Sawatdee Network Announcement

Members,

When I originally put the Sawatdee Network up for sale is was for a few reasons. One, that the monthly expenses were too high in relation to our current traffic volume through the site. Two, that a technical overhaul was required to reduce the monthly expenses and to provide a platform that would keep existing members here and possibly attract future new members.

I received interest from three separate members (Thank you very much). I have decided to enter into a partnership agreement with the first member who expressed interest and he and I have been busy making preparations to upgrade the site, currently on phpBB software (The Board that isn't viewable by everyone) and WP Pro software (That is no longer functioning properly with it's integration with our phpBB software). A few years ago I purchased Vbulletin software for the site and I am proud to announce this conversion will happen very shortly.

I have created a new Forum called the Feedback Forum, for you the membership to provide any Comments, Questions, Concerns or to provide any praise for the what you like. I will move this into the Sawatdee Forum with this post, to allow comments.

We do anticipate the site being down for up to 48 hours while we make the final move. There may be some issues moving some members over, email issues or password issues that we can resolve between the two sites until everything is running fine at the new home and we can turn the lights off here.

I will leave this post open now for immediate comments, questions or concerns.

Surfcrest

The Membership is lead to the new vBulletin...Hallelujah ;)

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y69...1204152204.jpg

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Originally Posted by Surfcrest

the monthly expenses were too high

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What are the expenses? The only expenses I have running my board are the annual fees for the host company and domain fees - totaling less than US $100 per year.

All expenses depend on server prower, configuration, SLA, licenses... That what you pay for year Google will use in 0.0001 sec :)

Do we get to know who the partner is, or is that a hidden secret?

I really hope his name doesn't start with a "B".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cdnmatt

Do we get to know who the partner is, or is that a hidden secret?

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It's me.

Ohhh, ok. Nice to meet you Moses. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cdnmatt

Ohhh, ok. Nice to meet you Moses. :)

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Thx. Just to clear - I'm not new here: I had account since 2009, but "at time of past transition (2013)" my account has been deleted. You can find me also at GB and GT forums under the same nickname.

I'm webmaster, webdesigner (less) and programmer (even more less). My English is quite poor, so I mostly prefer to keep silence :)

Members,

Here is just a preview of what we are working on for you!

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y69...w-preview1.jpg

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y69...w-preview2.jpg

The new site will combine the articles from the front page with the Forum into one site, one interactive package. The site will offer many more features that you will see and hopefully comment on in the new Feedback Forum.

We will begin the process in the next 5 hours, after that time the site will be down while we transfer the conversion.

Surfcrest

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Surfcrest

We will begin the process in the next 5 hours, after that time the site will be down while we transfer the conversion.

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We will do this sometime this week, not tonight. I will announce when as soon as Moses and I arrange a specific time.

Surfcrest

Congratulations to Surfcrest and to Moses - and welcome!

IтАЩm glad to hear that the future of Sawatdee Network is assured and that you have someone to share the burden Surfcrest.

And best of luck Moses in your new role! :)

Good luck to you both. Am glad that Surfcrest will be staying on.

Congratulations to both of you for the deal!

I hope the transfer of Bangkokbois goes without loss.

BTW my iPad remains dark grey I've changed my setting which was on "simplicity" and tried using chrome, the issue still presits (only on this site)?

Same, same.

I've given up but hope it will go back to normal once the new board is up and running.

Oh, and congratulations on your new partnership.

It will be a 50/50 partnership, I'll continue moderating and populating related articles and driving the membership upwards.
Moses is free to pursue whatever he likes and thinks would be good for the site and his own interests.

Some of the other parties interested in Sawatdee are also in the Web business and I would like to support their sites as well.

I would like to finally expand the site to support Facebook, Twitter and Pictogram, whether you chose to be apart of that shared social network too, or not.

This is going to be great!

Surfcrest

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Moses

. My English is quite poor, so I mostly prefer to keep silence :)

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I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. Moses Exodus 4:10

Welcome aboard Moses. :ymhug:

Thank you everyone for warm welcome.

Now about future transfer from phpBB to vBulletin platform. I will write not about technical details, but about things which can concern everyone. What have you know: it is difficult path - to transfer data from one database to another, I made it 2 times already for training, and every time some data has been lost, so please backup your avatars, signature pictures.

For security every forum keeps your passwords encoded with strong cryptography. This made impossible transfer of your passwords from phpBB forum to vBulletin and at new platform everyone will must to restore password via standard form "password lost". That why we strongly suggest you to check your e-mail addresses in your profiles: robot will send new password to your registered e-mail. If your e-mail address is outdated - then you never will receive password to new forum.

Also by reasons of security both forums keep attachments encoded. This algorithm is more weak, but anyway transfer of big attachments is time-consuming, so mostly we will omit attachments over 1 Mb because if we will save all of them then transfer could take a week. You can overview and backup your attachments on your account page if you want to save them for personal use.

Both platforms - phpBB and vBulletin are quite sophisticated software. No one can give 100% warranty of smooth transfer, but we will do our best for it.

Last point. New forum engine - vBulletine demands clear installation of software before importing old forum to database. That means we will add all additional forum possibilities (add-ons) only after transfer. From start it will be "just a forum". It is the price we have to pay for living at new, modern, secure and solid software platform like vBulletin.

Summary: backup your avatars, signatures and attachments, check your e-mail addresses.

Very happy with the good news ! I wish you every success !

How to request new password at new forum.

1. Please find Login Box at top of the right sidebar and click "Lost password"

[attachment=1:3bt5028d]swpassrecovery.jpg[/attachment:3bt5028d]


2. Fill your e-mail address registered on Sawatdee Network (1), answer question "Thailand is known as a Land Of S..." with word "smiles" (2), click button "Request Username/Password Now" (3)

[attachment=0:3bt5028d]swpassrecovery2.jpg[/attachment:3bt5028d]

3. Check your registered e-mail address in 1-10 min. If your e-mail box will be empty after 30 min. check your "Spam" folder.

