Changes To Our Forum

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Hello members!

 

You’ll have noticed big changes to our forum!

 

First, in an effort to keep things more organized, we’ve made changes to the boards. The biggest change you will notice to the actual presentation of the boards is the usage of sub-boards. It will take a little getting used to, but we feel certain you’ll master them in no time. All the same basic boards will be in place, they will simply be arranged a little differently. You will also find that some boards have been combined, while others have been separated into more descriptively titled sub-boards. For example, we will be using a general board titled <i>Your Health and Wellbeing</i>, instead of the three separate boards we had for health related issues, <i>Wellbeing (Conventional Medicine)</i>, <i>General Health</i>, and <i>Alternative Healing</i>. Our current <i>Withdrawal Support</i> board will be known as <i>Planning Your Taper</i>, and will include sub-boards for <i>Substitution Tapers</i> and <i>Titration Tapers</i> threads.

 

The forum is now open for guest viewing! Please bear with me while I try to explain this process.

 

All old posts have been archived in a section that will be accessible to <b>forum members only</b>; these posts are <b>not</b> open for public reading. To explain further, all of the former boards are in an archive that members, both old and new, will have access to view. Anyone viewing the new forum who is not logged in as a member will be unable to see that the board <i>The Archives</i> even exists. Also, search engines do not have access to these archived boards, so there is no danger that any portion of these posts will appear on a search such as Google.

 

The threads in the archived section will remain open for an as yet undetermined amount of time. We will watch the old threads, and close them to replies as they seem to wind down and new threads begin to form on the open boards. We will, however, close the archived boards to the opening of any new threads.

 

Current blogs will soon be locked, but we encourage bloggers to start a new blog on the open board. We would suggest placing links to your old blog in your new blog, and vice-versa. Of course, the link will only allow someone to view your archived blog if they are logged in as a member of the forum. This will protect the archived blogs from both public view and search engines. New blogs will not have board specific abilities for members, but will have the same functions as any other board on the forum.

 

With the new forum structure in place, all of the new boards, with the exception of <i>The Archives</i>, will be open to be read by anyone. You will no longer have to be a member to read the forum. You will, however, have to be a member to make a post. I can't stress enough...<b><i>all old posts will NOT be publicly viewed! Only new posts!</i></b>

 

We do realize that some members may wish to change their username as the new boards will be open for public reading; some may wish to use something more anonymous. Members who wish to change their username should send me a PM with the new username they would like to have applied to their account, and I will make the change for you. <b>Please note: If you wish to have a username change, you must have a current and valid email address listed in your profile. When a username change is made to an account, a new password is automatically emailed from the forum. Please be sure to update your email address before requesting a username change.</b>

 

We are hoping that all these changes will actually <i>help</i> the forum in the long run, but we won’t know unless we try. We want people to see us as a support forum, not some secret society with something to hide or feel embarrassed about. Our hope is that the forum not only survives, but it thrives!

 

We sincerely hope to make the transition as painless as possible for our current members.

 

Thank you so much for all your support.

 

Regards,

 

The BenzoBuddies.org Team.