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  • Upcoming Site Migration

    Hi everyone -

    There are going to be some changes coming to Cryptograms.org shortly so I wanted to give you some advanced warning here. If you play any of other other sites you might have already noticed in the last few weeks that we've been gradually bringing many of our game sites together under a single sign-on environment on the main puzzlebaron.com domain. Acrostics, Word Searches, Drop Quotes, Clueless Crosswords, Crossworders and Sudokus have already been moved over, and Cryptograms will likely be next.

    What will change

    Hopefully the migration will be relatively seamless, but there are some things that probably will not make it over. Private messages are one example - if you have any PMs that you'd like to save for posterity, please make sure to do that ASAP (i.e. copy and paste to a local file on your computer) as I'm 99% sure those are not going to make it in the migration. Avatars I'm less sure about - they haven't made it in previous migration attempts but I will do my best to preserve them. If you have an Avatar image on your account that you 100% want to keep, be to sure to save a local copy of that avatar image to your computer so that you can reupload it later in case it is lost in the move.

    Forum posts - I'm going to do my best to preserve all forum posts and bring them over to the new site. You may not be able to edit or search them however after the migration.

    User accounts - every user account will be brought over, and passwords should remain unchanged, but there may be some occasional conflicts that I will have to fix manually. If you find post-migration that you can no longer login just email me at puzzlebaron@gmail.com and I will reset your password.


    Email addresses - this one is important. We've traditionally kept email addresses "optional" during user registration, but that's not going to be an option after the upgrade. If you currently have an account with an email address that looks like "unknown@unknown.com", I would highly recommend you update it with your current email (via the Settings link at the top of the page). The new system is going to require email addresses for all new user registrations, and those without an email (or with a fake email) may not be able to access their accounts or reset their passwords after the migration.


    Game statistics - all of this will carry over, but there will be a small window of time during the migration where game stats for a few hours (or maybe up to 48 hours) will be lost. This is unavoidable and I can't fix/replace individual statistics after the move. So if you care about solving percentages, be sure to log out of your account when you see a message posted here that the migration is about to begin. When you see a message posted that says the migration is complete it will be safe to log back in and resume playing.

    When will this happen?

    I don't have an exact time right now but I'm planning for this week. I've got a new server coming online shortly and will need to do some prep work on it first before the migration can start, but I will give a 24-hour heads up here on the forum with an estimated time/date once I have more information.

    What's the upside?

    Single sign-on is going to be a big plus, but that's not the main benefit. Having all of our sites on a single, standardized platform is going to give all of them a significant performance boost. I'm also upgrading our server architecture/hardware, updating and streamlining our source code and installing several new software packages that should make things a lot faster and more reliable as well. My hope is that these changes will eliminate the occasional "server burps" we've been experiencing where a page will randomly take 10-15 seconds to load, or the site will become unavailable for 5-15 minutes at a time.

    So apologies in advance for any interruptions and thank you for your patience! I'll keep posting updates here until the migration is completed.

    Stephen

  • #2
    Downloading our private messages before the migration

    Originally posted by admin View Post
    There are some things that probably will not make it over. Private messages are one example - if you have any PMs that you'd like to save for posterity, please make sure to do that ASAP (i.e. copy and paste to a local file on your computer) as I'm 99% sure those are not going to make it in the migration.
    Wow, Stephen, that's a lot! Thank you for bringing the site into an improved environment. I have a few questions, starting with...

    Please elaborate on the best way to save our private messages.

    Your post says we should manually copy and paste PMs to a local computer file, but that's a tedious and time-consuming option for anyone with many messages to save.

    HOWEVER, there is a "Download all Private Messages" option at the bottom of the PM folder page. It says:
    Download all Private Messages as:
    XML | CSV | Text

    Here are my questions:

    - Is downloading PMs a better option?

    - Which download format do you suggest we use? I'm not sure how to determine the appropriate option, and I'm probably not the only novice here when it comes to download formats.

    Thanks,
    Lisa

    Comment


    • #3
      Hi Lisa -


      Thanks for pointing that out! For most people the "Text" option will be easiest. CSV would be useful if you wanted to have the data in an Excel spreadsheet format, but I doubt most people would want that.

      Comment


      • #4
        Suggest email notification to all members

        Stephen, it also occurs to me that there are many members who will not see your Forum post in time to save their private messages before they disappear. Since these messages may be important to them, I encourage you to send out an email notification to all members, highlighting the critical action items.

        Many players on this site have been here more than 10 years, and some online bonds have grown into real-world friendships. One member of the group passed away nearly six years ago but is still dearly remembered. I could easily imagine that some of those disappearing private messages may be precious to some players.

        - Lisa

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by admin View Post
          Hi Lisa -


          Thanks for pointing that out! For most people the "Text" option will be easiest. CSV would be useful if you wanted to have the data in an Excel spreadsheet format, but I doubt most people would want that.
          Thanks, Stephen!

