I can understand this Ken, especially about "it might be a good thing". At least you wouldn't be paying for service you aren't getting, and each of us would have to just quit complaining, or explaining, and find something else to do for a time. I do hope and pray for this site as it has helped me so much. I never really appreciated it until I felt like we were going to lose it. I am still offering to help with the funds for whatever you might need help with the possibility of starting a new site, or maybe the "hopefully" saving the data-base from this one
That's not what I meant. What I meant was that if they were to actually live up to their promises and migrate our data to a new server, there would be a period of from hours to days when it would be down. If necessary, I'll start a new forum but I don't really want to maintain two of them.
So far, it looks like we may be making some progress. I just received this communication for the guy I have been communicating with, in response to my last nag.
At this point, I have every reason to assume that we will soon be on a new server with an account I can access. I don't know when that will be, but it shouldn't be long now. Since nothing seems to be going on here right now, let's talk about that. One of the first things I will do is ensure we have enough resources to support the forum. That should be a given, considering they wouldn't move it to one that wouldn't support the forum. In other words, I don't think that will require anything of me other than to pay for it. Next, I will take the wholly unnecessary (except for the fact that there are people who don't know how unnecessary it is) step of paying the money for a secure credential (https over http) to eliminate browser warnings. This is a scam because they don't secure anything, particularly with a site that doesn't collect sensitive information, but it doesn't cost much so I'll do it. I can't do that without access or I would have done it years ago, although that wouldn't change the fact that it's a meaningless scam. Mostly, it's just a way of making it more difficult for people to maintain a free website, and perhaps at some point in the future, being able to decide which websites can or cannot be on the Internet. In other words, they could pull your secure credentials if they find "hate speech," "misinformation," or anything else they don't like and claim they're making the Internet safe. Then, I'll wait a while to ensure everything is stabilized, and then I'll upgrade the forum software so that we can take advantage of whatever new stuff they might have added in the past nine years. That's the part that will probably make the forum look a bit different, but I'm familiar with the more recent versions of the software, so there shouldn't be anything that will make you feel lost. There will be things that might make you feel lost, and I'll probably add some of that stuff one at a time after the software is upgraded so as to not confuse you (or me). That's it. That's all I've got.
AWESOME NEWS, @Ken Anderson ! So , if the forum goes off-line, we should figure that it is because everything is being updated, and it might take from a few hours to a couple of days, correct ?
Yes. I'll post a warning if I have enough time for that, as I expect I will. Before the move, I will put the forum into maintenance mode and display a notice to that effect. But there will be no connection while the DNS propagates after changing the nameservers. That period will differ for all of us. The last time we did that, some of you could view the forum a full day before I was. Either way, we can connect on our Facebook page.
For those who wish to bookmark it, here is a link to our Facebook page: SeniorsOnly Club Facebook You can always search on "Seniors Only Club Facebook" and find the link that way.
We are making the move today so the forum will be down for a while. I'll be putting it into maintenance mode and changing the nameservers momentarily.