Thanks for killing one of the top R/C sites on the internet. You should be proud!

Yep, it's been difficult this past week. However, the difficulty will result in a faster, newer and improved site for everyone. Things are happening behind the scenes that will be revealed to all very shortly. In the mean time, a performance upgrade has been approved and we should start to see some stability return.

I would like to see members get a fair review before being "banished" from posting on RCU. Some of the moderators are a little power mad.</p>

It would also be nice if the search feature would be fixed. It seems odd that Google can find a forum title or subject, but RCU can't. It seems like some forums are hidden on purpose since they don't show up in a search when similar ones do.</p>

I can assure you that no member is banned from RCU without a full review process. First off, the Moderators don't have the power to ban a member. That power resides with us in the Adminstrative roles of RCU. And before a member is banned from RCU they first receive warnings as to their actions and what needs to be corrected, if they still don't improve then they are placed on Moderated status (usually more than once), and then after all of that if they still cause problems then they are banned. but this process takes days, weeks, and even months in some cases. No legitimate member is ever just banned outright without due process.

Ken
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I was in Toledo this weekend with a rep from IB and I have seen the committment they have made to getting us fixed. They have approved the budget as well as the timeline for upgrading RCU to VBulletin, and it actually has started to happen. IB is fully committed to getting the problems we have fixed and getting RCU back on top. As a side note, IB owns over 500 online communities and they said that RCU was the roughest migration they have ever tackled. Because of the complexity of RCU, it's size, and the custom software running it what they thought would be an easy migration didn't happen. But they have now regrouped and are getting the upgrade process moving in earnest.

I know that it's a rough thing to ask considering the past history, but I do ask that you bear with us just a little bit longer. It's going to get better, and we do thank you for sticking with us through the hard times

Ken
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Sorry, I guess I was a bit harsh but I love this site. It has helped me more than any other facet of this hobby.
I am really glad to see they are moving to improve RCU. Now that I know it is part of a bigger plan, how bad it's been here lately, makes sense.
Looking forward to the new and improved RCU.

The custom software may have been a pain but was probably a good thing.  We'll see if generic off the shelf tweaked will do the job. 

The reason why RCU is a "custom software" is because the company that orginally put out the forum software went out of business. So it was up to the previous owners to do all upgrades and improvements themselves. And that's why it turned into such a customized piece of software. The funny thing is that Marc and Michael (previous owners) were planning on migrating the site to VBulletin themselves, but choose to sell the site instead. So we would have gone through all this nightmare regardless of who owned the business. The good thing is that IB has deeper pockets and is better situated to handle any problems that come up during the upgrade.

Ken
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I think that was an easy decision. Lets see............ upgrade RCU................ or retire forever. Hmmmm which one should I chose?

Like I posted on another thread here, I do feel for you guys, making the changes, and having to repeatedly come on and say "Bare with us, we're working on a fix"

I'll be honest, to many of us this has become "The check's in the mail" routine. We've heard it so many times it's pretty bad.

This was my #1 site for many years, but sadly it's not even #4 anymore. I still try and come on to see what life is left, but more and more it's less folks posting and the same repeated problems with posting.

I don't enjoy the other sites as much as I used too here, but least on them I can post and place photos with ease.

Hurry up and Git er Done! I miss my site.

I can't remember if it was in this thread, or one of the many other on RCU about the image upload problem, where I promised that I would forward any information that I received in order to keep all of our members better informed. Anyway, whether I did or not I'm still going to give you guys the info that I have received.<div>
</div><div>I know that the image upload issue has been going of for a few days now, but I've got some info about what's going on. Earlier this week IB tried to migrate us to a faster server cluster in order to get better performance out of RCU. During that migration a storage device went bad and caused the entire migration to totally crater, which resulted in the "Pardon our dust" banner showing for a good part of Wednesday. The tech department restored to the pre-migration backup and decided to take care of the migration a couple of servers at a time, instead of all of them at once. They think that the image upload issue is tied in with the storage device that went bad and it should come back up and work properly once the server migration is completed. Unfortunately I don't have the target for that completion, but I know that they are working as fast as they can to take care of it. </div><div>
</div><div>So hopefully we'll get our images back working soon. I promise that if I receive any other news about this I will pass it on to you guys. </div><div>
</div><div>This week I have new communications with IB that I have never had before, so I promise that I will pass on every scrap of news that I can get for everybody. I know most of you don't like being a mushroom and I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure that you aren't treated like that from now on.</div><div>
</div><div>Ken</div>

It's been reported to me that the image upload issues have been resolved. As you can see here I have uploaded a picture, so hopefully everything is good now.

Going forward I plan on taking a more active role in being a conduit of information from our Tech Department when things like this happen. In addition, if at any time anybody has any questions or concerns about tech related issues on RCU please don't hesitate to PM me, I'll do everything within my power to address your concerns. That's what I'm here for guys!!!

Ken

Thanks Ken. I noticed the up loads work better and the site is faster than before. Glad to see it.

Over the past few days Internet Brands has been migrating RCU to a faster server cluster. There are several reasons for this, but the upper most are better performance and prepping to upgrade us to the new forum platforms. The nice result is that everybody should see a much improved RCU in faster page loading as well as functions like picture upgrads working again. As we move to the new VBulletin platform later on in the year we'll see a BUNCH of new features on RCU geared to making your experience here much better. However, we will never change the core of what has made RCU so successful.

Ken
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