- Joined
- Aug 5, 2023
- Messages
- 167
- Status
- OWNER - I own a Hatteras Yacht
- Hatteras Model
- 48' YACHT FISHERMAN (1972 - 1975)
Hi all, this is an exciting post to make!
I am a new Hatteras owner and quickly realized what a valuable resource this forum and community is. Recognizing that the current forum software was a bit outdated, and witnessing the death of boatdiesel.com, I offered my help in upgrading the forum software to the folks at Sam's. They were excited for the help and here we are now.
The current forum will be shut down tomorrow morning (March 27, 2025) at approximately 0700 EST. We have planned for two days of downtime but hope that we will be up more quickly than that.
We will be transferring the current vBulletin forum and gallery over to the XenForo platform. It is a robust forum software and quite similar to vBulletin. I have tested the forum and gallery transfer on another private server, and the forum and gallery import went quite well, so we are aiming to preserve all of the existing forum data.
The only thing that won't transfer over is a record of what posts you have read previously, so it is suggested that you mark all of the forums as read when you log in to the new website. From that point onward it will track new posts for you and should take you directly to unread posts in each thread.
There will be some obvious layout and colour changes on the new website, but in general it is just a refresh of what currently exists. Some of the non-forum sections on the website will be moved around to new areas and we will also be adding a moderated "Resources" section to the site.
With new forum software comes some new features and changes of familiar buttons and items, but in general the functionality remains quite similar. I will do my best to answer any "how do I do this" questions as they arrive once the new software is up and running and will do my best to move these all over to a FAQ resource.
The new site layout is completely "responsive" and will work well on mobile devices. Creating a bookmark on your mobile device essentially creates an app on your phone or tablet.
We are hoping that many, if not all, of the software issues users have had with logging in, etc will be completely resolved with the new software.
XenForo offers lots of new functionality such as the ability to "like" posts, and the ability to alert users in posts by @username if you want to get their attention.
Image handling should be greatly improved, and it will be possible to upload PDF files. Ideally PDF files will be uploaded to the appropriate "Resources" section and linked from forum posts so that we don't end up with 500 copies of the same manual.
For the most part your existing login information will remain intact, however there are a few users with non-standard characters in their usernames that will have their username auto-magically changed by the import system. We will receive a report from the import system and contact these users with their updated login information directly.
Although the test site is in quite a good place, there will undoubtedly be some software tweaks that will be required once the full community starts to use the site - please be patient with us as we sort through these changes.
Long live the Sam's Marine Hatteras and Cabo Yacht forums!
Here is a quick sneak peek of the new site:
I am a new Hatteras owner and quickly realized what a valuable resource this forum and community is. Recognizing that the current forum software was a bit outdated, and witnessing the death of boatdiesel.com, I offered my help in upgrading the forum software to the folks at Sam's. They were excited for the help and here we are now.
The current forum will be shut down tomorrow morning (March 27, 2025) at approximately 0700 EST. We have planned for two days of downtime but hope that we will be up more quickly than that.
We will be transferring the current vBulletin forum and gallery over to the XenForo platform. It is a robust forum software and quite similar to vBulletin. I have tested the forum and gallery transfer on another private server, and the forum and gallery import went quite well, so we are aiming to preserve all of the existing forum data.
The only thing that won't transfer over is a record of what posts you have read previously, so it is suggested that you mark all of the forums as read when you log in to the new website. From that point onward it will track new posts for you and should take you directly to unread posts in each thread.
There will be some obvious layout and colour changes on the new website, but in general it is just a refresh of what currently exists. Some of the non-forum sections on the website will be moved around to new areas and we will also be adding a moderated "Resources" section to the site.
With new forum software comes some new features and changes of familiar buttons and items, but in general the functionality remains quite similar. I will do my best to answer any "how do I do this" questions as they arrive once the new software is up and running and will do my best to move these all over to a FAQ resource.
The new site layout is completely "responsive" and will work well on mobile devices. Creating a bookmark on your mobile device essentially creates an app on your phone or tablet.
We are hoping that many, if not all, of the software issues users have had with logging in, etc will be completely resolved with the new software.
XenForo offers lots of new functionality such as the ability to "like" posts, and the ability to alert users in posts by @username if you want to get their attention.
Image handling should be greatly improved, and it will be possible to upload PDF files. Ideally PDF files will be uploaded to the appropriate "Resources" section and linked from forum posts so that we don't end up with 500 copies of the same manual.
For the most part your existing login information will remain intact, however there are a few users with non-standard characters in their usernames that will have their username auto-magically changed by the import system. We will receive a report from the import system and contact these users with their updated login information directly.
Although the test site is in quite a good place, there will undoubtedly be some software tweaks that will be required once the full community starts to use the site - please be patient with us as we sort through these changes.
Long live the Sam's Marine Hatteras and Cabo Yacht forums!
Here is a quick sneak peek of the new site:
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