Forum Maintenance

Saidin

Attention all CF Community!

We'll be taking the forums down for a bit in the middle of the day Today (between 2pm - 3pm) for some maintenance.

We want to give some information for you guys. We are currently in the process of looking at options for forum upgrades. While I can't confirm schedules or exact details, one of the things that this will entail is reducing the size of the forum database.

That means OLD closed/deleted and other irrelevant threads from 2+ years ago will be removed. This will mean the boards will have to be shut down for periods of time while we run optimization tools and removal tools for these old threads.


We'll try our best to do this over night or at times when the boards are less popular, but it will mean some downtime mid-day today.

Thanks very much for your patience and understanding.


Monday Oct 28 Update

1) We did what we needed to do during the day today without taking the boards down.
2) You may see your post count change. During the upgrade process we can't guarantee your count.
3) We feel better boards are better than post count! Trust us with that.
4) We'll update with more information as we can as much as we can.

Thanks everyone for your patience and understanding. Upgrades are coming!

Sun][Light

Nice an upgrade of the forums ^^

Creative_E

Nice, but when will the ribbon page & clan page be updated ?

Sir3S

Sounds good, don't forget to fix the "Join Date" in our Forum Profild page.. it always said: Join Date: 01-01-1970 something like that.

Exiledking63

Ok, Np....................................................

Aimoperative

Does that mean a new Banned game and Last post wins threads?

ImRichie

Yay. Forum clean up. ^-^

]Rush[

Finally you do something

]zZ[

Sounds good

teh1337ninj4

Allow video embed support please as well...

bldSAINT

Very nice to hear

]SKoRM

Awesome.

[MOD]Rex

Aimoperative wrote: »

Does that mean a new Banned game and Last post wins threads?

Nah, if it's not Closed/Deleted(soft) then it shouldn't run into issues as of yet. If later on old threads get deleted that are still open, it should only be those that haven't been posted in recently.

Keep in mind people (posting this since someone mentioned the join time), currently the maintenance is to clear up the database a bit and get some clutter off the board, this does not mean the upgrade is coming today. You're not likely to notice much other than a possible lowering of post count.

ThePurv

Going to miss those Tastylimes threads

Abel95

Just one question, will this mean our post count will also go down? I know for a fact that I have been here since 2009 and I made a few posts back than.

But yeah, removing old threads or posts which are useless is a good thing.

]Impaled[

Its to stop the QQ about rackers [:

Vex_1

Creative_E wrote: »

Nice, but when will the ribbon page & clan page be updated ?

I'd worry about the replay submission page before all that.

Grabster

As long as its not VBulletin I'm happy.

[MOD]Rex

Grabster wrote: »

As long as its not VBulletin I'm happy.

There's no current plans to move away from vBulletin, in fact the plan is still to upgrade to vBulletin 4.

vBulletin 3 has served well for the past years though, especially better than the old Discuz! software we used to use.

Saidin

Quick notes on this ongoing topic:

1) We did what we needed to do during the day today without taking the boards down.
2) You may see your post count change. During the upgrade process we can't guarantee your count.
3) We feel better boards are better than post count! Trust us with that.
4) We'll update with more information as we can as much as we can.

Thanks everyone for your patience and understanding. Upgrades are coming!

NattNatt

sounds good to me

19_GoGa_83

Good to hear
hopefully you can do it most of the times without taking it down as you did today

traceokuhn

Well then... Evan and I were just talking about these forums a few days ago and how you guys couldn't update.

Im_A_Flip

Why don't you guys Add Trash bins, so the old topics that's closed Mods can moved them to the Recycle Bins That way its get cleaned weekly and all those QQing thread get moved so fast to the bin.

[MOD]Rex

Tokilz wrote: »

Why don't you guys Add Trash bins, so the old topics that's closed Mods can moved them to the Recycle Bins That way its get cleaned weekly and all those QQing thread get moved so fast to the bin.

We do have a bin, but we keep certain things on the forums for moderating purposes. We leave them until we decide it's time a cleaning is needed (which is now as the database needs cleaning before more updates can occur). The bin is for certain purposes, mostly soft-deleted threads and is private as the threads can't be seen by the public anyway when they're soft-deleted.

one_9

Please tell me those old mod application threads will be gone!

[dot]

one_9 wrote: »

Please tell me those old mod application threads will be gone!

i shall save it just for you.

imERICK

Will inactive forum names ever be available?

Im_A_Flip

[MOD]Rex wrote: »

We do have a bin, but we keep certain things on the forums for moderating purposes. We leave them until we decide it's time a cleaning is needed (which is now as the database needs cleaning before more updates can occur). The bin is for certain purposes, mostly soft-deleted threads and is private as the threads can't be seen by the public anyway when they're soft-deleted.

So Tell me what exactly is the reason for the thread not being Moved to the bin while the Mods Closed the thread already? leave it to the forum for Display? or Leave it there so someone can keep reading the QQ Thread?

Speculate

Sweet. I was hoping there would be some forum updates soon.

one_9

Tokilz wrote: »

So Tell me what exactly is the reason for the thread not being Moved to the bin while the Mods Closed the thread already? leave it to the forum for Display? or Leave it there so someone can keep reading the QQ Thread?

Threads that are deleted are not necessarily automatically moved to the "bin".

Really it's just a way for mods and GMs to clean up internally.

A few examples of threads that would be moved to the bin:

• Spam. When someone is spamming thread after thread for a 30 min duration the board can be a messy place, even after deletion. Therefore all those threads, deleted or not, get moved to the bin.
• test threads. Usually for mod powers but also on request of a forumer that created a testing thread in off-topic and are done with it.
• stuff they don't want you to see
  There's literally thousands of dead threads there. I've found a few cool oldies that were tucked away. This isn't really a use for the bin just something I found.
• Rex's stash

Closing a thread is a lot handier than a deletion. Sometimes a mod, gm, or even another forumer may have said something important that should remain in public view. A deletion on the other hand, may not always let the OP know why their thread was deleted.

Specifically for QQ threads, just because you may disagree with someone's opinions does not mean that a mod can remove it from public view, bar the forum rules of course. QQ threads also serve as a small, albeit a headache kind of reminder on what is going on ingame. It is like criticism... but the OPs sometimes can't keep it professional, or mature, or even respectful of others. Just roll with it and just do your part to try to better the community, not negate it with hate