Site-wide upgrade, please read.

[admin]

We are planning a site-wide upgrade this Thursday April 13th.

The entire site will down for a few hours while the upgrade takes place.  We anticipate a window of 4 to 6 hours where the site will be inaccessible.

Although we are planning Thursday April 13th, this could be delayed to a subsequent day if we encounter unforeseen issues between now and then.

The site upgrade will touch every functions; the online store, the download section, the forums, the license key activation server, user accounts, etc.

Your username and password will remain intact.

All forum threads will be converted.

The new site will have a fresher light look.  Blue on a white background.  There are no plans offer a darker theme at this time but we may consider one eventually, but not on day one and no promises.  We have several tasks to complete on Thursday and for a few weeks to come to ensure a seamless transition.

Everything is done in order of priority.  
1) Data conversion, including user accounts, store invoices, forums, etc.
2) Activation server.  This is the top priority once the data has been converted.  The site will remain off line until this is 100% operational.
3) Download server
4) Invoice system
5) Payment gateways, PayPal and Credit cards.

The new site will support both USD and CAD as the current site.  However, only one currency will be displayed at a time and you will have the option to change it.  If you have a US ip address you should see the prices in USD by default, all other countries will see CAD by default… but again this can be changed while browsing the store.

The site will also be bilingual, French and English.  This is a massive undertaking and may take a few weeks to complete the translation of all system text and store products.  Forums will not be translated but the French support forum will remain.

IMPORTANT – during the upgrade

1) The site will be unavailable for several hours and may come back up for a few minutes just to go down again.  Please allow a solid 12 to 24 hours of intermittent site up/down.

2) The activation server will be down.  Since purchase keys can be activated just fine without the Internet this should have no impact.  However, trials keys will not work during this time.  This is something I have tried to circumvent but alas I can not so please be patient if you have a trial key.

Thank you for your support.

Regards

[astroman133]

Good luck with the site upgrade!

[AaronSmall]

I kind of like the current color scheme but then again I'm not one for change.  I'll get over it.

With any luck you'll have a "Good Friday' (couldn't resist).  I was glad to see you scheduled this for the full moon.  Well timed.

Best of Luck, mon ami.

[admin]

The idea for a lighter color scheme is purely for brand name recognition.  I'm starting to advertise in magazines and I need the ads and website to be consistent.  I did a few samples and ads using the current color scheme simply did not pop enough and really looked awkward.

Thank you for your feedback.

Guylain

[admin]

Okay, good progress on the site upgrade.

1) The activation server only went down for about 1 hours between 2am and 3am.

2) Payment gateways, credit card and PayPal are operational

3) All forum threads were converted

4) The download server is operational, no need to dropbox anymore.

5) Your software keys (and identifier) are now displayed in your on-line invoice.  Click "My Purchases" then "Orders" from the top bar menu and your keys are there.

6) SSL certificate migrated.  As before, the entire site is 100% served over secure SSL connection.

 

Things left to so:

1) French Translation

2) Going through all store products and added product information details and specs where applicable... and new images.

3) Update all past invoices with correct currency.  They were all converted to USD despite some having been paid and process in CAD.

4) Sleep, drink beer, sleep some more, and drink more beer.

 

It will take 2 to 4 weeks to to tweak minor things left to do but overall I'm satisfied.  My biggest challenge was the minimal downtime on the activation server and this worked out great.

Thank you for your patience.

Regards,

[s3igell]

Welcome Back...  And yes, take some time for 

Quote

Sleep, drink beer, sleep some more, and drink more beer.

It seems that there are going to be a few "New Site" issues.

Symantec/Norton Safe Web is seeing the Forum Pages as "Suspicious / Phishing Activity" with this warning: chrome-extension://cjabmdjcfcfdmffimndhafhblfmpjdpe/RedirectPages/SUSPICIOUSREDIRECT.HTML

Also, while I had made sure that I knew my Current Password (Hey when you don't Login for a long time because of Successful Login Retention...), the New Site still caused "Locked for Security Reasons" and required me to "Reset Password".

 

Additional Observations:

Notifications seem to be Empty, even though I had a relatively lengthy list of Notifications before the Upgrade.  I also had a "1 New Notification" Red Advisory, only to be told No Notifications when I clicked to Check them.

Spacing between Lines and Paragraphs in Thread Postings seem to be "Extra", with "Double Spacing" between Paragraphs and 1.5 Line Spacing between Lines.  This makes a Thread take up more Vertical Space - less Density and more Scrolling...

[admin]

Thanks for the feed back, the notification should have survived the upgrade, I was not made aware that this could be an issue.

Odd for the password, the accounts I tested before the upgrade worked.

I see what you mean for the double spacing, I'll see what I can do.

Regards, 

[s3igell]

What is the "Pause" symbol in the Browser Tab Label when the Tab hasn't been In Focus for a while??  (seen in Chrome on Win10)

 

[admin]

I don't know.

Edit.  I believe it is the notifications being paused while you are browsing other sites.

[s3igell]

13 hours ago, admin said:

I believe it is the notifications being paused while you are browsing other sites.

Notifications are now presented in some "Active" manner, not just with the "Bell" symbol in the Header and (if signed-up) the Occasional Email??

[admin]

Yes, if you are on the site browsing and you receive a notification you well an instant message.  I only had it happen to me once so far but I assume this is it.  I\m not 100% sure, this is a new platform and it has a lot of features configurable, hard to navigate through all of them.

[admin]

Confirmed, I just got another one.  A small popup will be displayed momentarily and discreetly at the bottom of the page for about 5 seconds. 

[AaronSmall]

Looks good.  My sign-in held.  

Also, I really like the new daily digest e-mails.  Reminds me of the old Yahoo daily.