On last nights Satellite Nation I made the announcement regarding the future of SatelliteGuys and I announced that I will be closing SatelliteGuys on Monday morning and we will be moving SatelliteGuys off of the vBulletin platform over to the new XenForo platform.
The idea to move off of vBulletin has been one I have been thinking about deeply for a few months now, and its been bugging me so much that it has affected my health and sleep. SatelliteGuys is not a job for me it is my baby and I take great pride in running it for you. I know how people hate change and I was worried by upsetting our members by moving to new software. But in talking with our Pub Members / Supporters they agreed it was time to move to a new software.
We started using vBulletin 4 back in 2010 and it has served us well, but now it is unsupported and is no longer being updated. Over the past 6 months there have been a lot of security issues with the software which has forced me to turn off some of the features all members have had. In addition the back end software that the servers run could not be upgraded as this software we run now wouldn't work correctly and throw off error messages which is something we would not want.
In addition the platform is not using the more modern web coding techniques and is bloated, it also offers very poor search engine optimization. Because of this SatelliteGuys was sandboxed by Google and our search engine ranking and number of posted indexed declined greatly, causing both a huge loss in traffic and revenue to the site. While there hasn't been much to talk about it in the way of satellite over the past few months the biggest hit we got was the traffic coming in from people searching for information.
As I mentioned this has been bugging me for a few months now the question was in my mind "what do we do."
So after a lot of thought, headaches and sleepless nights I came to the folks who have believed in SatelliteGuys and me enough to give money to help support the site... our Pub Members and Supporting founders. And I asked them for their advice and I got to admit... I was honestly surprised with their answer when they told me they thought we should move to a new platform. I thought most would be against it, as I know how much people hate change.
I set up a special test site for the people to try the new software and the feedback has been amazing. I worked hard to give the new software the SatelliteGuys look and feel you guys know and love.. Its not 100% perfect but close enough for most everyone.
So this Monday SatelliteGuys will be closing sometime early Monday Morning and will remain closed as I perform the upgrade. As the upgrade happens you can listen to SatelliteGuys Radio and I will provide live updates on how things are going. (BTW... shameless plug... This Memorial Day Weekend SatelliteGuys will be playing 70's Music all weekend long!) Anyways you can listen for live updates. Once I have the vBulletin Database converted and imported into the new software I will open the site to Pub Members / Supporting Founders only. This will allow our supporters o do the first kick of the tires and let me know what needs fixing and adjusting. With the new software there are a million permissions and settings I must set and the Pub Members can help me with this. There will be a special new forum setup to report upgrade issues. Once we have the majority of them fixed then we will open up the site to the world.
Now in our testing everything will carry over except for two things.... your "likes" and the FTA Forum File Section. The reason the likes will not carry over is because "likes" is not a built in feature of vBulletin 4, it was an add on and the importer does import these likes... (there were a number of different "like" add on available. To try supporting them all in the importer would be a nightmare for the coders. Just like the "likes" system the FTA Forum File Section uses an add on and there is no converter available to it. If you want files from the FTA Forum File Section grab them before Monday.
Some features we have are not in the new software, with the biggest being New Posts by Section (i.e. New Post in DISH Forums, New Posts in DIRECTV Forums... etc.) But I am working on something and hopefully have a solution by Monday.
One thing that "should" work is all of your links that you have bookmarked. I have been given special code which "should" redirect those links to their new URL. I have been unable to test this code because of the way our test environment., but others tell me it works well.
When you are on the new software you will notice some new features. In XenForo Private Messaging is now called "Conversations" and these conversations allow you to have private easy to follow forum like conversations instead the current PM system which is like sending an email back and forth. This means no more needing to quote what was said in the last message.
There are some other new features... but I am not going to go into them here. I want you to find them on your own...
Folks I know people hate change, but as the Pub Members have finally beat into my brain, we are not making this move because we want to... we are doing it because we have to.
I thank everyone for their support in this move.
The idea to move off of vBulletin has been one I have been thinking about deeply for a few months now, and its been bugging me so much that it has affected my health and sleep. SatelliteGuys is not a job for me it is my baby and I take great pride in running it for you. I know how people hate change and I was worried by upsetting our members by moving to new software. But in talking with our Pub Members / Supporters they agreed it was time to move to a new software.
We started using vBulletin 4 back in 2010 and it has served us well, but now it is unsupported and is no longer being updated. Over the past 6 months there have been a lot of security issues with the software which has forced me to turn off some of the features all members have had. In addition the back end software that the servers run could not be upgraded as this software we run now wouldn't work correctly and throw off error messages which is something we would not want.
In addition the platform is not using the more modern web coding techniques and is bloated, it also offers very poor search engine optimization. Because of this SatelliteGuys was sandboxed by Google and our search engine ranking and number of posted indexed declined greatly, causing both a huge loss in traffic and revenue to the site. While there hasn't been much to talk about it in the way of satellite over the past few months the biggest hit we got was the traffic coming in from people searching for information.
As I mentioned this has been bugging me for a few months now the question was in my mind "what do we do."
So after a lot of thought, headaches and sleepless nights I came to the folks who have believed in SatelliteGuys and me enough to give money to help support the site... our Pub Members and Supporting founders. And I asked them for their advice and I got to admit... I was honestly surprised with their answer when they told me they thought we should move to a new platform. I thought most would be against it, as I know how much people hate change.
I set up a special test site for the people to try the new software and the feedback has been amazing. I worked hard to give the new software the SatelliteGuys look and feel you guys know and love.. Its not 100% perfect but close enough for most everyone.
So this Monday SatelliteGuys will be closing sometime early Monday Morning and will remain closed as I perform the upgrade. As the upgrade happens you can listen to SatelliteGuys Radio and I will provide live updates on how things are going. (BTW... shameless plug... This Memorial Day Weekend SatelliteGuys will be playing 70's Music all weekend long!) Anyways you can listen for live updates. Once I have the vBulletin Database converted and imported into the new software I will open the site to Pub Members / Supporting Founders only. This will allow our supporters o do the first kick of the tires and let me know what needs fixing and adjusting. With the new software there are a million permissions and settings I must set and the Pub Members can help me with this. There will be a special new forum setup to report upgrade issues. Once we have the majority of them fixed then we will open up the site to the world.
Now in our testing everything will carry over except for two things.... your "likes" and the FTA Forum File Section. The reason the likes will not carry over is because "likes" is not a built in feature of vBulletin 4, it was an add on and the importer does import these likes... (there were a number of different "like" add on available. To try supporting them all in the importer would be a nightmare for the coders. Just like the "likes" system the FTA Forum File Section uses an add on and there is no converter available to it. If you want files from the FTA Forum File Section grab them before Monday.
Some features we have are not in the new software, with the biggest being New Posts by Section (i.e. New Post in DISH Forums, New Posts in DIRECTV Forums... etc.) But I am working on something and hopefully have a solution by Monday.
One thing that "should" work is all of your links that you have bookmarked. I have been given special code which "should" redirect those links to their new URL. I have been unable to test this code because of the way our test environment., but others tell me it works well.
When you are on the new software you will notice some new features. In XenForo Private Messaging is now called "Conversations" and these conversations allow you to have private easy to follow forum like conversations instead the current PM system which is like sending an email back and forth. This means no more needing to quote what was said in the last message.
There are some other new features... but I am not going to go into them here. I want you to find them on your own...
Folks I know people hate change, but as the Pub Members have finally beat into my brain, we are not making this move because we want to... we are doing it because we have to.
I thank everyone for their support in this move.
