Just wanted to thank Todd for his dedication in bringing Mobius back.

Typical of human nature, you never realize how important something is to you until it's gone. I think a lot of us now understand what a unique and essential role MHVF plays in our enjoyment of film and video and the sharing of that enjoyment.

Mobius Home Video Forum -- F*** YEAH!!!

:D

Thanks for your support, Bob. But I don't know that I'd call this being "back" just quite yet -- we have a long road ahead of us if that's to happen, and this is only the first small step.

Todd, are you planning on going back to the old format once we're back up for good? I strongly prefer the original design.

Forums of this ilk never really appealed to me.

I have no idea right now, Paul. I would probably prefer to go back to an updated version of what we had before since I'm so comfortable with it (I'm not a fan of these flat forums either), but I had a lot of board software customization that was lost with our server. It gives me a headache just to think about recreating it from scratch.

Even though we don't like these kind of forums, I imagine many of our readers do, so their wishes will have to be considered. Maybe we can put up a poll or something.

It's good to see it starting up again. Good luck Todd, I wish you well with the gigantic chore ahead of you. Your hard work in the past , present and future of this site is very much appreciated.
Gil

I prefer the previous design as well, but take it slow, Todd. There's no rush. The board's still getting back up to steam and there'll be plenty of time for that later. The one thing I personally want from this forum is it's actual existence, everything else is nice, but a comfort, not a necessity.

Although I'm a wee bit of a lurker, I do love to read the rich commentary of the site. My tuppence? Love the new board, never much cared for the tech underpinning the old one.

Specifically, I find it easier to scan for new threads and then sift through the conversation. My only wish would be for real e-mail client-ish threaded conversations that collapse and expand.

Of course, it might be said I waste waaaaay too much time looking at UBB-driven geeky Mac boards and such.

This board **should** be easier for you to administer and archive.

Perhaps.

Then again, I'm not the admin nor do I have to archive GB's of stuff ;-)

Best of luck with it all! Thanks for adding the amazon.co.uk link, too!

John, I guess I'm confused about your software preference. This style of forum isn't threaded and you express a love for it, but your preference is a threaded board with expandable and collapsable threads? This is a flat non-threaded board that forces users to read the entire thread to reach new posts. Our old board was threaded, although users couldn't collapse or expand threads. Help me understand your preference more clearly.

You're right, my language was murky and the thinking muddy (it's raining here - what a surprise). Here's a quick rewrite:

Although I'm a wee bit of a lurker, I do love to read the rich commentary of the site. My tuppence? Love the new board, never much cared for the tech and organisation underpinning the old one. I always found the mass of text - each topic with it's child replies exposed - to be a cluttered approach. Despite the true threading nature of the forum, I found that threads could end up a bit fragmentary and confusing as the threads grew in visual complexity.

Specifically, I find it easier to eyeball the forum for new and interesting topics.

What is it that I look for when I come to Mobius?

Welll, what's new since last I visited in each of the 5 top-level categories. That total topic number and last post info are nice and quick indications.

Then, I usually go into the Arthouse, etc forum and have a quick look around. Perhaps I'm conditioned to scan the page for information in a certain way because of my use of other forums, but I rather like the "organised by time-stamp of last post" scheme and really like the "unopened" post icon with boldfacing.

Again, topics with heavy activity will rise to the top and those to which nobody responds those that are old go to the bottom.

I suppose the real weakness in the present board (and all flat or semi-threaded boards) is the difficulty in exposing the content of the replies without entering a post and reading through all the responses. That IS a pain. This where I'd loooove user-defined controls that toggle responses on and off with proper subject lines. One can hope ...

Of course the upside of the present format might be tighter, focussed conversations within topics. Perhaps ...

Thanks for allowing me to ramble. Again, great to see the site online again - in whatever form works out.

I've been around since MHVF went down. Often i'd find myself going to my bookmark only to forget it was down. My normal thing for me on the internet to do daily is check my email, read mobius and design/maintain my websites. That's about it other than using the web for doing research and buying stuff.

In all honesty i've never really liked the old message board setup. The problem is that I like to view all the messages all at once, instead of clicking on each and every one of them. Then again, with the new setup it's possible that people won't read or see each and every new message since they'll be at the end.

I like the idea of being able to use quoting in message forums, but some people will overuse that feature. With this message forum you don't need that so much.

I don't really know why people hate this message board software so much. Seems fine to me. To me, nothing could be worse than Yahoo Groups! It's so bad to me that I never visit those things and I'd imagine you'd lose a lot of visitors if you had decided to try them. The biggest problem I have is that it requires you to view ads before seeing certain messages. Seeing ads above or next to a message is no big deal. I just don't want to have to click a link from an ad to see a message.


Anyway, I was wondering...why don't you have your old domain redirect to this url temporarily? That way you don't lose any more visitors. I imagine if you care about google page ranks and all that other stuff for traffic it'd be a bad idea maybe, since it might go way down, but maybe not. That's if the googlebot checks your site before you switch back to the old setup. Now that I think of it..maybe is it that you'd go over this host's bandwith limits? I doubt they give you 80gb or so that you used up before.

I wasn't surprised with the amount of bandwith you used, but was more amazed at the amount of space you took up on your server...8gb (or whatever it was) of...TEXT..hard to believe. Obviously that isn't something that could be easy to restore! I wouldn't ever want to even THINK about downloading that from a server to my computer for a restore to another server.

If you like the old message board better yourself, then you should switch to it. If you prefer to leave it up to what your visitors think then I think a poll would be good. If the old software costs a lot of money, then maybe you could save a few dollars if people didn't mind this setup so much.

