Changes to Skoolie.net

[Steve-SKO]

Thanks to everyone who has joined the skoolie.net community. Originally in back at the beginning on the internet I ran skoolie.net as sort of a blog to let others see the work I was doing on my 1972 International school bus conversion. After realizing there was no good way for others to share their ideas and especially pictures of their projects I started to plan out the best Skoolie website ever envisioned. On Nov 26 2003 I turned on the power to the new community of bus enthusiasts and although it has migrated from many servers since it has never stopped running along. The internet has come a long way since then making it easy now to share you pictures with Flickr and your videos through YouTube but forum remains the best way to share and collaborate on ideas.

For several years now I have been busy with other projects and the amount of time needed to deal with all of the SPAM coming from gmail, yahoo, and other free email sites has caused me to close down new registrations coming from those sites. This has lead to many people who would like to join not being able to. Sara and the moderators made great advances in cleaning up the site of the spam and fake accounts over the last year and now it is time to take the next step.

For several years I have been talking with Andy Robinowitz about him taking over the site. He runs many forums of similar interest and has the knowhow and the drive to continue the fight against the spammers. Last week I decided to sell him Skoolie. I will still post on the site about updates on the buses as I find time to work on them but I think for this site to continue to grow this is a change that must happen.


-Steve

 

[bansil]

Re: Changes to Skoolie.neta

Steve thanks everything you have done to give us a place to play and talk skoolies

 

[dond]

2nd that, thank you!!

 

[Andy R]

Thanks for the introduction Steve. I'm honored for you to entrust us with the Skoolie community.

A little about me. I started my first forum when I was restoring a 1961 Airstream Bambi in 2002. It grew and I found forums fascinating. A few years after starting www.AIRForums.com I decided to dedicate myself to fostering great forums. I guess I am just a wanderer because I packed up all my stuff and headed off to live on the cheap abroad and work on forums. I ended up spending nearly 5 years on 6 continents living out of suitcases and working with forum communities 24x7 (excluding time to see cool things and enjoy some cold brews).

Over the years I was blessed to meet some amazing people through the forums. Some stepped up to help out and now I have an awesome team of friends who helps make sure the sites get the attention they deserve. Janet helps with community management working with the mods/admins, Jeff helps with technical stuff, Andy Staple is a graphics guy, Jake makes sure our servers are secure and our backups are working.

As for plans for Skoolie, we'll probably move over to vBulletin so we can have a bunch of features that are currently not available with phpBB. We'll setup smartphone access (is Skoolie already available via Tapatalk?) and a showcase system so everyone can show off their school bus conversions. We are all ears so if you have some ideas on features that would make Skoolie better, please let us know.

If you have any other questions, please let me know!

Regards,

Andy

 

[Valkyrie_2]

Sadly Skoolie is not on Tapatalk. I think it would be a good idea though since I believe Tapatalk offers offline composition of responses for those of us that use soly mifi or public WiFi.

 

[Andy R]

Sadly Skoolie is not on Tapatalk. I think it would be a good idea though since I believe Tapatalk offers offline composition of responses for those of us that use soly mifi or public WiFi.

Well get Skoolie onto Tapatalk soon. You are right, it's a nice fast interface when on slower connections.

 

[Janet H]

Checking in and saying hello... I work with Andy and you will see me around here occasionally. If I can help in some way please let me know. I met Andy years ago through the Airstream forum when I registered there to find info about restoring my vintage camper. I became a moderator and then an admin and now work with site teams to help out and offer support. I live in eastern WA and am also a professional musician. Every once and a while I run into another player who has a restored bus - especially at music festivals where they stand out in the camping area as the coolest rig around

I'm hopeful that over the next few months we can update the site software and offer some more robust spam abatement tools. That would allow registration to be opened again and bring an infusion of new members. It's frustrating to not be able to register.

 

[xJP]

Hey Andy.
I was wondering if there is any way I could help moderate and remove spam and just keep everything going smoothly?

