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PostPosted: July 31st, 2007, 9:38 pm 
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Three years ago I wrote this:

Fritz wrote:
Off and on for the last couple of weeks, I've been tinkering with something off and on. Not frequently, and not for any long periods of time.

The Ectozone continues to grow as a site. I'm constantly looking for ways to upgrade it, make it a better, more interesting place to visit. And sometimes, I feel like something's...still missing.

And one night a couple of weeks ago, I went..."Oh, hell, do it...either it will work out or you'll realize it was a waste of time and you'll get that bug out of your system."

So I did.

I wasn't going to show anyone until I had some other material--some non-Ghostbusters material--ready for release, and I wasn't going to do that until I had Gozer laid to rest.

But sometimes it seems like fate has other plans in store. And last night, when GBHQ went down for an indeterminate amount of time, I could swear that I heard opportunity knocking. So a few quick modifications and additions later, here it is...

I hope you'll all take a look. I honestly hope Netsolo gets GBHQ back up pronto, but maybe this can serve as an alternative until he does. And even after that, like I said, I have some non-GB ideas I'm hoping to try soon...

Thanks for your support and patience with my whimsical diversions.
:D
Fritz V. Baugh


Well, after three years, it was time for a change.

The Ectozone's design has been changed regularly since it started as my knowledge of web design became more sophisticated. The first version of the site, which started in May 2003, was pretty basic html and a few images (Go here for some snapshots of the site's evolution over the years)

I launched Ectozone 2.0 on the first anniversary, May 2004, when I learned how to manipulate tables. Not long after that, in June 2004, I signed up for the very first Ectozone message board, one remotely hosted by Pat Clinger and Proboards: http://ectozone.proboards31.com

It's design I also tweaked constantly, especially after Proboards upgraded their software in June 2005.

Ectozone 3.0 I debuted less than a year ago, in November 2006. This time it was stylesheets and a bit of Javascript that brought the party on. The message board was tweaked yet again, and the board and the main site looked more like each other than ever.

And now the next step.

I freely admit it was Bo Holbrook and his upgrade of the Nightsquad Message Board about two months ago that sparked the latest round of changes. PhpBB was getting ready to release a new version of their popular software that completely blew everything else out of the water--and it looked to be at least a couple more years before Proboards would come even close.

I first signed up the domain name Ectozone.net back in February 2005, at first to keep it from being snatched up by somebody else, and at first I had designs of building a Digimon site around it. That didn't pan out, and I set it to redirect to the old message board--I looked at the "Free Hosting Package" being offered by GoDaddy at the time and it just didn't seem any better than what I was getting at Angelfire (Ectozone.com's host) or Freehomepages (the host of GBWC.net).

But a few weeks ago I discovered differently. 5GB of space. 250 GB bandwidth. PHP and MySQL capacities. And I knew that it was time to upgrade again.

The main Ectozone, ectozone.net, may not look much different than it did before. Maybe not Ectozone 4.0, but Ectozone 3.5. The Timeline, the Fan Fics, the Fact List, it's all still there, pretty much exactly as you remember it (in fact, if you have Ectozone.com bookmarks, it'll take you to the exact same page on Ectozone.net) But with Ectozone.net, a lot more things will be possible, and probably will happen as my knowledge of web mechanics slowly grows.

The biggest change, of course, is right here, the brand spanking new Ectozone Message Board 2.0, powered by PhpBB3. And it's all mine. Not Proboards'. Not Netsolo's. Mine Uploaded, configured, and installed by Your Truly.

So feel free to sign up, take a look around, and maybe help fill the new place up with the same insight I got used to at the old board.

And in case you were wondering, the "old" Ectozone is still there. While Ectozone.com now redirects to Ectozone.net, if you feel like touring the old place just go to http://archive.ectozone.com . The url is different, but other than that it's just like you remember it.

Special thanks to:

--Brian Reilly, who helped talk me into posting the Timeline, and thus gets a big share of the credit/blame for my role in the community.

--Ludicris and Andy Harness, who asked me to join the Ghostbusters West Coast, and thus also get a big share of the credit/blame for my role in the community

--Kingpin, Vincent Belmont, EGB Fan, my frequent collaborators and the unofficial "continuity committee"

--Bo Holbrook. As mentioned above, he inspired this latest move, and he provided some advice and insight that helped me put this place together. The style he chose for the Nightsquad board was easily adaptable to my purposes here.

--Doc Ryedale. The first friend I ever made in the Ghostbusters community, before he became troubled enough to fake his own death. I still miss him, darn it.

--Everybody else who's read, loved, and even hated my works over the years.

Now let's get to work making this place lively...

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--Fritz V. Baugh

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PostPosted: August 24th, 2007, 9:24 am 
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After a longer delay than intended, well, here we are.

If you're just reading this and haven't signed up yet, take note of this little number:

8932

Because of a glitch involving the banner ads disrupting the Visual Confirmation system, I had to institute a stop-gap measure to keep out spambots, but it's one suggested on the PhpBB support forum, and is based on a PhpBB2.0.22 hack which reportedly stops spambots cold. It will ask for that number during registration.

Anyway, once you're active it doesn't matter anymore.

Welcome to the new Ectozone.

:)

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PostPosted: September 1st, 2007, 5:05 pm 
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Just a reminder, in case there is any further confusion:

This board's database is completely seperate from that of the original Ectozone forum. You must register (or re-register, if you prefer) at this board, the phpBB3 board, before you have an account to use.

Once you register, as mentioned earlier, I can adjust your post counts in the database (so that if you weren't a newbie on the old board, you won't look like one here either), but you have to create a new account here first.

Another update:

I will be upgrading the board to the newest version of the PhpBB3 software tomorrow, 3.0.RC5. The board may be unavailable for a brief time.

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PostPosted: October 20th, 2007, 9:31 am 
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Tomorrow I plan to upgrade the board to the latest version of PhpBB3, RC7. RC6 was released about a week ago, and had so many problems RC7 was released only days later to fix them.

They did some significant changes to some of the logging and security features that would lead to a lot of "Invalid Form" errors on pre-RC6 styles. While there is no official update of the style I'm currently using, between swapping in some of the Subsilver2 files (the style which Classy Dark was based on in the first place) and a number of manual changes as posted on PhpBB.com, I hope there will not be any problems.

I always back up my databases before upgrades, though, so if there is a significant problem, I should be able to restore back to RC5.

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PostPosted: October 21st, 2007, 1:38 pm 
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So far, so good. I did the RC7 update with only one minor problem (I had to do a slight change on one of the templates, because the Subsilver2 style uses .gif files while Classy Dark uses .png files).

But if anyone else encounters any problems, let me know.
:)

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PostPosted: November 28th, 2007, 2:17 pm 
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I'm actually ahead of the curve on this, ironically, but I've created a new forum for the new "GB3" video game, and moved the GB3 thread there. I may end up splitting it into a news thread and a rant thread.

It says "video games" plural, so if you want to talk about that frustrating old game from the 80's where you had to mash the button or get a turbo controller to get up the stairs of the Shandor building, you can do that there too.

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PostPosted: December 16th, 2007, 9:43 am 
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You probably won't notice any difference from yesterday. Actually, there isn't much actual difference, but the "testing" stage of PhpBB3 is over. On Thurdays, December 13th, the first stable release--PhpBB3.0.0--was released.

I just upgraded this board and GBWC to PhpBB3 Gold from RC8.

I just felt like sharing that.
:)

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