Question Any discussion on the 'new site' announcement/news can go here

Let me preemtively be the "bad guy" so Kristin does not have to be:
1. While I do work in IT, I have no particular technical expertise in this area nor do I have insider knowledge of the state of the website, so I won't try to second-guess Kristin's decisions, and I hope other people pay her the same courtesy. If you DO have VALID expertise and wish to contribute, talk to Kristin IN PRIVATE to see if she needs/wants help. If she declines, let go of it.
2. From what our webmaven has divulged, the current state of the site has what could be described as "a few issues." Again, no insider knowledge, but from what little I could discern it is likely to mean that, rather than an in-place upgrade, Kristin is talking about importing the content into a brand-new, started-from-scratch virtual server with a brand-new, started-from-scratch CMS (whether it's a newer release of Joomla or an entirely different CMS I have no idea). These things always involve some risk. Yes, there are backups, but it may turn out that some of the content simply can't be imported for one reason or another (say, it depending on a plugin which is no longer maintained and not compatible with the new CMS). I do believe Kristin will do her very best efforts to minimize these and other unpleasant side effects of the move. But if it can't be done, it can't be done and no amount of whining will change it.
3. This is not an invitation for a wishlist. If any nonessential feature is not supported out-of-the-box by the main pieces of software (or if it's in a "deprecated" list), It's very likely that Kristin won't bother to implement it. Past, painful experience has shown that customizations often interfere with regular CMS updates.
4. Teething issues are normal and expected. If something in the new site is not working as it should and you believe that Kristin might not be aware of it, politely bring attention to the issue, and exert patience while she looks into it.

I don't work in IT. I can barely turn on a computer. But I know just enough about the subject to realize that it's a huge PITA, and would only be done if either necessary, or at least a major advantage. Kristen, All net-monkeys working on the project, thanks for your hard work. If only we had money to pay you.

Of course, if we had money to pay YOU, I'd be first in line for some residuals.

So, you're saying we should get a redirect for a while, but when we do, reset our bookmarks for the new site?

What about user data? Like, will we need to create new accounts, will our forum rankings be carried over (if such a system will be present on the new site), and if we are registered as a WhatIf author, will we need to reapply for author tool access?

(Just in case anyone asks, yes, I am surprisingly proud of my -76 karma. Yes, I realize that having the lowest karma score out of the entire userbase is not a good thing. No, I'm not particularly upset about it.)

I note that you are revamping the forum organization. Will it be possible to import the old forum messages to the new scheme?

Kristin Darken wrote: Sir Lee:

No, since the database is at the core of most of the problems, I'm not importing anything... behind the scenes because I don't want to migrate the corruption.

Before anyone asks/complains: It is possible to export the contents of a table in such a way as to import those contents into a table with similar tuples. Most relational databases allow this. Special characters can be escaped to reduce loading issues, and some databases allow a table to be loaded from disk without triggering procedures that validate the data against or directly affect other tables.

It's still a nightmare when free text is involved, and can introduce errors that are difficult to back out.