Seiko 7A38 - by the numbers

>Followed on Tuesday by:

 Well... 2am? Lol... Took longer than I thought but I'm happy to say that your archive is 100% in all browsers now! Had to rename every post and forum file to add .html to the end of its name. Then, add server level URL rewriting so that when a URL is clicked (which has no .html) on the end... Append .html to said link. Bottom line, it works!

I've since checked a number of threads using Chrome and indeed it works !!

I am a little confused about this item, and the status of the workaround / migration attempts in general. It looks to me like attempts to create a clone of the forums (as an archive) have been successful. Will access to this archive be public or otherwise available for members?

To me, archive implies that users will not be able to add data, and it will exist solely as a preservation of the wealth of knowledge accumulated here. Not that I'm knocking that, by the way. If I am understanding correctly that the forums are now backed up and theoretically accessible - that's great news.

Any clarification provided would be much appreciated. 

The answer to your questions is Yes.  I will be making a further announcement / update at the weekend, or soon afterwards. 

Great to hear, Paul!  Cause for some celebration, I think 

To quote from the music of Donald Fagen: 

Better break out the good stuff,

The Boss wants to party all night 

As promised, albeit slightly later than planned, here's that update on the status of this website / forum and the intended replacement.

Some of you may have tried to log into the forum at the weekend, only to be met with Webs usual Hmm... Let's try that again error message.  The Members app had completely stopped working on Friday afternoon. Fortunately I was still logged into the forum and soldiered on, making a few more posts over the next 24 hours. Then much to my annoyance, my login session timed out and I couldn't sign in !! 

Whereas I could have carried on posting from the Control Panel (where I was still able to sign in), I didn't feel inclined - this was for me the proverbial 'last straw'. So I emailed Johnny_E and asked him to initiate another 'final' back-up scrape of the forum. (The previous back-up he'd saved was as of December 4th last year). John emailed me late last night informing me that it had been successful.

I can't post a link to it at present, for reasons that will become obvious, but it will be either: https://www.seiko7a38.com/archive/forums/

or just: https://www.seiko7a38.com/archive/

The archived forum will hopefully include everything, up to and including the couple of posts I made on the afternoon of Saturday 23rd January. The dozen or so (maybe 18) additional posts I've made this week will likely not be saved - including this one, which will sadly be my last post. They will be lost in the transition away from Webs.

Later today, I will be initiating the transfer of the domain name to John's host server.

Theoretically, post domain transfer, this site should temporarily be viewable under Webs default non-custom domain name URL: https://seiko7a38.webs.com/forums/

That said, as soon as they start conversion to Vistaprint, the forum will disappear.

Worst case, I don't expect to be offline for more that a week or so. Fingers crossed.

The new site will include a phpBB forum (under the same URL as this). Although I have a list of existing forum members, anyone who's planning on contributing will need to register as a new member.

The new site will eventually include a full catalogue of all ninety-plus Seiko 7A38 models (as I'd originally intended with this one) - and naturally the multitude of other non-Seiko branded variants (Orient J39's, Yema N8's, etc.). They will be written up as individual (or brand) blog articles, citing and including photos of the known best condition examples - without all the eBay shenanigans that had blighted the three dozen threads in the 7A38-xxxx Model Specific forum section.

There will also be a linked database section, where I'll upload Excel spreadsheets (in .pdf format) of my 'knowledge', like the one I created for the Orient J39 variants.

Although I've never published it before, the Seiko 7A38 spreadsheet, which I first created back in June 2009, is 90% complete. It just needs a little refining. Similary the Yema N8 spreadsheet needs a little bit of work (adding in product sales codes).

Those two sections will appear on the new site as:

https://www.seiko7a38.com/catalogue/ and https://www.seiko7a38.com/database/

Thanks to everyone who has empathised in this thread, to those people who've tried in vain in the past, to persuade me to move away from Webs - and for their help. Especially to our new host Johnny_E who finally succeeded.

In closing, I'd just like to reiterate what I'd written on the Home page:

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all forum members, past and present, for their valued contributions over the last 9 years and for helping this site achieve my original aim of becoming that #1 online resource. It's been a rewarding, if at times slightly frustrating, experience.

Hopefully see you on the other side soon.