Lots of changes and new stuff coming...

[JPotter57]

OK, guys, the ball is rolling.  I am making plans for the many changes coming up on our site.  As you know or not, the 1957ford.com purchase included several domain names.  I am going to add them all to our site, and all will point to the main page.  I will be making a couple small changes, in that the 57fordsforever.com domain will no longer be the primary domain.  It will still point to the same place as the others,but our site will go forth as being known as 1957ford.com.  It will become THE site for the 57 Fords International club, as well as our forum here, etc.  All of the technical data and photographic information that was on John's site will be there, hopefully in a seamless fashion.  I want to make all areas of the site accessible from all areas.  I had considered upgradinig to vbulletin forum, but then I thought about the massive content we have here which I would have to manually move, and decided against it.  I havent had any real problems with this forum.  I back it up semi-regularly, which I will step up to backing up weekly once this transition is made.  Visually, this area wont change much as it is what it is.  Not many options, but it is easy to read, easy to search, everyone seems to like it, so I wont do much there.  The rest of the site, I plan to incorporate Wordpress into it, so that I can update it daily with news, upcoming events, member meetups, etc.  Hopefully, we can begin doing some of those things, as I have been watching the forums here, and noticing that some of you guys have become good friends outside of the forums as well, and meet up on occasion.  That is good for the club, as well as each other.  Any ideas on things you would like to se on the site is appreciated.  All of the things you loved about John Gambill's site will be there, including the thousands of pictures, shop manual information, model information, etc.  I plan to  have as much of John's stuff in there as possible.  I am looking at a potential launch date of sometime early in the year, maybe mid-January.  More on that as I start putting it together.  I want to get it together as a functional site before I start adding pretty to it.  Once everything is working properly, it will go together quickly.  Stay tuned, we are about to grow!!

[Marc]

Sounds great James. Thanks for all the effort you put into keeping this site going!

[RICH MUISE]

wahoooo!

[hiball3985]

That will make an awesome site, I can't wait..

Not important now or maybe at all but I've tried posting using symbols from the Windows character map. like the one for degrees, it copies into the post when writing but after it posts it's like the site doesn't recognize it and it shows a question mark instead. I'm some what of a computer idiot so I don't know what is required to make a change?

[djfordmanjack]

GREAT NEWS !
Leaving the forum as is sounds like a great idea, as many of us seem to be quite oldtimers when it comes to changing things on the computer or internet. As far as I am concerned the forum is great as is.
getting the  57Ford domains and saving Johns site and info is a huge step really ! Congratulations and thanx for the efforts!

[mustang6984]

I have been part of a couple of other car forums, (NOT 57 Ford forums) and this is by far one of the best and most helpful. Everyone on this site is more than willing to offer up assistance, advice and past experiences as well as ways to find things I need. Can't get better than a bunch of car nuts willing to stick out a paw and help one an other!

Thanks to all who have helped...and I will stick my hand out when ever I can to do likewise. Look forward to the new "stuff" and doing some exploring!

[57AGIN]

James:

You can't imagine how wonderful it was for me to read this post about the continuation of the 57 Fords International Club and web site.  I had heard something about the site going down and I've been so busy wrapping-up the Wings, Wheels, Rotors & Expo show that I'm responsible for that I haven't even been able to see what was going on.  By the way, Congratulations on the arrival of your son Daniel Shade Potter, what a blessing.  God bless and many thanks for your continued efforts to make this site better and continue the great collection of 57 Ford data and information on John Gamble's site, too.

I've attached a couple of photos from the above mentioned show that you and the club may find interesting and I'll be updating some information on the progress of the rehabilitation of my 57 at Santini's.

Bob
57 AGIN

[lalessi1]

James,

Great job. So awesome to see things happening towards keeping the "faith". I am still planning a trip your way. My car gets 12.5 mpg so I am trying to fix my gas tank issue. Can't wait for he updates.

[n77cjs]

I thought that John said that he lost the backup of the site? Will the new 1957ford.com site have all the same data/info or has some of the site been lost forever or does it need to be re-scanned/digitized?  I would like some clarification on this before I decide how much I'm going to donate and I might be able to provide some other services that might help get the sight up and running. I own a business that provides digital transfer services. I'll be willing to do it for free if someone picks up the shipping cost. Media-tech.ca

[JPotter57]

Bob, this site was never going anywhere.  I had just renewed the site webhosting for two more years a couple weeks ago, so we're good.  now John's site. 1957ford.com. has went down.  It was apparently broken and John just didnt want to invest any more into it.  He made us a great deal, so a GoFundMe campaign later, we have acquired it complete.  I am working on it, and hope to have it back up soon, with the 1957ford.com URL, and this forum as a big, big part of it.  John never really pushed the forum section of his site, as we were both in the same market, not really competing with each other, but vying for the same market.  He had a huge, great information site, where we had more a participant based setup.  I believe that both can exist together, and using John's pattern for displaying his lifetime collection of knowledge and data, and our member driven dynamic knowledge base, we will become THE site, THE place to go to for 1957 Ford information.

[JPotter57]

By the way guys, just so you know:  any previous outbursts of whining from me, will need to be ignored now.  By following through with this merger, I will now have married myself to it forever.  There can be no turning back now.  At some point in the future, I may be forced to upgrade hosting, or invest in a private server due to bandwidth considerations.  Time will tell.  As of now, though, I think we will be safe with what I am using.  What I may do at that point, is accept advertising to  cover those costs, as at that point, will probably be substantial. Right now, I can handle a few hundred per year or so.  When we are looking at it jumping up to a few hundred per month, we will cross that bridge.  Hopefully, that will be a while.  I want this to remain free for you guys as long as possible, with as little outside interference as possible.  I will do my best to keep it that way, and if the time comes to take ads, to make them as relative to 57 Fords as possible, ie, no soft drink or tampon ads, lol

[RICH MUISE]

You weren't  whining...just letting your friends know you were stressed. Thanks for the updates.
Rich

[suede57ford]

What a great job James!  I can't imaging how much dedication it takes to link everything together, but there is so much great information collected that we all can continue to share in the future.

[mustang6984]

As a fairly new member of the site...I gotta tell you...this place is like HEAVEN! Especially with the guys here who have knowledge and the willingness to share it. So...if that means ads...or some sort of fee per month...or just a pass the hat request now and then...well worth it in my opinion...for what that's worth.
Thanks for this treasure trove of info..without which I'd be working a LOT harder to get stuff and to gain education from those who already done much of what I want to do!