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 Need to regain all our previous friends and members....

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Capt. Kool Aid
manipper
Lasterday
TopGun
finzup
Soapstop
Admin
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Admin
Admin
Admin


Posts : 91
Join date : 2015-09-14
Age : 70
Location : United Kingdom (Unfortunately!)

Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... Empty
PostSubject: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptySun Sep 27, 2015 12:51 pm

A big "Thank you!" to all of you that have registered here already.

As we lost access to the member list of the old forum it is going to take time to rebuild what we had.

So, what we need most at the moment is MEMBERS.

Does anyone have any ideas of how we can promote ourselves so that we can get people back?

I've gone down the Facebook route as some of you will have seen and posted in all the Eleuthera groups that I follow.

But mainly we need to get the forum 'out there'.

Any ideas (not including paying Google!)?

Admin/IB
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Soapstop




Posts : 37
Join date : 2015-09-24

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyMon Sep 28, 2015 12:10 am

Sorry, don't have much to help you on this. Have looked through my facebook bunch and all those I know already know. Thanks for all your work on this IB. Hope it gets a kick start. I think I already saw this on TripAdvisor, but you did already post there, didn't you?

Soapy
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Admin
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Posts : 91
Join date : 2015-09-14
Age : 70
Location : United Kingdom (Unfortunately!)

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyMon Sep 28, 2015 12:01 pm

Doh!

I confess with all the other goings-on I forgot about that Soap.

Can you pin down where you thought you saw it as there are hundreds of entries on TA so I can take a look?

Thanks!

Admin/IB
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finzup




Posts : 12
Join date : 2015-09-18

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyTue Sep 29, 2015 12:47 pm

I saw mention of the new forum location on TA a few days ago.  There were a few comments after that, and then the thread disappeared.
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Admin
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Posts : 91
Join date : 2015-09-14
Age : 70
Location : United Kingdom (Unfortunately!)

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyTue Sep 29, 2015 3:47 pm

Thanks Finz......

I'll see if I can post something on there to hopefully attract more here.

Admin/IB
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Admin
Admin
Admin


Posts : 91
Join date : 2015-09-14
Age : 70
Location : United Kingdom (Unfortunately!)

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyTue Sep 29, 2015 4:02 pm

Following Soap's sage advice I have posted on TripAdvisor in the hope of reaching out to many more of our previous members.

Hope to see many re-register.

What we also need is to start to make this a vibrant forum so that 'visitors'/previous/potential members can see that things are happening again.

So, if you have any questions, thoughts or observations on island life (like we used to have) it would be wonderful to have them here again so that we can 'light up' the forum with threads and posts.

Let's go everyone!

Admin/IB
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TopGun




Posts : 3
Join date : 2015-09-30

Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... Empty
PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyWed Sep 30, 2015 11:57 am

Hey guys,

I'm not quite sure what exactly just happened to our beloved forum, or how it happened.  It's upsetting because I felt like I could have helped, but things happened so quickly that I didn't have a chance.

Does anyone know who owns the www [dot] bahamas4u [dot] com domain (and are they willing to work with us to regain the traffic)?  If we would be allowed to post a page up at the old URL we can hopefully funnel old users to the new forum.  I can easily whip up a page to handle that, if needed.  I'm also willing to help with hosting / recovery if needed (willing to put it one on of my personal servers if there are any issues).
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Admin
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Posts : 91
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Age : 70
Location : United Kingdom (Unfortunately!)

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyWed Sep 30, 2015 5:50 pm

Hi! TopGun.

JB owned the licence that the domain was hosted on.

He needed the licence to host a new project.

The hope was that we could raise sufficient funds to purchase that licence from him and we had pledges in excess of requirements.

Somehow events overtook us and the domain/forum disappeared.

I don't really know why as JB was prepared to let us pay him so that he could purchase a new licence for his new project and we keep the old one.

I had the necessary software to copy members, etc. to here as a back-up and if anything went wrong with the purchase.

Again, events overtook us for some reason.

vBulletin can be very difficult to deal with and while it is said that everything is out there somewhere I fear that that have deleted the whole domain. Or, if not, I doubt very much that they would release the domain/data to us.

Admin/IB
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Admin
Admin
Admin


Posts : 91
Join date : 2015-09-14
Age : 70
Location : United Kingdom (Unfortunately!)

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyWed Sep 30, 2015 7:05 pm

To the SoapMeister.....

I followed your sage advice and posted on TripAdvisor.

In their wisdom they have deleted my post.

I guess they see us as competition to their Eleuthera forum?

That I like!

That means they see us as a threat.

Now let's go to it and bring this forum back to where it was but recently and to hell with piffling little TripAdvisor.

We are the REAL voice of Eleuthera!

Lets rock guys 'n' gals! Let's show it to the detractors!

Admin/IB
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TopGun




Posts : 3
Join date : 2015-09-30

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyThu Oct 01, 2015 11:20 am

Hey IB,

To ask a follow-up question. Do we have any working relationship with JB at this point, or is it not an avenue worth exploring? Sorry to prod, but even if we can't get the data, a redirect would help more than anything else.

I also purchased a domain yesterday (bahamasforums.com) if we ever wanted to do something better from an SEO perspective (i.e. bamamasforums.com/eleuthera). I recognize that you've put a lot of work into getting this solution up and running, so it is probably not worth it but just wanted to let you know.

Thanks!
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Admin
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Posts : 91
Join date : 2015-09-14
Age : 70
Location : United Kingdom (Unfortunately!)

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyThu Oct 01, 2015 6:08 pm

Hi! TopGun.

Any advice, suggestions, offers of help, (offers of money? Laughing ) are always welcome.

