Upgrading the Forums

I will be closing the site tonight so I can upgrade the site to 3.7. Finally!

You won’t lose pm’s, posts or anything. Members will get new albums that will be in their CP and I’ll activate Social Groups as you saw in our ‘practice’ board. Only Mods will create social groups to start with, but anyone can join any group. You’ll be able to post messages in your CP that others can see, as well as respond to, like in MySpace

If you need to respond to

Yes, I know it’s short notice but I’m hoping it will be down for less than an hour. But it could be two.

I’m going to wait until DH gets home and we get the kids to bed, so this will be about 9:00 PM PST.

Thanks for understanding! I have to fit this into my schedule too.   We finally got a new doggie (Indiana Bones!), I actually edited my new podcast and will upload that later today. Not to mention carpool, sewing, and uh… dishes and laundry.

Take tonight off and sew something kewl to show when we get back on!

Here’s the list of some of the upgrades. Some are for the user end and some are for the admin end:

* Inline spam management & prevention
* Thread tagging
* Search cloud / tag cloud
* Thread prefixes
* Reciprocal friendships between users
* Public visitor messaging on profile pages with ‘conversation’ feature
* User picture galleries with user comment facility
* User-created social groups with invite only and moderated membership options
* Extended member profile pages
* Customizable member profile pages with admin-controlled styling abilities
* Inline editing of custom user profile fields
* Lightbox viewer for attached images
* Viewable and comparable history maintained for post edits
* Notices system for navigation bar
* User change history
* Social bookmarking integration

Upgrading

If you can’t get on to Sewing Mamas right now, it’s because I’m running an upgrade.  It will be back up soon!  Go sew something you can post in the Runway ASAP!

A couple of items for the weekend…

 Happy weekend!  I hope your Valentine’s Day was nice.  My husband totally suprised me with three dozen red roses!  One dozen for each daughter.  So sweet!

Wanted to keep you up to date on changes at Sewing Mamas.  I’ve selected the new “Team Sewing Mama” which is a fancy word for mods.  I have one team working on migrating the old album to the new, Coppermine album.  I’m hoping to preserve all your lovely photos and have something that works better for all of us!

As we’ve discussed for many months, onFebruary 15th, only sponsors can post threads in the Boutique Forum.  We’ll have an ISO thread for sponsors and members who are looking for something.  We’ll have a “Yard Sale” once a month where anyone can post anything.

Please vote!  I’m noticing a lot of off topic posts here. I’d like to make it easier to find the sewing posts, and I’d love your input and help. There are a few options I can review with you. If you have another one, please lmk!

The mission here at Sewing Mamas is:

Quote:

Sewingmamas.com is a forum of (mostly) women who sew at all levels and are looking for a place to chat about sewing, life, and kids. We have a decidedly natural/attached parenting viewpoint and learn from each other, inspire one another and have fun!

So to that end, I’d like to make a change but don’t see quite how to do it. Here are some options and I’m open to any of them:

1. An extra thread field, where once you post your thread you can choose from a list what the thread is about (general sewing, embroidery, crafting, NSR-not sewing related). I had this going for awhile but I agree that it made things really messy. This is not searchable however, so you’d still have to read the little notes to see if it’s sewing or not. You can’t filter out just the sewing stuff.

2. Different post icons. Instead of the spam, help, ot, and different smilies we have I can create small icons that say ’sewing’ ‘embroidery’, etc.

3. Have a new forum inside Material Girls, where you can post parenting and OT stuff. I wouldn’t be really uptight about it, I know we’re pretty organic here and things flow to and from sewing and parenting. We’ve gotten so big, I like the idea of a separate forum myself but I know it was a concern to some.

4. another idea?

Team Sewing Mama fourm poll

Question about a Mod/Team Sewing Mama fourm

Please vote and let me know what you think!

Changes at Sewing Mamas

As of February 15th, Sewing Mamas will be undergoing some changes. You can read Allison’s post here.

To that end, I’m making a few changes. Slowly so there is no panic LOL. We will remain a forum committed to sewing with a bent towards natural and attached parenting.

You can keep up to date with the progress by subscribing to the RSS feed here, or checking out the forums.

In the last few days I added in a new ‘default’ skin. If you scroll down to the bottom of the forum, you’ll see where you can choose the ‘flora and fauna’ of our site. If your ‘colors’ change, you can change them back down there.

I’ll try to post these here as well as here on the sewing forum. So no one freaks out when things are tweaked a bit. I know change is hard, but I’m not changing too much I promise.

Barring any more Pinkeye/broken toes/vomiting/high fevers/contractor issues we’ve had this week, this is what my plan for today is.In the last few days I added in a new ‘default’ skin. If you scroll down to the bottom of the forum, you’ll see where you can choose the ‘flora and fauna’ of our site. If your ‘colors’ change, you can change them back down there.

