I'm very pleased to announce that after 10 a LOT of hours invested that I am very close to closing up this old broken site and forum.

I am going to need some volunteers to try out the new forum before it goes live. I'm not quite ready to do a "public beta", but need some testers.

If you are will to help, please contact me at my temporary email of beachcats@thebeachcats.com and mention you saw this post.

I realize the forums have been in such a mess that not many are checking here, so if you know how to contact other members who would be willing to help please share this info with them.

I'm looking into signing up for a bulk email service like MailChimp, SendGrid, or Brevo in order to contact the rest of the registered members when there is more to check out and when the new site is launched. so if you have any tips on the best of those paid services to use please let me know.

--
Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

NEW TheBeachcats.com Forums HERE.
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/forums/
--

This is GREAT news! Awesome Damon. I can volunteer to test out the new site or help out where I can.
Thanks

--
Philip
--

Happy to help. I've gained a lot here.

Thanks Philip and westmatt! I've received four other offers of support this morning by email.

I'm very close to launching the staging site with the all new forum. I've spent the last dozen days (and nights) getting the forums migrated to a forum software called WPForo. There is a lot of beachcat history and content that I couldn't bear to lose.

19 Forums, 8,504 Topics, 75,700 Posts, 37,700 Members

The forum is by far the most difficult migration, I'm also working on a new:

• Classifieds: I've identified two systems that would work and am doing test migrations to see which works best. The current classifieds are still working and still very active.
  
  
• Photo Album Archive: The old photo albums at https://www.thebeachcats.com/pictures won't be needed in the same way on the new site, since it will have the ability to upload images in a post, but the content has to be saved for posterity. It contains 24,502 photos in 1,618 albums and uses nearly 6 GB of storage. I've already successfully migrated this to a modern responsive photo gallery called Piwigo.
  
  
• Calendar: Surprisingly hard to find web software that offers the same features as the one from 22 years ago but that is done.
  
  
• News articles: These have been migrated to WordPress blog posts successfully. Will make it so much easier to create news articles about the beachcat world.

Lots of other odds and ends and to migrate but I feel more confident now than ever that it will happen.

--
Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

NEW TheBeachcats.com Forums HERE.
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/forums/
--

Email sent
Whoo hoo! 600th post. I'm catching up to the spammers.



Edited by tominpa on Jan 28, 2025 - 11:02 AM.

--
Tom
NACRA 5.7 (1984 Sail 181)
Pennsylvania
--

Thats great news. I'd be glad to help.

--
Cameron
Tornado (Marstrom) USA 851
--

I am logging in now.

--
Tom
NACRA 5.7 (1984 Sail 181)
Pennsylvania
--

We've had great response and feedback so far. About a dozen members are taking a deep dive to try and make a new better TheBeachcats.com for all of us.

--
Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

NEW TheBeachcats.com Forums HERE.
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/forums/
--

Very keen on trying it out, seeing the new hotness.

I'm a seasoned computer geek if that helps. How does one get to try? - emailing Damon

martin_langhoff

Very keen on trying it out, seeing the new hotness.
Damon

Martin, I sent you the test site info on the 15th, have you had a chance to take a look?

--
Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

NEW TheBeachcats.com Forums HERE.
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/forums/
--

Damon,
Just now seeing what you are doing with the site. Holy cow that's a lot of work!! Thank you so much for keeping this going and making it even better. We sure appreciate this.
Regards, mark

tangledsail

Damon,
Just now seeing what you are doing with the site. Holy cow that's a lot of work!! Thank you so much for keeping this going and making it even better. We sure appreciate this.
Regards, mark

Thank you! Up till now I've only been sharing the URL of the new site under construction with those that have emailed me direct. I've have just moved the under construction site to it's real server on a staging URL. Anyone still reading these forums is welcome to come try out the replacement forums and event calendar.

I have migrated all the existing site members (usernames) over but not password to keep things secure. To create a password for the new site go to the login page at
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/sign-in/
and use the "lost password" link to create a new password with your existing username.

Once you are logged in you can try out the parts that are ready.

If you have information for Catamaran related events, please add them to the calendar.
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/submit-event/
So when we go live there will be a nice list of upcoming events.

I've already added the ones for OSYC.com since I do their website and have all the information needed.

Take a look here
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/all-events/

One very nice feature of the new calendar is the permanent list of venues that will be created as events are added. This will allow clubs and locations to link directly to their own events.
https://thebeachcats.temp…l.host/catamaran-venues/
https://thebeachcats.temp…l.host/event-organizers/

As always, any feedback is welcome. Discuss the new site in the new Site Talk forum:
https://thebeachcats.temp…l.host/forums/site-talk/

Thanks for your patience and understanding during the migration.

