Info The end of Gallery and vbJournals

hoptis

Bluelight Crew
Joined
May 1, 2002
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This is a discussion thread for any questions or issues concerning the announcement that we are reaching the end-of-life for the Gallery and vbJournal products.


Main text from that ANNOUNCEMENT:
In the coming year we plan on upgrading the software Bluelight runs on, hopefully twice to bring us up to the latest version.

Doing so will mean that some older parts of the site, parts that will not be compatible with the latest version of vBulletin may break permanantly.

In anticipation of this, the administrators have decided to close the Bluelight Gallery for good and put on notice to those with jounals in the old vbJournals plugin that they must archive their journals if they want to keep them. Image uploading and commenting in the Gallery has now been turned off.

We will do everything possible to keep these modules working in future, if we're lucky one or both of them will hang around as parts of our history but we also have to take into consideration the time constraints we're under and that the priority of our efforts will be on improving our forums.

We have set an earliest estimated date of deactivation of both for April the 1st 2010. This is the earliest that we estimate we will be ready for the second upgrade to vBulletin 4 Suite.

Until that time, if you have content on either, please copy and backup anything you would like to keep. There are tips in this thread on how to export your journal quickly.

Journals of course have been replaced by blogs, the blogs module is now a fully integrated part of vBulletin and a valued part of Bluelight, they will not be going anywhere.

After our upgrades are complete, we may look at starting new galleries using the vBulletin member albums feature but we are a long way from evaluating whether this will be worthwhile.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you. Also we'd like to thank and express our gratitude for everyone over the years who has worked on Galleries and Journal.

Updated March 13 - We are still holding April 1 as the 'earliest' time frame for these upgrades to occur. Those who know us may expect us to be a little later than that ;) but YOU, the public, should assume that the Gallery and vbJournal content will be gone without any further notice after that date. Consider it YOUR deadline to save stuff.
 
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i would like to preserve the vbjournal of a deceased friend of mine for anyone interested in reading it in the future.

is the only option to download as text and upload somewhere else (such as one of his tribute threads in the Shrine, but thats a lot of entries), or could there be some way to transfer everything to the "Blogs" plugin? or perhaps have it somehow linked on his tribute page, still hosted here on bluelight?
 
make it april 2nd or march 31st. people may think it's a joke if the due date is april fools.
 
That sucks, but then again my care-o-meter is real low anyways.
 
i would like to preserve the vbjournal of a deceased friend of mine for anyone interested in reading it in the future.

is the only option to download as text and upload somewhere else (such as one of his tribute threads in the Shrine, but thats a lot of entries), or could there be some way to transfer everything to the "Blogs" plugin? or perhaps have it somehow linked on his tribute page, still hosted here on bluelight?

Unfortunately downloading the text version is the only way to back up a journal.

There is still a chance journals and gallery may exist in some form after we're finished with upgrades, but it depends on the amount of work required to modify them. Also, we have to give priority to the forum, so for now we're issuing the statement that they're both going to be gone when we've finished all our upgrades.
 
You should remove the FAQ section about uploading images to the gallery for the slower ones. Those poor people with no understanding about the inability to upload pictures despite a clear posted tutorial!;)
 
I was just curious as to the reason they are being removed. Are they not being used enough.
What is going to be the new answer to, "Take it to your blog?" Idk, just STFU???
I don't think removing the blogs is a good idea just because of that fact. Some users just need to have a safe place for outlet and if they don't have it our forum may become clogged with stuff that should just go to a blog...
 
read the announcement!

Journals of course have been replaced by blogs, the blogs module is now a fully integrated part of vBulletin and a valued part of Bluelight, they will not be going anywhere.
 
Oh, sorry. PT is dumb. I just read the title. Please excuse me. Good idea. I was just concerned thats all. Thanks :D
 
Quick reader, huh PT? haha <3

I'm really going to miss the Gallery. That was one of the reasons I stuck around a while back. Clearly nobody cares as to why I joined/stayed, but if a Gallery in the future is at all possible I beg of you Admins (Hoptis? Finder?) to somehow do it.

It doesn't look like that pipedream is too likely though.
 
Like I said, PT= dumb. I haven't slept yet. Brain is failing. It may be time to close BL for a few hours.
 
came across this, may be of use for those who wish to save information from journal or gallery before they are gone (aside from the downloading already available)

http://www.pdfmyurl.com/
 
^doubtful. gallery has been sloooooowwwww for quite awhile now. if it's costing money, i don't see it as being the greatest investment right now.

what's truly sad, is that the last pic to ever be posted in gallery is some random cock-shot.

in fact, i'm gonna go delete that. we ain't goin' out like that.
 
lol... thanks gP, but given the relationship the gallery had with our benefactor, perhaps an adult photo isn't that inappropriate as the final photo.

I can assure you that this is not an April Fools joke.

Besides from the difficulty of maintaining an add-on product for galleries, the decision is also partly motivated by an evaluation of where our priorities need to lie, now and in the future. There are plenty of photo hosting sites on the web that are able to provide a much faster and powerful service than ours, if anything, we think that if the potential is there for Bluelight to host files of any sort, they should be things like documents related to HR information that forums like Other Drugs or Drug Studies would find extremely useful.
 
Aw man, the gallery is dying. :( This thread makes my heart hurt, its like learning that an old friend has been diagnosed with cancer and only has a few months left to live.

I understand the reasoning for getting rid of it, but BL just isn't the same without it. Its been around for as long as I can remember BL-- I remember being a 15 year old kid, browsing through the gallery after toking up late at night, looking at all the droogz pictures and nudie pictures....it was fuggen awesome man. :D The thought that future generations of young druggy web-browsers will be deprived of that experience is distressing to me, to say the least.

You guys do what ya gotta do, I guess-- but let it be known that its a travesty.

RIP Gallery!
*pourin' out some of my 40 ounce*
 
Is it possible for this to be made a site wide announcement that pops up no matter what forum you look at (like the current donation drive one)? There are probably people who would like to save things who might not read annoucements or support.
 
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