Welcome to the new Birdline Forums

With this post I hope to answer some questions on why we changed to these new forums, what it means for you, and some of the more important differences. As usual if I don't cover something you would like to know, please feel free to ask and I will try to answer.


So, why did we change to the new forums?
We changed to these new forums for multiple reasons. The main reason is a better integration with our website that allows us to have one user account for each member. One of the many confusions we get with new users is that they create an account on the website, then eventually find the forums and try to login using their website login details. This doesn't work because the old forums were completely seperate from the website. Many users at this point didn't bother registering on the old forums and we lost a potential new chat friend. The new forums share the same login details with the website, so that when you register an account on the website, you automatically have access to the new forums. Less confusion for everyone.

The next reason was administration. With the old forums we would have a constant battle to keep the website and the forum accounts aligned. If a new member joined Birdline it would be up to us to try and find their account on the old forums and then add them as a Birdline member on the old forums. This is more difficult as it sounds as most users use names not related to their real name. This resulted in many legitimate Birdline members not having access to the membership forums because we couldn't "marry" their accounts up and had no idea who they were. The same applied for when a members membership lapses. We have to try and find their old forum account and remove the Birdline access.
With the new forums being integrated into the website, this is all done automatically. When you pay for your membership online you are automatically added to the Birdline membership and instantly have access to the member only sections of the website and forums.

Cost. Although there is an increase in cost in having the new forums, it is still cheaper than running the website and the old forums seperately. Instead of paying for two hosting packages, we only pay for one. Saving Birdline money is always a good thing, as that money saved can go on to help our feathered friends.


Why have we lost all our posts and history?
Simply due to imcompatibility. The new forums are run by a program called "Active Forums". The old forums were run by "SMF" and the two are simply incompatible. We did look at many ways of copying the data from the old forums to the new forums, but unfortunately there was no way to do it. It was decided by the directors of Birdline that starting the forums from scratch was the best option. We simply could not continue with the old forums and the problems that they bought. New posts will be created here and in a years time you will wonder what all the fuss was about.


Why can't I attach images anymore?
The new forums does actually support this feature but for now it has been decided to leave it turned off for now. The reason for this is the cost involved in storing your uploaded attachments. On the old forums, when you attached an image to a post, a copy of that image was copied to our server. A lot of these images were large in size and took up a lot of space. Unfortunately space costs money on the internet and it's a cost we could really do without. You can still put images in your post, but you will first have to upload them to an only sharing facility such as ImageShack or Photobucket and then link them in your posts.


I don't like the new forums!
This is to be expected. No one likes change and this is a pretty big one. Along with various featured you are used to on the old forums missing in the new forums, it's a lot to take in. Please remember that this was done in the best interest of Birdline. Give the new forums time and you will adjust to them.. it just takes a while to get used to.