Good on you Perry. Merry Christmas.

[Cool23]

The Garage Journal forum (part of the HAMB group) will go across to this format. Good move.

[1966Mustang]

The Garage Journal forum (part of the HAMB group) will go across to this format. Good move.

Yup - I saw that. I figured they would start converting all of their properties over at some point to consolidate their development and management workloads.

Hopefully our migration does not take as long as The Garage Journal

[chad]

Happy Holidays -
Perry & site !

(I hate movin...
gulp, will hold on4 the improvements ! )

Thnx fr all ur yrs of work Ford6 Team


One thing 2 report. Mac is pretty good on spam avoidance, the virus, etc. There is one nasty for us (I can get). As soon as I showed up to 1H8MUD it popped up ("MacClean" or sumpin like that). Its a no show on ford6 tho.
Generally the 'content heavy' I like to avoid. Simple, clear like phpBB are fine for me (Internet Brands, jellSoft, vBulletin R all way too much). I like the ol "looks like a page I'm reading" kinda thing (not all the additional geehaws) & certainly not adverts. Anyway, good luck..

[Cool23]

The Garage Journal forum (part of the HAMB group) will go across to this format. Good move.

Yup - I saw that. I figured they would start converting all of their properties over at some point to consolidate their development and management workloads.

Hopefully our migration does not take as long as The Garage Journal

The GJ has been slow to go across due to the fact Admin has been using the HAMB to sort out all the bugs.

[chad]

not quite as bad as FB (3 column) & others but looks 2 have that 2nd sm column on R.
Clutter 2 me, sorry.

[1966Mustang]

Chad: Good feedback - I'll try to not move the cheese too far.

Not planning on straying too far from the default out of the box forum styling - Asides from some color tweaks perhaps.

And Thanks

- Perry

[chad]

aaahaha
Grumpy ol man: "Who moved it?"

gulp: "I don't like change, fella!"

[1966Mustang]

aaahaha
Grumpy ol man: "Who moved it?"

gulp: "I don't like change, fella!"

Don't worry - I understand the demographic here

[chad]

Y U young wiper snaper! I wuz on the puter in '66 B4 U
wuz in long pants. It hada hand set hangin off the side,
a tractor feed w/friable yellow paper fed outta a box behind,
dazy wheel printer, dot matric charicters, and a stacka punch crds
like 3 X 7 manalla index crds. The phone line went to the MIT Labs in
their basement'n back. No where else. I outta murder-i-ze ya... U need
some ed-u-macation wid dat "ol man" comment.

snort...huff, rapid (but weak) heart beat ...

[1966Mustang]

I wuz on the puter in '66 B4 U

I will work on this for you. Here's a mockup.

chadterm.png

[chad]

now that I can understand. But this new stuff? all automatic, behind the scenes, outta MY
control, don't like (cuz don't understand easily, I guess, no?).

Alright, do it to it bro.
Fun, fun, fun !
Catch ya on the other side...

Oh, BTW, Jan 1 still the roll out? Done like this last one (i.e. time to play on each B4 the plug's pulled)?

(Reminds me Y I like my ol bronk over the 21st century rig. I can get in there, tinker, put hands on. The new 1? gotta put the scanner on - "by guess'n by golly" change a sensor or sumpin else that seems pretty remote)...

[1966Mustang]

Jan 1 might be the day, I am working on nailing that down.

Will be refreshing the dev.fordsix.com site tomorrow for another test.

Thanks,

Perry

[1strodeo]

Your efforts are most appreciated Perry, thanks! -jeff

[BigBlue94]

TheHighRoad firearms forum also uses xenforo, and its easy to navigate and ususe have no issues with it.

[1966Mustang]

Happy New Year! - A little update on what's going on with the new site. This is taking a little longer than I thought due to Holiday constraints and other unexpected chores. Married people know what I'm talking about...

This week I am moving the test site to a different hosting provider - which should improve access and reliability when I migrate for real. There will be another test run for users to test out the migrated site data Jan 12-18th. Currently, you should see a test site at: http://dev.fordsix.com . That data is a bit stale and the server might be a bit slow. The next announced test will be on a better connection and server.

If testing Jan 12-18th goes well, (everything works, people can login, use the features, and no issues with the new hosting) I think I will put this board in 'maintenance mode' Saturday night 1/19 and get everything done for Sunday 1/20 morning.

If testing does not go as planned, or there are issues that cannot be resolved prior to the 19th, then I will re-evaluate the plan.

Thank you all!

Best Regards,

Perry Clark
1966Mustang

[chad]

OK,
sounds like the end of this wk/most of nxt wk U want us to test a 3rd site?
Will wait till U post that link or address…

Thnx again, Perry.

[Charlie Cheap]

Just purchased a 1973 200 out of a Maverick for my 65 Mustang. The OEM 200 had to be bored .060" over to clean up...which is not a good idea. I drove it to Tennessee last summer for the M6A show, running 75 and sometimes better just to stay with traffic. It had no problems running up to and above those speeds. After the M6A show we went to Mississippi to visit relatives. It ran great, got 24.5 MPG running the AC all the way, but refused to start after stopped, unless we allowed it to cool. Mine is built for highway running not max power. I will remove the internal goodies to put on this motor as I am well pleased with its performance. Anyone else needed a .060" bore and finding the same problem? It works but has issues with cylinder-wall flex when hot. Hoping .030" bore will clean up cylinders but have a question. My 65 has 8.8 - 1 compression with 13cc dish pistons. The 73 looks like it has a lower compression when checking info pages. Is this true? Are the 6.5cc pistons the way to go? About 9-1 or 8.5-1 seems like a good road static-compression for a car not racing. With my cam that comes to just below 8-1 dynamic-compression. My dizzy is one I built with BWD SELECT parts and Pertronix conversion with a dual-advance (swing-weights-vacuum) modified with the 925D spring, manifold vacuum and Ford 9mm wire wound plug wires feeding Autolite AP46 plugs gaped at .040". A MSD .8 ohm ignition resistor puts a little more primary voltage to the ACCEL 42,000 volts coil, while the lowest ohms wires reduce that voltage as little as possible. With higher input the coil puts a little more to the plugs plus it has about 10K higher ability than the OEM. Better coil, more primary volts, Pertronix, the best available parts, tuned right, and platinum plugs...works.[image]img1743[/image]

