Rolled Back to the Old ET

y the new site should be up for tweaking until no more complains about any of 'new' and 'improve' features then migration should take place slowly until all content is moved over.
 
After you log in to that site, you can easily find your latest posts by hovering your mouse over your username at the upper right corner, and then clicking on "Your Content".
 
Quote from Baron:

Due to the negative feedback about the new version of ET that appeared last week, and unexpected software problems from third party vendors that was completely out of my control, I had no choice but to roll back to the old ET for the time being. I discovered that the importing software I acquired to transfer data from the old message board to the new one had a critical bug, which caused a ton of threads and posts to vanish on the new site.

And honestly, once I did the upgrade, I was shocked at how many members expressed how they loved the old ET just like it was.

Yes, I want to upgrade the site eventually, but I want to do it in a way that's a much softer rollout next time, with better explanation in advance of the changes and new features to come, so it's not so much of a shock factor.

The biggest downside to this debacle means that last week's posts went into a black hole. There's no point in me even trying to stitch that content back into this format because it would just cause way more downtime and aggravation for all of us. The bright side of course is that one week is nothing compared to the 1 million+ thread and posts I discovered that were missing on the site upgrade (those are all in tact on this site now).

This has been the toughest month of my life... period. I kid you not when I say that I have slept about one night for every three days this past month trying to get this migration done. Considering the outcome, I regret having to put you guys (and my family) through this. ET is my life and I appreciate every one of you who takes the time to participate here. Always have. I tried so hard to move us forward, by my effort didn't work out like I hoped, so I fell short, and for that I'm truly sorry.
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just an fyi Baron but Silicon Investor tried to change their site many times, all with negative feedback. And guess what? It's now back to its original layout after all these years.

If it ain't broke don't fix it. Maybe take a poll. haha
 
Quote from PointOne:

The new site was going to be much better, IMO and the forums page aside, didn't look that different to this one but much more powerful and easy to use. Baron - I thought you were nearly there, it looked great to me.
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My (edited) comments on the new site for posterity:

"Hi Baron
appreciate this migration is a lot of work, so take these suggestions as just that:
1. can we have a light, text only version option?
2. I liked the old forums front page where you could see the active 4 or 5 threads in each subsection.
3. a searchable archive is incredibly important, when I joined I learned massively from posts from 2003 or earlier
4. can we subscribe and follow sub-forums (not just threads)? i.e. customise our forums page?"

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Baron - I really liked the follow and alerts features you were rolling out and the whole interface was slicker generally. I think a lot of the old guard had a Pavlovian negative response to the "Like" buttons and avatars and other such FB type nonsense - so they missed the benefits of the new platform and these were never really explained to them.
 
Few suggestions:

- Next time setup a beta site and get feedback before fully migrating.
- I wasn't able to find a "show all new messages since last visit" link/icon. This is absolutely critical.
- I also think a "Thanks/Kudos" button is very useful for forums such as this. Single sentence "thanks" posts these days aren't necessary, but people like to show their appreciation.
 
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