I have a passion for the island even though I am able to get there all too frequently.

Having moderated the old forum for some time, with very few problems, and admin'ed it jointly with JB (well, maybe more than jointly for some time setting up controls to block bot registrations and spurious member registrations, it hurt me when the forum was wrenched away from us.

I have come to love our members, both met and those un-met thus far, and desperately wanted to keep us all together.

Sadly we seem to have lost our store of knowledge but like all things (wo)man-made it can be re-built.

I just hope that the majority of our previous members, particularly the regular contributors, will find us here and re-join us on our journey.

Thus far most every response has been positive although I did receive one strange response on Facebook when I posted on a friend's page stating that this not a proper site. I replied, of course, that it was not intended as a 'site' but a replacement forum for what we had lost.

But, as our Winston Churchill famously said, "You can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you can't please all of the people all of the time".

Admin/IB
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TopGun




Posts : 3
Join date : 2015-09-30

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyFri Oct 02, 2015 10:08 am

Hey IB!

Let's continue the discussion out of the thread and maybe I can help things along.
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Admin
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Posts : 91
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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptySat Oct 03, 2015 11:16 am

Thanks for that TopGun.

Will be in touch shortly, off thread, as promised.

IB
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Lasterday




Posts : 2
Join date : 2015-10-22

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyThu Oct 22, 2015 11:42 am

I'm back. Looking forward to seeing the return of others.
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Posts : 91
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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyThu Oct 22, 2015 4:35 pm

Good to have you back Lasterday!
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manipper




Posts : 2
Join date : 2015-10-24

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PostSubject: I'm here   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptySun Oct 25, 2015 7:45 am

I'm back. I was mostly a lurker at the bahamas4u site. But an occasional poster. I'm up in NC. That forum kept me in touch with what was happening on Eleuthera.
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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptySun Oct 25, 2015 7:55 am

Good to have you here manipper!

IB
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Admin
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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyMon Oct 26, 2015 1:33 pm

Good to have you back Oceanbreeze!

IB
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Admin
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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyMon Oct 26, 2015 1:44 pm

So......

60 members so far (well, 58 if you discount myself as both Admin & IB) and counting (hopefully).

It is good to see so many 'old friends' back in the fold.

Now we need topics and posts to bring us back to the mine of information we once were and (also hopefully) a valuable part of the community of Eleuthera for residents and visitors alike.

If you know of anyone on the old forum who has not yet registered here.....can you give them a nudge?

I'd love for everyone to be back together.

I hope that we can see that 'free' hosting does not necessarily mean 'cheap'.

The more I tinker with the forum the more comfortable I feel with it. It seems to do pretty much what we need from a forum including image posting, links etc.

Best wishes to you all!

Admin/IB
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Capt. Kool Aid




Posts : 33
Join date : 2016-01-14

Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... Empty
PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyThu Jan 14, 2016 8:33 pm

Is there any way you can get JB to put an announcement and link to this site on the bahamas4u page?

When I found I couldn't find the old forum online any more I twice emailed him via the contact link on the bahamas4u page and asked what happened to the forum, but never received a response of any kind.

If I hadn't kept looking for the old forum or information about it I never would have found this place.
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Becks




Posts : 21
Join date : 2015-09-19

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyFri Jan 15, 2016 10:30 am

Yeah...well the sudden deletion of the bahamas4u site, even after a number of people stepped up to the plate financially at JBs request for funds , was a pretty lame move and made it extremely hard to find this site.
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Capt. Kool Aid




Posts : 33
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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyFri Jan 15, 2016 10:36 am

Really, so some people gave him money to keep the forum up and it still went down? Anybody lose any money? Or was it refunded?
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Becks




Posts : 21
Join date : 2015-09-19

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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyFri Jan 15, 2016 1:15 pm

No, I doubt anybody had the chance to send him money....he posted on the site asking for donations to fund the site.....I think he said it cost something like $400 per year to run the site...a number of people immeadiatly volunteered funds (Ithink it was enough to run the site for 2 years) and asked where to send the money but they got no response and a day or two later the site disappeared. I think Soapstop offered enough funds on his own to fund the site for a year.  Anyways...JB asked, the money was volunteered and the site was shut down...all in the space of about 5 days.
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Capt. Kool Aid




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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptyFri Jan 15, 2016 4:35 pm

Weird and a bummer.

But thanks to IB's smart planning we have this. And with a little luck it will grow to be even better than the original. Thanks IB.
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Admin
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PostSubject: Re: Need to regain all our previous friends and members....   Need to regain all our previous friends and members.... EmptySat Jan 16, 2016 8:20 am

Hi! Cap'n.....


Good to have you along!

And 'thank you' for you kind encouragement.



Pledges were offered by some of us but no monies actually changed hands.


The issue surrounded JB wanting to move on to another venture which required that he either re-use his site for that or 'sell it on' to members so that he could use that money to develop a new site.


As I understand it a problem arose with the host which also, unfortunately, prevented me importing all our previous members details into a new forum.


However, thanks to 'social media', and the ability to contact many previous members directly, we are where we are now and hopefully we can continue to grow this forum and provide a valuable, helpful, point of information to residents, long-term visitors, visitors and potential new visitors alike.


It gives me humble comfort that so many of our regular members from before have joined up here. And as this is hosted for free as long as I 'live and breathe' ( Smile ) it will remain. (There is a minimal cost to remove pop-up advertisements that I am happy to pay for all the pleasure the island has given me and the wonderful friends that I have made along the way. No....I will not be asking for donations. Very Happy )



Admin/IB


Last edited by Admin on Thu Oct 06, 2016 2:59 pm; edited 1 time in total
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