--
Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

NEW TheBeachcats.com Forums HERE.
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/forums/
--

Why haven't we moved to the new site yet? This old site is completely unusable.

--
Tom
NACRA 5.7 (1984 Sail 181)
Pennsylvania
--

tominpa

Why haven't we moved to the new site yet? This old site is completely unusable.

I agree, and I am sorry.

Sometimes, migrating the site content to a modern platform has seemed "just around the corner" but many times it has seemed like a lost cause that I should cut my losses of lots of money and immeasurable time.

Here's where it stands today:

The staging site is located at https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/
After the new site launch, the site will simply come up instead of this one at TheBeachcats.com .

Update on where things stand:

I have a satisfactory move of News,
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/news/
Forums,
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/forums/
and Calendar.
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/all-events/

I have also successfully migrated the 6GB photo gallery with it's 25,000 images, in 1500 albums along with all the attached album, and image titles and descriptions to a modern free standing phot archive at
https://archive.thebeachcats.com/pictures/
This quite a feat, if I do says o myself, but I wasn't willing to lose that content contributed by the members over so many years. It required a lot of custom coding and the purchase of a separate hosting server to accommodate, but now those images and PDF's will continue to be available for future beachcat sailors.

The Classifieds has been a huge effort and is very important since they are still very popular and classifieds is the only income generator for the site.

I've just last week been able to do a successful(ish) migration of the existing classifieds (super important since members paid for the ads).
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/classifieds/
Sell a boat form
https://thebeachcats.temp…sifieds/sell-a-sailboat/
I believe after some tweaking this is going to work out and be a big improvement over the existing classifieds.

Communications with the members. I have long wanted to send out a newsletter emails to the existing members explaining what is up and inviting them back to the new site. Sending mass emails is a tricky and expensive business with today's spam rules and safeguards. I have a practical solution built using Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) and the FluentSMTP/FluentCRM plugins which I have been testing.

So please hang in there, I want to make the move very much, in January I thought I was a month away and started paying for the second web server.

Nearly every feature on the new site required paid plugins and paid customization in order to recreate the functionality of this site, which was way ahead of it's time in 2002.

An issue I've been dealing with this week. After making a breakthrough on migrating the existing classified ads I started thinking about a time frame for launching the new site. First thing I thought of was that the forums migration was done in January. I paid a specialist database company $600 back then to migrate the forum posts from this extinct software (Zikula/Dizkus) over to the wpForo Wordpress forum. So if I simply launch the new site now, all posts here since January would be lost. I started trying to contact the company who did the migration to see if they could do an update on Sept. 1st and sent them an email every day, they haven't replied at all.

So if I can get the classifieds fully working, what is your opinion on losing those topics and posts and launching as soon as possible?

--
Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

NEW TheBeachcats.com Forums HERE.
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/forums/
--

I would say migrate. We haven’t lost that many posts. Longer you wait, the more you stand to loose and I think people just lost the taste for the (now) old style platform, that still has content life and operability in the form of classifieds left in it.

Once going, we could try and generate some critical mass to get it going again as well.

I say go.

--
Chuck C
NACRA 500 Mk2
Hobie 21se (sold)
--

charlescarlis

Once going, we could try and generate some critical mass to get it going again as well.

I say go.

Thanks for the input! I tend to agree. I finally have a setup to send out mass emails to the members.

I'll be doing a test email to a couple hundred Monday or Tuesday to make sure they are deliveralble.

Ive transferred all the username/emails to the new site, so anyone registered here can get a password on the new site using the lost password form.

--
Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

NEW TheBeachcats.com Forums HERE.
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/forums/
--

Should we just start posting on the new site? Would it be possible to use a script to find the posts and threads since the site was migrated similar to the action that finds new posts from the last week or last visit? Activity has been very limited on this site due to the amount of spam and I think many members have simply migrated away until things are fixed.

--
Tom
NACRA 5.7 (1984 Sail 181)
Pennsylvania
--

tominpa

Should we just start posting on the new site? .

Yes I think so. I won't be able to migrate any more posts from here. I have started a series of emails out to members with instructions to go to the new site. I'm on a personal deadline to move the site by October 2nd, just 11 days away!

--
Damon Linkous
1992 Hobie 18
Memphis, TN

NEW TheBeachcats.com Forums HERE.
https://thebeachcats.tempurl.host/forums/
--