If this website does get moved, do we have to start over and re-post everything that has already been posted? It will be hard to get this original information back because there are some people who have posted that have lost interest, or moved on, so we will be lacking some important information!

 

[Sara-SKO]

Good morning, and nice to meet you and your team, Andy.

We have a great community of incredible people here. I know that our dedicated contributors would love to see the traditions of information-sharing and collaboration continue. It's always nice to see a group of like-minded souls working to educate and enlighten the rest of the world!

Welcome to Skoolie.

 

[Andy R]

Hey Andy.
I was wondering if there is any way I could help moderate and remove spam and just keep everything going smoothly?

If this website does get moved, do we have to start over and re-post everything that has already been posted? It will be hard to get this original information back because there are some people who have posted that have lost interest, or moved on, so we will be lacking some important information!

Thanks for stepping forward and offering to help. At this time I think the best course of action is for us to work with the current team and get the site converted over to better software. Once we are settled on the new software and looking to expand the team then we'll keep your info handy.

As for starting over/having to re-post everything, the answer is no. We will import everything so pretty much nothing is lost. There might be a few small settings that do not transfer over but all the posts will stay exactly the same, no need to repost anything.

 

[Andy R]

Good morning, and nice to meet you and your team, Andy.

We have a great community of incredible people here. I know that our dedicated contributors would love to see the traditions of information-sharing and collaboration continue. It's always nice to see a group of like-minded souls working to educate and enlighten the rest of the world!

Thanks for the warm welcome.

I agree that online forum communities are very special and we look forward to providing more tools for everyone to enjoy.

 

[bansil]

Good morning, and nice to meet you and your team, Andy.

We have a great community of incredible people here. I know that our dedicated contributors would love to see the traditions of information-sharing and collaboration continue. It's always nice to see a group of like-minded souls working to educate and enlighten the rest of the world!

Thanks for the warm welcome.

I agree that online forum communities are very special and we look forward to providing more tools for everyone to enjoy.

**** yeah, got it in a quote , I would like a new welder and a plasma cutter would be cool also''''maybe a plasma cam table setup to go with it'

Thank you Santa...ugh...er...Andy!!! :mrgreen:

 

[ol trunt]

Way to go Bansil, you forgot to mention the high pressure water cutting tool and the semi-sized spray booth and and and all that other stuff you said you'd get for us!

 

[Andy R]

Skoolie Ranch will be awesome. A couple hundred of the most beautiful acres next to a stream with beautiful mountains nearby. Campsites for all Skoolie members and a huge shop with every fabrication tool you can think of. Oh yeah, a stocked bar for keeping hydrated and an amazing garden for fresh veggies to go with our grass fed beef! That sure would be fun! Sounds like a great reality show!

 

[Elliot Naess]

Thank you, Steve!
Welcome, Andy!

My preference is to stay with phpBB just the way it is -- unless new features that some folks want can be added WITHOUT CHANGING ANY OF THE OLD.
I really dislike having to learn new stuff when the old was serving me perfectly well.

 

[Valkyrie_2]

If it means I can use Tapatalk then any change is welcome. I use a tablet and a phone for all of my internet at the moment and all of it over a 2g connection. I have two 3g devices but have yet to encounter a 3g service in South Carolina.

 

[somjuan]

I'm thrilled to hear this!

My two cents: I'd be really cautious changing forum software. I'm sure you know the problems. Any links between threads or from outside will cease to work. Possible errors on import. Is there really so much vbulletin can offer over phpBB?

 

[turf]

very cool!
welcome to the new team and a big thanks to the old one. good luck on all the changes!!!! looking forward to the future of skoolie. (and that fab shop by the creek!)

 

[Janet H]

Hey folks - be sure to check out the announcement about the coming software update here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=468320

 

[jmar896]

I didn't see this thread till now but I wanted to say if you ever need help with the site I have worked with many fourm softwares (phpbb, vbulletin and xenforno). Seeing that your other forum has ads I am guessing that skoolie.net will end up having ads too. Please don't load it with them. I understand you need to make your money back and recoupe running costs, but some sites are crazy with them.

And welcome