Window on Wildlife Forum Updates

[JudyB]

Hi everyone!

First, a bit of background -

WildlifeCamWatch (this forum) is a forum I set up as a place to share information when the Hancock Wildlife Foundation (HWF) forum is offline, generally for routine maintenance (which always seems to take a bit longer than we expected) but occasionally because of power outages or other unexpected events. The idea is that HWF forum members can bookmark this forum, and if they can't reach the HWF forum, they can come here to see what's happening (once my co-admin gemini or I know there's a problem and get here to post about it). It looks like the HWF forum because this is where we test updates before making them to the huge HWF forum - but it is not part of HWF.

The Window on Wildlife (WOW) forum (http://www.window-on-wildlife.com) is an outgrowth of a forum that followed an eagle cam in Maine (where I live) that was online back in 2006 when I discovered eagle cams, and I actually was active on that forum before I became involved with HWF (though HWF's Hornby cam was the first one I watched). I'm a co-admin on the WOW forum with two other people, but all three of us are less active than we once were.

The reason for this thread:

The WOW forum hasn't had a major update since we set it up back in 2010, and it's pretty much worked OK with occasional minor tweaks, so we have been going with the "if it ain't broke, why fix it" plan. I've recently received a notice from BlueHost, the company where we rent server space for the WOW forum (and this forum), that they are upgrading their servers - which makes sense from a security perspective, but which might mean that we will no longer be able to connect to the WOW forum. I hope that doesn't happen - the last time there was an upgrade, their tech support helped us get the forum back online in a day or two. But if it's more complicated, it may take longer. I'm going to send an email bcc to those WOW forum members who have logged in recently (maybe the last 6 months) to let everyone know what is happening and provide them with a link to this thread - and after that, if the forum goes offline, I'll post updates here when/if I have news.

I don't have new member registration turned on at the moment - if we actually end up using this for any length of time, I can do that if there's interest. (We keep it locked to avoid spam.)

[JudyB]

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