Most of you have probably seen the announcement that our Gold Community Membership is due to expire and needs to be renewed.
Gold Community is the vehicle EZBoard uses to help pay for the operation costs associated with running the forum, the costs are variable and calculated by the amount of members, the amount of posts those members generate and the traffic associated with viewing the forum. In other words the more visits, posts and members the more the annual cost of our Gold Community Membership.
What is normally done on EZBoard is advertising which helps pay the bills but since we are a Gold Community we don't see any advertising and pay for that in our annual membership which costs about $3000.
These costs can be defrayed by the amount of members who become EZSupporters and I believe we have around a 35% to 65% mix, i.e. 35% of us are EZSupporters and that lowers the annual Gold Community costs for the forum.
EZBoard will no longer exist by early in 2008 and it is being replaced by their new server structure called Yuku, I have made several announcements of this over the past year or so.
Each forum was given the opportunity to migrate early-on while Yuku was in Beta Testing and I opted not to migrate during this phase as it can be problematic and would have occurred during the busiest period on the board, i.e. late winter and before fishing season begins in most areas.
Knowing we often have some bumpy periods during that time I opted to not add to the fray and with the mess my life was in it ended up being the best call. With Dec 2007 being the target date to begin forced migration to Yuku of all the EZBoard forums we would be back to the scenario I just spoke of and not a good time to face a migration.
So for this reason I have requested that our forum be placed in the queue to be migrated and we are currently there now. I don't know how long it will take since the migration team has not contacted me yet but expect them to today or tomorrow but I do know it can take anywhere from several hours to a week dependent on the size of the board, i.e. members, forums and posts and while our forum is not the largest on EZBoard it's by no means small.
When the migration happens we will exists twice, the primary will be the new Yuku presence with the secondary being the old EZBoard presence. The URL used to get to the board will automatically bring you to the Yuku site and 48 hours later the EZBoard site will disappear.
We will have some work to do during and after the migration as I'm sure there will be some bumps along the way but considering this is one of our slowest periods I thought it the best time to do this with our Gold Community Membership up for renewal since Yuku does not have a Gold Community system in place as yet which means that the cost of maintaining the Yuku Forum will be in the form of advertisements so this is a change we will experience and one of the bumps I spoke about. Yuku is planning to have a Gold Community type structure but it is not in place as yet and when it becomes available the funds we currently have in our Community Chest will be applied to that structure and I will open the Community Chest, or whatever they will call it, and accept donations which will then remove advertising from the forum as we have for all these years.
One last thing, Yuku is still in Beta but it is in the final stage of it which means the board has reached the point that it is running at peak with the least amount of disruptions and with it being the summer period the least active time for a migration so it should go rather easily. If you have not visited the Yuku side I encourage you to do so in order to familiarize yourself with what is coming and you will see a lot of the shortcomings of EZBoard are fixed with Yuku, i.e. Searching and Spell Checking are very robust and there are many improved features as well. Thank you all for your continued support of our forum and hope to see you all on the Yuku side.
Regards.............
Gold Community is the vehicle EZBoard uses to help pay for the operation costs associated with running the forum, the costs are variable and calculated by the amount of members, the amount of posts those members generate and the traffic associated with viewing the forum. In other words the more visits, posts and members the more the annual cost of our Gold Community Membership.
What is normally done on EZBoard is advertising which helps pay the bills but since we are a Gold Community we don't see any advertising and pay for that in our annual membership which costs about $3000.
These costs can be defrayed by the amount of members who become EZSupporters and I believe we have around a 35% to 65% mix, i.e. 35% of us are EZSupporters and that lowers the annual Gold Community costs for the forum.
EZBoard will no longer exist by early in 2008 and it is being replaced by their new server structure called Yuku, I have made several announcements of this over the past year or so.
Each forum was given the opportunity to migrate early-on while Yuku was in Beta Testing and I opted not to migrate during this phase as it can be problematic and would have occurred during the busiest period on the board, i.e. late winter and before fishing season begins in most areas.
Knowing we often have some bumpy periods during that time I opted to not add to the fray and with the mess my life was in it ended up being the best call. With Dec 2007 being the target date to begin forced migration to Yuku of all the EZBoard forums we would be back to the scenario I just spoke of and not a good time to face a migration.
So for this reason I have requested that our forum be placed in the queue to be migrated and we are currently there now. I don't know how long it will take since the migration team has not contacted me yet but expect them to today or tomorrow but I do know it can take anywhere from several hours to a week dependent on the size of the board, i.e. members, forums and posts and while our forum is not the largest on EZBoard it's by no means small.
When the migration happens we will exists twice, the primary will be the new Yuku presence with the secondary being the old EZBoard presence. The URL used to get to the board will automatically bring you to the Yuku site and 48 hours later the EZBoard site will disappear.
We will have some work to do during and after the migration as I'm sure there will be some bumps along the way but considering this is one of our slowest periods I thought it the best time to do this with our Gold Community Membership up for renewal since Yuku does not have a Gold Community system in place as yet which means that the cost of maintaining the Yuku Forum will be in the form of advertisements so this is a change we will experience and one of the bumps I spoke about. Yuku is planning to have a Gold Community type structure but it is not in place as yet and when it becomes available the funds we currently have in our Community Chest will be applied to that structure and I will open the Community Chest, or whatever they will call it, and accept donations which will then remove advertising from the forum as we have for all these years.
One last thing, Yuku is still in Beta but it is in the final stage of it which means the board has reached the point that it is running at peak with the least amount of disruptions and with it being the summer period the least active time for a migration so it should go rather easily. If you have not visited the Yuku side I encourage you to do so in order to familiarize yourself with what is coming and you will see a lot of the shortcomings of EZBoard are fixed with Yuku, i.e. Searching and Spell Checking are very robust and there are many improved features as well. Thank you all for your continued support of our forum and hope to see you all on the Yuku side.
Regards.............
banjo
Visit my website: Fishnbanjos Place
Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
--Mark Twain
"Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape"
Visit my website: Fishnbanjos Place
Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
--Mark Twain
"Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape"
