New Website URL - www.anzfol.com

Hey everyone!

We just registered www.anzfol.com which currently redirects to our www.aussielegofans.forummotion.com address. This will in time be the URL of the site, but for now we can't control the Domain Name Servers as we are using forummotion. It is being considered that we may host our own site at our own address (www.anzfol.com) but there is still more discussion to be had as it will involve hosting fees and Invision Powerboard licence fees (if we chose to use IPB which is a better piece of software than phpBB3 which is what runs ANZFOL now.)

Feel free to add your input though, you guys are what make the forums what they are, so what you think is very important to us. So please let us know your thoughts on these matters, and use www.anzfol.com to get to ANZFOL from now on!

Sounds like a good idea, certainly is a smaller url then the current one. If you need to pay fees, maybe open a PayPal account for us all to donate to. As long as all of our posts can be bought across to the new url, then I don't think it really matters where the site is hosted. If the new site is easier for the moderators and admins to manage, then I reckon that's got to be a great thing!!!

If its on our own site is it worth changing phpBB3 to our needs? I was a PHP programmer for a few years so could lend a hand. I dont know if we really have the traffic to support both hosting and licensing fees yet. Is Invision Powerboard really worth paying for?

peterab wrote:If its on our own site is it worth changing phpBB3 to our needs? I was a PHP programmer for a few years so could lend a hand. I dont know if we really have the traffic to support both hosting and licensing fees yet. Is Invision Powerboard really worth paying for?

That's what we've been currently discussion, whether or not its worth it.

Anyway its just an idea, Nothing solid.

The free forummotion software that we are currently using is powered by phpBB3. If any changes were coming anytime soon, it would just be moving to phpBB3 on our own server giving us total control. Although I doubt that it will be possible to transfer all the posts from this forum to Invision or even phpBB3 due to the forummotion limitations. But I'll certainly speak with you about it at Brickvention Peter!

I don't think paying for a new forum right now would be a good thing until we get some more members. forummotion is easy enough to use in the short term.

EDIT: goodness me, I'm a pirate master!

Captain Havoc wrote:I don't think paying for a new forum right now would be a good thing until we get some more members. forummotion is easy enough to use in the short term.

It is, the only thing is that we would want to move sooner rather than later so as to avoid losing a huge number of posts.

Captain Havoc wrote:
EDIT: goodness me, I'm a pirate master!

So you are! You earned it!

[quote="Captain Zuloo"]

Captain Havoc wrote:e would want to move sooner rather than later so as to avoid losing a huge number of posts.

Captain Havoc wrote:
EDIT: goodness me, I'm a pirate master!

So you are! You earned it!

I wouldn't stress about losing/moving the posts. In the worst case we/I could always write a screen scraper to hit each page and dump the contents into the new forum. Inelegant but given there's not a huge ammount of trafiic here it would be pretty effective.

I think I need to do some fancy train mocs so I can be a station master or something BTW I'm thinking a train sub forum would be nice.

peterab wrote:I wouldn't stress about losing/moving the posts. In the worst case we/I could always write a screen scraper to hit each page and dump the contents into the new forum. Inelegant but given there's not a huge ammount of trafiic here it would be pretty effective.

Which is why if we are going to move, we should do so sooner rather than later before our traffic increases too much. Although I'll certainly take you up on that offer!

peterab wrote:
I think I need to do some fancy train mocs so I can be a station master or something BTW I'm thinking a train sub forum would be nice.

Well, let's see them! And a train subforum is a possibility, maybe start a new thread about it where we can discuss it further.

Why not focus on a set group of people in our site instead?

Let me explain, some of us are from australia and some are from nz. So why not have sub forums for those in nz and those in australia. This way if any events take place in nz that have to do with lego, then those who live in nz can decide to meet other member's at the location etc.

Its no good to me someone informing us that there is a lego convention in wellington when I live in victoria.

I think we need relevant sub forums per country so that information is shared in the correct forum.

If we get in to that, it could lead up to "I don't need to know that there is a convention in wellington, because I live in Christchurch." and then there'd county subs, then city subs ect.

Also, why not just not read the topic of that particular convention.

PS: just using wellington convention as an example.

I personally think that the new URL is much better as its easyier to remember

Star_wars_rules wrote:Why not focus on a set group of people in our site instead?

Let me explain, some of us are from australia and some are from nz. So why not have sub forums for those in nz and those in australia. This way if any events take place in nz that have to do with lego, then those who live in nz can decide to meet other member's at the location etc.

Its no good to me someone informing us that there is a lego convention in wellington when I live in victoria.

I think we need relevant sub forums per country so that information is shared in the correct forum.

We could do that, but the only person from Cairns (for example) might get lonely, besides some people are interested in travelling to an event. If the thread titles are accurate, you can just ignore those you're not interested in. The trains subforum, on the other hand will probably have enough support to survive on its own, and there are town builders who may not be interested in many posts associated with trains.