There is some board software that allows you to use threaded viewing (like the old Mobius) OR sequential viewing (like this board). The Lurker Lounge uses the same software as this forum, but has the option at the top of each thread to switch between three modes: Outline, Standard and Linear+. I've no idea how this feature is implemented - it might be a plug-in - but it suggests that it should be possible to please both sides of the fence.

Thanks for pointing that out, Michael -- that's interesting to consider. I do know this software allows users to implement skins, so perhaps that's a skin plug-in. (I have skins turned off right now.) I'll look into this more if I can find the time.

Travis, thanks for your feedback. The URL isn't redirected right now because our server is still down and we don't have a physical page to redirect from. Sure, my domain registrar could do it, but I'd have to pay extra for it. I'd rather not do that now since hopefully we'll bring up the server within a week or so -- it will be a moot point when that happens.

A lot of our 8GB was graphics and other binaries. Remember that we had several short films hosted, and we had a lot of special reports with a number of photographs and that sort of thing. But yeah, the bulk was text (after all we did have tens of thousands of posts archives for all five boards).

I'm not sure what direction we'll go with the software. Don't worry, Yahoo Groups is not even being considered. (It was possible to view all posts in our old set-up, BTW.) I think I'm leaning towards what we had before, but I'll definitely consider input from readers (chime in now if you have an opinion). I'll see if I can figure out how to put up a poll.

It would be nice to find software flexible enough to allow readers to configure it however they'd like within some design constraints, but I don't have a lot of knowledge about what's out on the market right now and not a heck of a lot of time to research it (unless we just stay here for a while and take our time to make sure we make the best decision). From a cost standpoint, most of the packages seem similarly priced.

Oh, thank God that Mobius is back!

I feel like I can breathe better now.
I've been googling nearly every day, trying to find the new manifestation of MHVF.
Really, really glad it's back.

Thanks, Todd. Glad you were able to keep the forum going.

First of all, like everyone else I'm thrilled to have MHVF back. Though I've been much more of a lurker lately than I used to be, I still stop by and browse quite often.

Second, while I do prefer this layout of this forum to the old one, I'm having HUGE problems getting images to load here-- is anyone else? It takes forever and ever for each link to load, and when it finally does, none of the images come up. Instead, the screen is covered by blue squares with white question marks in them. (For example, as I reply the "Clickable Smiles" box has 15 of said squares in them, and the "post icons" section is full of toggle buttons next to blue question mark squares.) I don't have this problem with any other message boards, so I don't think it's my settings. Suggestions?

What OS/browser are you using, Martha?

Oh Todd, I bet that's it-- I'm using Safari (with Mac OSX). Let me check and see what happens with IE...Yep, no problem. I guess this forum software just doesn't support Safari.

I've never used Safari before, Martha, but you might want to check the browser settings in case there's some sort of image loading toggle or security setting that you don't have properly set. You also might want to find a Safari support board and pose the question to some experienced users to see if they have any tips for you, or to see if they know if it's a bug or a conflict with this software.

Well, finally I've discovered what has happened to MHVF!

Glad to know things are progressing, Todd.

For what it's worth, I much prefer this type of board. It was often very difficult to follow the progress of a thread with the old board, and often you'd join an interesting topic mid-way through, and it would be virtually impossible to backtrack to find the thread's source.

Nice to be back!

Todd, just to let you know that I'm reading these forums using the Safari browser (1.2.3) with Mac OSX (10.3.5) and I'm experiencing no problems at all.

. . . it goes without saying that I am very happy I can once again fill my head full of the knowledge to be gained from reading these boards . . . regard the boards themselves, the current system is OK, however, I do believe I miss those long threads, how the subject would often (usually) change at some point along the way, and this change of direction would be obvious to the reader - it would seem this event would be more difficult to notice on this board as one would need to click on each any every item to see in what direction the conversation might be going - those twists and turns were half the fun!! . . . but, if this is an easier system for you to administer, stick with it; if the current boards will enable you to keep Mobius going with less fuss and bother - fine . . .

I miss the long threads too, but I'm just glad mhvf is up and running again.

THANKS Todd!

The old forum was perfectly designed. I'm not a fan of these type of boards. That's one of many things that made the old forum great. I hope it returns.

Best of luck Todd.

Todd,

Thanks for all the hard work. I'll have you know that my lottery fantasies now include Mobius. If I ever win, I'll get paid up on my rent, and MHVF gets a lifetime subsidy from me.

**It would be nice to find software flexible enough to allow readers to configure it however they'd like within some design constraints...**

I would love it if the software you end up choosing has certain display flexibilities built in. It would also be great if the new forum had better printing capabilities. My job has me constantly on the move, so I often try to print threads I'm interested in for reading on the subway. The problem is that the old board had its margins set too wide or something. It would always cut off the last word or two from every line. Very frustrating.

But, obviously, do whatever is best for you.

Thanks, guys -- I really appreciate you.

God i've missed this place.

thanks for the hard work puttin' our kingdom back together.

I can't find my old post on the subject, but Todd-- apparently the problem with Safari is actually with my computer. I've got exactly the same setup here at work and the forum loads with no problem. Sigh. I don't want to think about what this means about my computer at home but, on the positive, the forum isn't even slightly broken.

Thanks for the update, Martha, and good luck getting your tech issues ironed out. (Your earlier question is on page 1 of this thread.)

Thanks Todd.

Not that it's at all important, but my post count doesn't change. Is anyone else having that problem? Of course, I guess it could be (sigh) another tech problem on my end....

Martha, no worries. I have a setting each section designating whether postings in that section counts towards someone's post count. Since this is an admin section, I set it so the post count doesn't increase. (Not that post count really matters -- I should turn it off completely now that I think about it.) Sorry to stress you out. ;)