• I’m figuring out coding today to add in an easier, more user friendly review system — that work better than our current review system.  Got it figured out, now need to write the code
• Cleaning up of the forums — figuring out a way to keep them tight and clean but also accessible and easy to find what you need.  Still looking at this. Still looking at this
• Creation of a mods and writers forum. This will be private (for now) but only on topic discussion for training of mods. Stuff like “how to do this or that”. No discussion of members will take place, I’ll move those discussions to the MG forum. Done
• Thanks button — and I’m going to recode it so it’s a “Sew Cool” button for the runway. I can’t figure out how to have both so I choose Sew cool. If I can figure out how to have both then I’ll add that in later. This is a mess. I’m shelving it until I can get some more help.
• Creation of an application form for Team Sewing Mamas — for jobs here like modding or calendar etc. Done!
• Thread extras: When posting, you can choose the general topic of your thread below your “title”.This may be an easier way, in the future, to sort out subjects you want to read and those you want to avoid. Done
• Random Quotes: I’m posting a random quotes modification with quotes about sewing, creativity, parenting somewhere on the site. Done!  Feel free to add in your own quotes here.
• Review and place Team Sewing Mamas Members (in process)
• Coppermine Gallery (new) Upload new gallery software (done) Update gallery, migrate old pictures to new gallery, create a faq for posting there. (in process)

If you are interested in being a mod, helping with advertising, coding, graphics, or writing for the site, I can’t pay much but I can offer free advertising.   Feel free to fill out this form so I can take a look at our needs and what you can commit to. I cannot consider you unless you are a sponsor. Thanks for understanding!Have a wonderful day!

Nutmeg

Sewing Mamas Site Issues, Happy New Year!

Sewing Mamas site is down for today. This is because of a domain name registration issue, and we’re working on it as fast as we can.

You can find all the details here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sewingmamas/?yguid=120249778

There is an issue with the domain, not anything we’ve done to the site.  Please spread the word.

You can get in if I go to 216.12.223.218.  Please tell anyone you can to use this address instead of sewingmamas.com

Calling all Sewing Mama Sponsors!

Please help, it will just take you a moment.

Please go into your control panel, scroll down to ‘group memberships‘. You can mark yourself how you want to be seen.

Sponsors, I’d appreciate you marking the sponsorship radio button.  Then I won’t have to have to do it by hand this weekend.

THANK YOU mamas!!!

Sponsorship and titles issues

I know some are concerned about seeing their custom title change. I’ve been trying to figure out how to identify the sponsors here, and have been trying to figure out how to bold the sponsor’s names.

Long story short, I have to do this one by one, and with 133 sponsors it will take a bit of time.  Look at the end of this post for how you can edit your own usergroup to sponsor.
If you are a mod, admin or admin-lite and not a sponsor, the result is that you’ll lose mod privileges. Nothing personal, but it’s how the system is set up. Allison will be re-modding soon anyway.

Another result is the loss of custom titles for sponsors. You didn’t lose the ability to change, the upgrade deleted them. If you want your custom title back, go into your Control Panel and change it back please.

Please help, it will just take you a moment.

Please go into your control panel, scroll down to ‘group memberships‘. You can mark yourself how you want to be seen.

Sponsors, I’d appreciate you marking the sponsorship radio button Then I won’t have to have to do it by hand this weekend.

THANK YOU mamas!!!

Clear as mud? I was up late momming sick kids, had a ‘warm discussion’ with dh about his long hours, and other various reasons I’m wiped out today LOL I’ll do as many as I can and hopefully get it sorted out asap.

nutmeg

Upgrading the forum software

Hello again!

We’re changing from vBulletin 3.6.2 to 3.6.8 over the next day or so. All should go well, but wanted to keep you up to date on what we’re up to. Hopefully this will help some registration problems we’ve been having.

Thank you everyone!

Nutmeg

Sewing Mamas is on it’s own dedicated server

We moved to a dedicated server last night. Looks like we’re still here, so that’s good LOL

You may need to log in again, as the server information has changed. I know I’ve had to log in a few times where I didn’t have to before. I think the tables need to be rebuilt, that store all the information. I’m not much good at that stuff so I’m just playing it by ear.

The blog was down this morning when I got up, and has been intermittent . I guess wordpress has had some glitch, I’m not sure what’s up. It’s not on the sewingmama server, it has my materialmama blog and that’s down too so it’s not a SM thing.

We’ll be upgrading the forum software later this weekend or week, so stay tuned.

I hope the site is loading faster for you now, even during peak times we should be fine.

For all log in issues, please look here