While having a dedicated server is nice, our costs will go up a little. We currently pay 180.00/month and our new cost is 219.00 for the server. Added to the 39.00/month we pay for the HamWeather service on the main site, our annual costs for STORM2K come to $3,096.00. During the month of June we're paying for both sites but that's just the cost of making the move/conversion in a controlled and safe manner. Just so you know, our current PayPal balance is $1,295.35. You have all been wonderful over the years in supporting S2K and we feel that it's necessary to make this move to provide you the site that you deserve.
Beside the new server we will also be migrating from phpBB2 to phpBB3. While the new version is not officially released yet, the RC1 release (Release Candidate 1) has been very stable in our test environment and offers tons of new features. Here's a link that describes some of the new things to look forward to. http://www.phpbb.com/about/features/ Just this past week Chad conducted our first test conversion of our current database and it went very smoothly. We anticipate around 12 hours of downtime between the move and conversion but we'll schedule this well in advance so everyone knows when it's going to take place. Get your downtime plans ready now
Since we have a MySpace page now we will use that during the conversion time to keep everyone posted onthe progress.
In additon to the above changes, we're also testing a couple of picture/photo galleries for the site. This will give us a much easier to maintain "Member's Gallery" (read that as " It will actually get updated regularly") as well as our own place to upload and show off your weather photos.
I can tell you the staff has been testing the new site/board and is very excited! As we get a better handle on the timing of the changes we'll post an update.
Thanks for everyone's continuing support!
