NoPistons -Mazda Rx7 & Rx8 Rotary Forum - Welcome To The NEW Nopistons.com

Hey everyone & thanks Scott! I wanted to take a moment and introduce myself and answer some questions before they come up in the hopes of making some of the changes easier on you.

So first off, my name is Rick and I am from Ontario Canada.
I run a single person company called Forumedia Inc. I incorporated in 2009.
I acquire / manage forums for a living. My vertical of interest is auto. I currently own 16 auto sites and 1 rc website (i like nitro boats and lipo onroad).
I am in my 30s. I have wrenched on my own cars and I have owned an Rx7.

Whats happening to NoPistons?
NoPistons has been going through a migration. By the time you read this the DNS and the site contents will have been moved to my personal servers.
I have been speaking with Scott for some time with regards to taking over the site and finally this year he agreed to it.
NoPistons is going to be migrated to vBulletin away from IPB (more on that later).
One of the goals is to turn NP into an active site, increasing active users from 250.
Other than that, its going to be NoPistons as usual.

Why migrate to vBulletin?
Its pretty simple. All the sites I run or assist with are vBulletin. The people who can help me from other sites all know vBulletin. All the development I have ever had done is only for vBulletin. That means all the neat extra features my other sites have NoPistons will get.
It is a cost effective move and an ease of management move.

Do you have any other Mazda sites?
Yes, I currently own
www.miataturbo.net
www.v8miata.net
www.miataforumz.com *new*

Will vBulletin have all of IPBs / NoPistons features?
To be honest, I dont know. What i can tell you is that NoPistons has always been a work in progress, like any forum. Its my job to ensure we stay cutting edge and relevant. So that means after the migration I will certainly be fielding comments and questions, some that I imagine will have to do with making NoPistons vBulletin similar to NP IPB.

Will there be advertisements?
There will be advertisements. While we will be keeping some of the current ads we will be adding some. There will be a supporter system in place and we will honor current site supporters. If you support, you dont see the ads. Regular members will be subject to them.
During the first few days give me some time to fix who sees what. If you see an ad and you are a supporter, PM me. I will fix it.
*note, the groups are pulled over from IPB. So if you were in a supporter group then you will be put in a supporter group now.

Will there be new sites rules?
The current rule set is here:
https://www.nopistons.com/forums/ind...ion=boardrules

The new rule set / additional details can be found here

After the changes my account is messed, i'm about to spazz, help!
Send me a pm outlining what is broken. If I can fix it, I will.
If i cant fix it right away I will have a sys admin look at it.

I am a mod, was a mod... what the heck?
Only one during a migration in the past have we lost the staffing credentials and privleges. At the time of writing this, after our first test migration that was not the case.
Don't freak out if something isnt right, just shoot me a PM. Replying to the thread about your mod privs may go overlooked. While I will be trying to answer every question or concern, sometimes things get overlooked.

Some features are broken, WTF!!!!
This is / will have been a large migration. First off, I don't do migrations often to begin with. I do have 1 person helping be hes also human and not a pro at IPB to vBulletin. We will try and fix everything of the course of a few days. If I am not responding to you right away its likely because i am working on something else related to the site.

Broken Other stuff
This has been a bit of a struggle migration for myself and a hired gun.
We know at the time of writing this and after a test migration that the gallery will need to be kept up in an archive capacity until its migrated. This is something we will be tackling both in keeping it up and possibly later migrating it to the current system.
We know attachments to threads had some issues during our test migration. This has more to do with the current tool we are using. We will be trying again. The good news is we have the attachments, worst case is threads get stripped of them (which is really bad IMO).
There wont be an arcade.
There wont be a garage though we will try and keep it up for archive reasons.
** broken stuff takes time to fix. please be patient. I am honestly doing what I can to resolve everything with help and on my own.

Decals?
Yes, once we get sorted all of the new site supporters will be eligible for a set of NP decals.

The Store?
The store was ran by Scott. I have no intention of running a store or selling gear at this time. If there is a demand for hoodies or t's its something we can look at doing.
Scott will still be here with us and whatever inventory he has is for sale as far as I know, contact him :)