Warning! Words "registered e-mail address" means not any e-mail which is registered by you but e-mail address which you have recorded in old forum profile. It is only data by which new forum robot can recognize you as a old Sawatdee Network member.

What will happen to PMs? I have PMs of sentimental value (some from people who are dead: Neal, LMTU) which I don't want to lose.

And Bangkokbois, I hope it can be transferred without loss.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by christianpfc

What will happen to PMs? I have PMs of sentimental value (some from people who are dead: Neal, LMTU) which I don't want to lose.

And Bangkokbois, I hope it can be transferred without loss.

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About PM: I can't physically read other's PM, so I have no idea if they are safe. If you wanna check that - write me PM here then, and I will give you access to check quality of your PM's transfer what have been done at time of my training - you will see and tell us if your PM are safe on training site.

In general words: we will transfer everything except big attachments and passwords, but nobody can give any warranty since both software are written by Indian programmers and import module even worst - by freelancer, what means no software quality control at all. But Surfcrest has no choice: while wordpress and phpBB by them self are secure, bridge btw them is not supported by developer long time already. So it is just question of the time when this forum will be hacked and destroyed.

About Bangkokbois: have you seen this site recently? But: yes, I will transfer them, but not together with forum - only after forum's transfer. So for about first month they will be untouched, may be even longer.

We are making backups now, by this reason sometimes for 10-20 minutes forum may work slowly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by christianpfc

What will happen to PMs? I have PMs of sentimental value (some from people who are dead: Neal, LMTU) which I don't want to lose.

And Bangkokbois, I hope it can be transferred without loss.

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PM's are transferring over to the new site just fine. If you have multiple folders set up for PM's, you will find them all in one folder (Your Inbox Folder) on the other side. If you really have some sentimental attachment with PM's, why not take a screen shot of them with "Paint" and save them as a JPEG in your Photos folder? Saving PM's means managing them over time and so once you figure out how short life really is...you may not want to waste any precious time managing something that only exists in the virtual world of your "inbox".

Surfctest

congrats to both on the new partnership... Onwards and upwards!

Please tell me we will have a "Like" or "Thanks" button!

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Originally Posted by colmx

congrats to both on the new partnership... Onwards and upwards!

Please tell me we will have a "Like" or "Thanks" button!

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If everything will be like is planned, then we will have "like" and "share" for FB, Thwitter, Instagramm and G+, forum's "thank" and "reputation +/-" in each post. But not from fresh start - as I wrote already: this software demands fresh installation and import of content and only then is possible to add add-ons like "thx" and so on... so I will add them one by one and it can take about 15-20 days after start with testing and bug-fixing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by christianpfc

I hope the transfer of Bangkokbois goes without loss.

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Ok, here is first report: please meet bangkokbois almost as it was created years ago. Click http://bangkokbois.sawatdeenetwork.com/
There are a lot of points for restoration yet , but mainly they are "behind the scene", the main content is "as it was in past" at 99,9%. If you will meet "page not found" or damaged image please report URL of such page or image here.

Have a nice masturb... err... reading!

Moses, there's an image in this post http://bangkokbois.sawatdeenetwork.com/ ... vacations/ I'd suggest you remove. I'm pretty sure you'll know which one when you see it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tobi

Moses, there's an image in this post http://bangkokbois.sawatdeenetwork.com/ ... vacations/ I'd suggest you remove. I'm pretty sure you'll know which one when you see it.

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Ohhh... Thank you very much! Done!

There are about 17000 images on this site, so I made recovery by scripts, not by eyes. Looks like next few days I will spend in watching images one by one by eyes.

To all:

if you will meet illegal images please report not here but to my PM. Thank you.

No probs. That's the only one I'm aware of on BangkokBois. I appreciate that you've transferred it onto its own sub domain, but I imagine the last thing you want is Google blacklisting and/or deindexing the whole of sawatdeenetwork.com including subdomains so I would definitely check to ensure there are no other examples.

17,000... 16,999... 16,998... @-)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tobi

No probs. That's the only one I'm aware of on BangkokBois. I appreciate that you've transferred it onto its own sub domain, but I imagine the last thing you want is Google blacklisting and/or deindexing the whole of sawatdeenetwork.com including subdomains so I would definitely check to ensure there are no other examples.

17,000... 16,999... 16,998... @-)

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To my horror I found what 17000 aren't full list:

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53┬а056 Files, 68 Folders

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It'll give Surfcrest something to do. :P

This new automated message is not only annoying but after receiving many my mailbox is almost full.
Forum post notification - "Sawatdee Gay Thailand"

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Originally Posted by Manforallseasons

This new automated message is not only annoying but after receiving many my mailbox is almost full.
Forum post notification - "Sawatdee Gay Thailand"

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That's what you can control: just switch it off in your profile.

Done! Thank you.

Here http://sawatdeenetwork.com/sn/ everyone can watch how new site is assembling step by step. Enjoy! Wishes and suggestions are welcome :)

PS, registration is closed, till time when setup will be finished.

Look I find I hard enough when people write parts of their posts in Thai but if you're going to start writing parts of the site in (faux) Latin then Im definitely going to start to struggle :-(


( I'm joking before anyone "enlightens" me :-) )

hehe... yeah... it is just dunb text - to keep design expanded: for to fix design before it will be filled by real text :)

Now I'm cleaning database from orphan scripts, files and images. That time you may find what server is working slowly. That will lasts 2-3 hours beginning from time of this post. I'm sorry for this.