[chad]

CC -
U may have clicked the wrong button And
posted on the wrong forum for this entry.

This specific thread is following the change over from the ol Fordsix SITE
to a new'n improved site.

Hoghlight, and copy, click, paste etc to this forum:

viewforum.php?f=1

[1966Mustang]

Well, I missed my deadline/goal... But, I did learn some things... so, I got that going for me.

The upgrade is going to take 3 hours. Not really horrible - it's mostly waiting for things to finish. I may be able to speed that process up, but I'm OK with 3 hours.

The big challenges I'm having are securing the environment (new/different OS & hosting provider (not amazon/aws...) ) - and there's some slight learning curve with the things I've been configuring and using for years. Obviously, we don't want to go through the work to move the site to find out we've got some security issue. Better to be a bit over careful about this than end up with something broken or exploitable, but I'll figure it out.

For now, go and poke around on http://dev.fordsix.com if you want - that's from earlier this month. I see chad has poked around on there.

Thanks,

Perry

[chad]

Y R we switchin, again Perry.
Safety? speed? features? - all? +..x..?

[DoctorC]

I like the new forum layout.
Looking forward to the upgrade!
I've done one of these before, and I've worked with a couple forum environments (been a while), but if you wanted an extra pair of hands, I could probably help on a weekend.

Best,
Roger

[chad]

Just an FYI:
Finding I need an extra step here (not new site).
Need to log in each time I select the ford6 mail in my in-box.
I clic on it, that goes to this site for a log-in, that opens the msg/post.
Usta just open the msg when clicked on in box.

[dgdelion]

Hi All, Just getting started with a newly purchased '72 Maverick 250 L. Enjoy the site so far. Thanks for your work !

[wsa111]

Welcome aboard. Wish you the best with your 72 Maverick.

[mattri]

Great thread!

How's the R&D coming along?

Any beta testing so far?

[1966Mustang]

All,

I owe you all an apology and some earnest communication about this forum migration to xenforo. I thought I would have had time Q4 last year... then Q1, Q2, and now Q3 of this year. Then a bunch of restructuring happened at work - which has been a PITA. And of course other real-life things, situations and projects interfere or take priority. I think it happens to all of us, and sometimes it sounds like excuses. I haven't been replying to PM's, I haven't been pulling site stats and analytics, I haven't been on this site much. And other than monitoring the backend to make sure it's still alive, I haven't really touched anything here in quite a while.

I know I owe you guys more than that. First, I want to thank all of you that have contributed money and content to the site - The money goes towards costs associated with hosting the new site. The content here speaks to the quality of our audience and users. This truly is your site, not mine.

Also, I want to thank The Mods - they really do a great job of keeping this content tidy - I wouldn't know how to do that job without them. I especially want to thank WSA111 for notifying me when things aren't working - that I should catch before they happen. I appreciate it.

So, what's the status of the new site?

I've done several test migrations of all of the users/data/images (not the gallery images...yet)

There are several things that still need some work.
#1 - The Archives
- app.php/page/archives
These are 'horrible' in terms of presentation and migrating.
- Solution: Recasting them over time into 'articles' within the context of Xenforo - could be a copy/paste job.

#2 - Gallery images
- Not sure if I can migrate those easily.
- Not going to lose them, and I don't want people to have to re-upload their images.

#3 - Site security.
- PHPBB has been a pretty secure platform - in terms of hacks, spams, etc - it's been pretty solid.
- I don't want to migrate and launch the new site on xenforo and realize we've got problems.

#4 - I have the migration process and steps pretty well mapped out.
- Permissions, Mod Settings, New User Reg, Image Posting, etc will need to be heavily vetted
- Newsite - "Old Data Beta" - http://dev.fordsix.com/

I had a boss who once told me - "Not making a decision is still making a decision..."

And I realize... This is where I've been stuck and over-analyzing. I don't need to have the stars aligned and build the Cathedral on the first shot.

So, what do I owe you?
- Timely Communication and better setting of expectations.
- Recommit myself to this project and move forward with the new site
- Implement what works and get y'all using it and go from there.
- Worry about the other details later.
- And a couple of other things.

Thank you and best regards,

Perry Clark

[chad]

I say:
fagedabouddid.
Due to ur good wrk in past a robust system is in place. No rush to the next. No appoligy needed.
Also
ask for help if needed, we can provide it.
let EVERY 1 know abt what they personnaly can do to prevent losses of that which they wish to save (?bring 2 nxt site as well?).
As U know, in my mind~
slo change is good, no change is beddah ! aaahahahaaa

[wsa111]

Keep rolling Perry.
Posting photos on this forum chases a lot of potential members away from this forum.
It would be a pleasure to dump photobucket.
Bravo Perry.

[jamyers]

I'll second all of the above comments - no worries, buddy!