That's the part I truly do not understand so the forums will be linked yet the greatest asset of communal areas will be killed off, sheer madness

You will still be able to log-in to all the Dennis forums with your email address and password.

However, you will need to choose a screen-name for each forum. That means you can continue to be PCErnie or TimArk or BurnBarryCollins on every forum if you wish, or have a different identity on each.

However, according to our tech bods, "multiple screen names are incompatible with a shared forum which requires only one unique username, due to the forum software requiring one username table per instance". Hence we had to split the forums.

I know this has caused a great deal of anguish among the great and good of x404 and we're not ignorant of that. However, we simply cannot reinstate the old shared forum structure.

Barry, thanks very much for keeping on responding to all queries.
Could you possibly look in to allaying my concerns that someone else (other than me, obviously) could register as, for example, timark_uk on the PCPro or CPC or any other Dennis forum?

Mark

That could lead to some very interesting user names

The thing is, though, the IT forums share a common interest - as I said in my reply yesterday, I can understand keeping Maxim & the PC Pro and related forums separate, but I don’t understand why the IT forums are split. Despite using varying platforms, in this modern age, there is a lot of cross platform interest; the common interests of IT spans more than one Dennis publication, and it make absolute sense to keep the links because of that.

x404 is clearly going to be ample replacement for what has been lost at Dennis.

Ohh - a semi colon.

Mark,

It is technically possible that someone could nip in and steal your screen name on the other sites. With the greatest of respect, I don't think it's very likely. It will also be easy for you to hoover up the screen-names on each site. All you'll have to do is visit the site, enter your email address and password, then choose your screen-name. It will take seconds, and I'll let you know on here as soon as the boards resurface (which we now estimate will be sometime tomorrow).

If you do find anyone trying to pass themselves off as you, let me know and we can reassign the screen-name.

From the sounds of it, it looks like Dennis didn't necessarily want to split the forums, but this new registration system made Dennis break up the forums.
It makes me want to ask: Why choose a new registration system?

It's not like the information that was held behind my username and password was critically private (like my banking details), so I don't see the need to up security, the old registration system seemed OK, and if it was just a case that it was hard to maintain or had little expansion options, then a sensible thing to have done would have been to shop around, whereas I'm guessing Dennis has gone with the cheapest option to implement (I.e cheapest solution + easiest way to implement it).

I could not have put that any better myself, Ben, so I won't even bother

Peter.

+1

We didn't switch registration provider just to get the increased security. We changed because our commercial agreement with our existing provider had come to an end.

Well, I haven't posted it here, but I had a less cookie-cutter response from Alex Watson at CPC. He was very understanding, but the long and the short of it is what Barry has said, it can't be put back. Alex was apologetic about the way things had been handled and it seems to me that a few staffers at CPC (and possibly other mags) were less than pleased about the way things went down. However, nobody can change it. It's like moaning that automatic updates has been bugging me to download IE8 for 2 days, when I'm happy with FF. Nobody at MS has the power to do anything about that.

I'll be looking in today, when they do eventually get going, but I'm quite happy here.

I haven't popped into any of the new Dennis sites, because I don't read any Dennis magazine besides CPC, so I can't comment on how those sites appear to the readers of those publications.

At least, however the Linux users, the Mac users, the PC Pro readers and all the rest will have a shiny new site to carry on with. We CPC readers only have the choice to leave the CPC forums all together or integrate with the alien entity that is Bit-Tech.

I have been a member of the Dennis forums- correction, I WAS a member of the Dennis forums, for over two years. In a way, it's like going from primary school to high school where you do still see people around that you know, but there is one hell of a lot more people around that you don't know and you have to integrate with them all over again. It's not impossible, but maybe you were happy enough the way things were.

I have only been an active member of two forums for any length of time, ebay (not touched in years) and CPC and I liked things the way they were. If I had not signed up for X404, then I would have missed the community a lot, and while I can join a new one, to dismiss my issues is like dismissing a child's concerns about missing and making friends when you move him from Dorset to Yorkshire.

Long live X404 and maybe I'll go and have a look at Bit-Tech one day when I really do have nothing much to do.

Far point about the community, but we all had to go to big school once. As a "CPC person" you should find far more like-minded peeps on bit-tech than the old place and I can see why Dennis have gone that way. It makes a lot of sense. I think the majority of people here arrived via one of the other mags and consequently their new experience is definitely lacking compared with people who want to know about modding, overclocking etc.

Barry, thanks for your response. The message we got from Dennis seemed to say that they were changing because they wanted a more secure system...



I think that with time, we'll get experienced modders perhaps.

Well one of my main rules as a PM in IT is NEVER go live with a project on a Friday. Another is NEVER go live on a bank holiday.

Why ? simple because you can't support it ( easily ) if it goes wrong.

So its late Friday afternoon on a bank holiday weekend and we are awaiting the launch of the new Dennis forums. I wonder if they will risk it ?