Friends of Betty MacDonald
For fans of this beloved American writer
Inkubator: The Editor's Log
New Forum Format Coming
We're testing a new system for the forum. It will be fully integrated with the rest of the site, and all activities that require registration will be unified. Old forum content will be migrated to the new system once we've thoroughly tested it all. You need take no action at this time; further notice will be posted in the News and the Forum.

The present forum system is a commercial product intended by its developers to be the core service of a website. Because FOBM is composed of the forum, the chat, the news, etc., that is no longer appropriate, because the current forum system does not allow us to integrate logins and member services easily.

Your web hosts, Clark Internet Publishing, have been working with several of you to test a new system. It is simpler and provides for easier member support that does not require as much technical knowledge or as much intervention by our staff.

As part of the conversion we will be deleting users who have never posted. If you have been "lurking" on the margins, please post a message. Due to the increasing problem with abuse of open forums worldwide we will no longer support hidden or anonymous users. However, we do not check anyone's real name; we only verify that the user does indeed have access to the registered, existing email address. If you have been corresponding with anyone who is lurking, we urge you to make them aware of this change.

The new system will integrate all comments across the site into a single data structure, and comments will be previewed on the home page whether they arise from the Forum, News, Gallery or other section. This will simplify finding information that crosses the internal sections of the site; it will also improve indexing by external search systems.

The conversion will most likely occur later in December. We are working on the conversion of the old archive and the current topic structure, in order to bring forward the continuing conversation. If this turns out not to be possible we will archive the old messages in a set of files.

(If you came here by clicking the post in the Old Forum, you may close this window now.)

Rees Clark
Managing Director
Clark Internet Publishing

Preview the New Forum

Comments
frankalexander - Dec 1, 2007, 2:17 PM
People can now comment directly on news posts, and they show up in the preview list along with recent forum comments.

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