405th Ownership Change, Site Move and Updates - ALL PLEASE READ!

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Art Andrews

Community Owner
Community Staff
OMG!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THE 405th?!?

First off, let’s back up a bit…

Hi, my name is Art and I recently acquired the 405th from Adam Grumbo. Many of you might already know me from therpf.com, thedentedhelmet.com, and thehunterslair.com. If you don’t know me already, I run a website management company (Movie Prop Sites, LLC) that specifically focuses on managing communities like the 405th.

With that in mind, let’s just get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first. With this transition, you are going to see change… a LOT of change. No one likes change, but without change we cannot grow and improve. You are already witnessing the first of that change now. If you are reading this, you are reading it from an all-new, much more powerful server, as we have moved the 405th onto our own platform. We have also updated the site software to the latest version (not vB 5… everyone knows how bad that is), and we have also made some minimal changes to the structure of the forums and made a couple of forum name tweaks. Again, while I know it is uncomfortable, this and more change will be coming down the road. Please be patient with us because once we come out on the other side of it, things will be a lot better.

Now that we have explained the unpleasant part, let’s talk about the good things. First, I believe this is an amazing community and we are very excited to be able to serve you. We think there is a lot of potential here and over the next year or so, we plan to try some new and interesting things… some of which many of you have wanted, and probably a few things you haven’t even thought of! We don’t want to spill all the beans just yet, but we see a fun future for the community!

I am sure you have questions and possibly concerns, so instead of me prattling on, let me know what is on your mind and I’ll try to answer to the best of my ability.
 
I'm so glad to see that the forums will be reborn and improved, even now I am noticing nice little changes. Thanks Art, and I look forward to seeing how the 405th changes under your leadership.
 
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Welcome aboard Art, here's to a rebirth of the 405th as a community, I'm sure you will be able to catalyse a much-needed revitalisation, your track record proves as much. Not much more to say really, already loving the increased stability, my laptop would always crash on the forum, not a problem since the move!
 
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Art, I'll admit, when I saw the new layout, part of me was thinking WHAT...?

Having said that, it works brilliantly on my phone, something the last version failed to do. That, and load times have improved considerably. So thanks, and welcome aboard!
 
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Just to give you guys an idea of how effective the spam prevention software is working... before Friday, we were getting between 300-500 new members a day, the overwhelming majority of those being spam accounts. Yesterday (our first full day with the spam filters in place)? 46 registrations. Now, this isn't to say that spammers won't get through now and again... but it is going to be a LOT less of them.
 
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Well Art, the RPF is a fantastic site. Can't wait to see that magic brought over here. :cool

Thank you! We plan to do our best and the really cool thing is that this community has some opportunities for us that the RPF doesn't provide so while we can bring some expertise here from that experience, there are also new areas for us to dip our toes into.
 
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Looking forward to the changes. I joined about a month ago and found the site very daunting and hard to browse. I use Tapatalk for GrifballHub, and I'm thrilled to see the 405th now working on it too (I'm using it right now). I don't think I would have even found this thread on the old site. ;). I'll have to check out the site on my laptop soon to see how things are progressing on the front end.
 
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Quite a few more visual updates tonight along with minor functionality changes. The home page and forum index pages are pretty much where they need to be. The thread pages themselves still need quite a bit of work. While I hope we can do a complete overhaul at a later date, hopefully this can at least get us started down the right path and give you a community worthy of its membership.
 
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Ive been up almost all night.....I could tell you were pretty busy last night....I now see why. Looooove the new header and wording!
 
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I haven't been on the site nearly long as most but I got to say the improvement is amazing Art. Thank you for still caring about us all and our love of making costumes and props.
 
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Congrats on the ownership change. I have just looked around and WOW! I like what I see and I like the changes have are happening.
Happy to see that navigating and appearance are improving.

Great encouragement to check back later to see what else is going on.

Cheers!
 
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I can't express how excited I am for the new potential for the 405th. Just seeing so many old names return to see the changes beginning.. it's pretty exhilarating. I'm looking forward to a new beginning for the group, and all that it brings. Congrats Art, and WELCOME! :D

This pretty much sums up what I came in to say. I'm a longtime fan of the RPF and all the changes that happened over there since I started lurking, and am very excited to see change come to the 405th.

I can't think of a better person/ group to take the reins of the site, Art!
 
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