There's a new board for forum games, under the General Discussion board. What's a forum game? Any never-ending thread is probably a good candidate...all active threads of this type have been moved to the new board so take a look if you aren't sure what qualifies.

Threads on this new board will NOT show up in the 'new forum posts' box on the right navigation bar of the site. While we realize there are a lot of members who enjoy these games, there are also a lot of members getting annoyed by the same threads consistently dominating the box and making it hard to find new threads. We hope to create an option soon to allow members to choose whether these posts should show up in their box or not, but for the moment that's how the system works. Please keep in mind that these threads will still show up in the 'show unread posts since last visit', or 'show new replies to your posts' links on the left side of the site, near the PM area. You could also put them on your notify list.

The 'Site under construction' message we were getting for most of yesterday was caused by a hack or a configuration error on the server our site is on. We've still got all our data, but since this type of thing has been happening more often we're now shopping around for a new place to host the site. It'll probably be a few weeks, we'll post more info as that gets more concrete.

Many of you probably noticed that the site was down for a while today. I believe I've fixed everything, but there may be one or two lingering quirks. Please report any issues in the webmaster area of the forums as usual.

After some investigation, I don't think we were hacked. The problems followed a very specific pattern, and indicate a potential problem with a program running on the server that accidentally overwrote a few of our files. I'm going to try to get in contact with our hosting provider to see if they can shed any light on what happened.

The site was recently taken down for a short amount of time to effect some upgrades. They are as follows:

• Image Gallery module added: We now have the capacity to upload images as content and add them to a gallery to be stored on the site. If you have pictures that you would like to submit, please let us know, and we'll see about getting them on here. Although smaller size is better if you can do it, note that the file size limit is currently 1 MB per image. This may change in the future.
• Repeating Events on the Calendar: If you have any events that need to repeat on a certain regular schedule, the calendar now has the ability to handle these and display them. For non-officers, as always, let us know if you've got anything you would like added to the calendar. You may also notice that the phases of the moon have been added as well. :)

The website will be taken offline tonight at about 7:00 p.m. for some upgrades. It should return to full functionality by 8:00 p.m.

We still need a new webmaster. If you are qualified (know PHP and SQL), and at all interested, please PM me and/or Jerle as soon as possible. Time is rapidly running out.

I have graduated this winter semester and I will be moving to Utah State for my graduate school. As such I will no longer be able to fill the position of webmaster due to time constraints and distance. I will still likely be able to help around somewhat with things around the site, but it wouldn't be good for me to be the primary webmaster anymore.

So, we're looking for a member of the club that feels they are at least decently competent in PHP and MySQL, and is willing to help out with the site. The webmaster should also attend planning meetings when they are announced. If you are interested in the position, please either PM me or reply with a comment to this post. I will want to spend some time training whoever is selected for the position before I leave, which will likely be around the end of July.

The website will be taken down for maintenance tonight at around midnight (perhaps a bit earlier). There will be a warning shout in the shoutbox between 5 and 10 minutes before it happens stating at what time it will occur. I will be upgrading the 'Remember me' module in an attempt to fix it so it actually remembers your login.

Update: I have updated the remember me module, please let me know on the Post Problems With the Site Here thread if you have issues with it still.

Any other remembered logins you had with the site are either out of date or potentially non-existent. Please log out and log back in again at least once before you report any problems with the site not remembering you.

In order for us to better be able to track club membership, we request that you please verify your full name in your membership profile here on the site. To do that click the 'My account' link on the left, If your name is there correctly, you should see a section called Registration under which it has Name and your full name (at least your first and last name-- we don't really need your middle name unless you really want to give it to us). If it does not appear there, please click the 'Edit' tab on the upper right side of your profile, then click on the Registration tab, and update your full name there.

Please verify this even if you are a long-standing member of the club-- there apparently were some difficulties when we did the changeover from the old site and various older members' accounts were not updated correctly with their real names.

Thanks for your cooperation! Please let either me or Jerle know if you have any questions, either via PM, contact on the site form, or through commenting on this post.

Some of you may have had intermittent problems posting to the site from BYU campus. This is not a problem with the Quark site, we can not fix it. BYU needs to figure out what's wrong with their network. We've contacted their Office of IT, and hope they'll fix it eventually. Until then, there's nothing we can do.

The shoutbox is temporarily down. I'm trying to find out what happened to it and fix it.

Hi everyone, thanks for you patience. We've completed the change to the new site system. A FAQ will be posted in the upper right to help you with figuring out the new features. Let us know if there are any problems. The old website is accessible at: http://quarksff.org/mambo. Note that posting has been disabled there.

Thanks,

-Daen

The final site changeover will happen tonight at approximately midnight (barring further user login problems). If you visit the site during that time you will see a maintenance notice. After the changeover has happened then you can access the new site with the same URL you used to access the old site: http://quarksff.org. (Important, continue reading!)

If you have any problems logging in to the new site or using the forums, you may send me an email via the new site's contact form in the upper right.

After the transition has been completed, I will give the URL where the old site may be accessed for purposes of retrieving PMs and other information. Note, however, that all posts and other information made on the old site from this point forward will be lost, and further posting there may be disabled.

If there are further concerns from the officers, please contact me through the above mentioned methods, with preference being by phone.

-- Daen (Josh Adams)

Most of you might have already noticed the cool new calendar the forums have. Officers will be able to post stuff on there as usual, but we'd also like to open it up a bit for GMs or other people who regularly host events.

If you'd like posting access to the calendar, please PM Daen with your reason, and assuming it's a decent one he'll get you set up.

One other interesting thing is that entering your birthday on your forum profile will automatically add that to the calendar.