          Everyone: I just downloaded all my private messages with a total of two clicks. It was quick and painless. What you get is all your messages from forever, saved into a single Text document, in a font that looks like an old DOS computer screen from pre-Windows days.

          Comment


          • #6
            Please retain Forum threads and keep them searchable

            Originally posted by admin View Post
            Forum posts - I'm going to do my best to preserve all forum posts and bring them over to the new site. You may not be able to edit or search them however after the migration.
            Please don't lose the Forum threads! For this community, it would be like losing all our family photos in a house fire.

            The forum threads are a trove of wit and helpful wisdom, compiled over many years.

            The Forum treasures include:
            - Solving tips (difficult quotes, how scoring works, words with certain patterns, etc)
            - Games (group storytelling, etc)
            - Discussion (in memory of Pootie, how people chose their usernames, etc)
            - Classic quote comments (more than a thousand posts and still going strong)

            ALSO: Is there any way you can retain all threads as searchable content? Much of what's useful loses its use if we can't search for it.

            How Forum searchability supports your revenue stream:

            If anyone on earth does a Google search for a particular quote whose many cyberspace appearances happen to include our "Obnoxiously Difficult Quotes" or "Classic Comments on the Quote" threads, their search results will lead them to that Forum post. Both of these threads draw way more views than any others -- to date, 3,297,511 views for Classic Comments and 236,628 for Difficult Quotes. These super-high view counts must be due to quote searches on Google (or other search engines), and I would bet many players first discovered your website through that search pathway. But these Forum threads will stop drawing new players to your website if their content is no longer searchable.

            That's it from me. I hope other players will chime in.

            Comment


            • #7
              it worked!

              i just downloaded my private messages as advised and then saved it to my documents--way easier than i had anticipated.

              Comment


              • #8
                Please retain Forum threads and keep them searchable

                The Classic Comments are my favorite part of this site (thank you LLapp), right after the puzzle-solving itself. I'm so afraid we will lose them that I just now copied and pasted all 101 pages into a Word file to save on my computer and will repost them if the migration loses them (if the site will allow a single post that long).

                Comment


                • #9
                  Wow, Skeeter! What did you use for a download program and how long did it take? I may have to do the same thing. I just love the Classic Comments thread.

                  Edit: Oops! Just saw you used Word. At least I have that on my computer if I need to.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Shortcut for preserving an entire Forum thread

                    Originally posted by skeeter View Post
                    The Classic Comments are my favorite part of this site (thank you LLapp), right after the puzzle-solving itself. I'm so afraid we will lose them that I just now copied and pasted all 101 pages into a Word file to save on my computer and will repost them if the migration loses them (if the site will allow a single post that long).
                    Skeeter!! You are my hero! And you are a great pragmatist! Thank you.

                    Your post inspired me to see whether the Forum threads have an easy download option. They do not, but I found a shortcut to reduce copy-and-paste time. So in case anyone else wants to save a whole thread before the site is migrated....

                    Copy-and-paste shortcut for saving a whole Forum thread:

                    - Open the thread and click on "Thread Tools." (First tab immediately above the first post on the page.)

                    - From dropdown menu, select "Show Printable Version". This launches a new window showing 10 posts per page in printable layout.

                    - At top right corner of new page, click the link just below page numbers: "Show 40 post(s) from this thread on one page". This will allow you to copy 40 posts at once instead of only 10 at a time.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Upcoming Site Migration

                      Oddcouple, I chose the printable version as LLapp mentioned then copied each page and pasted it into Word. It retained every bit of what was said, including images where they were included and the date and time stamps. It only took me about 20 minutes. It sounds like LLapp's way is faster.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Stephen says Forum posts won't be lost

                        Hello all -

                        I emailed Stephen yesterday to repeat my concerns, and his response is worth passing along.

                        First, he sent out an email that went to all players who have more than 1 private message stored in their account. He alerted those players to download their PMs asap if they want to keep them. A few of us in the chat box mentioned receiving it Thursday morning.

                        Second, it looks like the Forum content will be okay -- at best it will be migrated intact, and at worst it will be archived. Here is Stephen's more detailed explanation:
                        My goal is to retain forum threads, it all comes down to the migration technology. In theory it should be fine but this is all new for me so I can't say for sure until I actually do it. Worst-case scenario, I'll have the old forums archived somewhere on the new site in a "flat" format - meaning just the raw HTML files. This won't be searchable or editable via the forum software, but people could still read through/browse it as they've always done and keyword search it via Google. So forum posts will not be lost even in that worst-case scenario.

                        I hope it's okay with Stephen that I'm passing along his message, since it's good news.

                        Lisa

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          ?

                          i wonder if any new quotes will be added during this migration. that would be fun!

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Looks like the new site is up and running!

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