We're long overdue and finally preparing to upgrade the Stock Car and Drag racing sites into an all-new more modern, more mobile friendly, and better supported platform. Yes, we're leaving NING after almost 9 years. NING has been good for us, but it is time to move on.
The migration will begin soon, and will hopefully be ready to go live just after Christmas....so yours truly can spend that time debugging.
The Bad News
The bad news first....I know how much most of you dislike change...we're changing...I'm sorry. That's it...that's all the bad news.
The Good News
We will be combining three websites into one. RacerReunion.com, StockCar.RacersReunion.com, and Drag.RacersReunion.com will become ONE! One login to access ALL of our awesome content. If I can figure it out between now and the time of migration, I may add RacersReunionRadio.com and make it four sites into one. That one is currently a bit of a challenge for my old head, and will most likely require us to host our radio shows differently to add it to the new site. But, I'm willing to do that...if it simplifies our footprint.
Photo Galleries
The photo galleries are of major importance to us here at RR, and this feature has been the single reason we have not done this migration sooner. With migrating and combining the sites,the photos will still be attached (that's the plan...and the challenge) to their rightful owners profiles. Then they will be joined into one gallery where they can be searched using "tags" (Stock Car) and (Drag Racing) to load them separately. We're still working on this....so there could be further updates here.
Groups / Clubs
The groups / clubs should remain intact with all group members and comments coming along for the ride. This, too is very important since there is massive history recorded in those accounts.
Chat,
For our Monday and Tuesday night chat sessions during the radio and tv shows we will be introducing a new chat platform. It is completely different...no way around it. We'll get through it...I promise!
The Forum
The forum on the Stock Car site is where much of the interactivity happens....not so much for the Drag racing site. The forum is (hold on) ...completely different. We'll survive this as well. I don't think we'll be able to interact on the home page like we do now...but we're still working on that. If not, members will simply have to go to the "Forum" page to read and post...many of you do that already. Stock Car and Drag forums will be combined, but can be separated by "Topics".
Blog
We'll be combining the Blog feature from RacersReunion.com, StockCar.RacersReunion.com, and Drag.RacersReunion.com into ONE blog feed on the site. It is very easy to use....and hopefully will increase the number of members who would like to blog on a regular basis.
Admin / Moderation
The admin and moderation function of the new site is much different. We'll be learning that together....for those of you who help with this. I did see that we can add a " help ticket" system, which I think will be a great way to help users who are struggling.
Contact Us
The contact us feature has been a bit of a challenge with NING, in that most folks who contact us, do so while they are on a member's page and think they are actually contacting the member. 99% of the message I get there are intended for someone else. We'll be adding a "Guestbook" to the member profile pages to hopefully reduce the confusion.
That covers most of the things for which you can prepare. I'm telling you now, so you can get used to the whole idea of "Change"...there's that word again. Sorry for the epistle, but I had to get this off my chest.
Jeff
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Founder/Creator - RacersReunion®
updated by @jeff-gilder: 12/05/16 04:11:22PM