Peter is right, we were having daily problems here. Access was slow at best and sometimes nonexistent. Sometimes going from page to page took forever. There were times when I'd try to open a page and go off and do something else while it loaded, other times I'd just give up and come back later. Yeah, I am an administrator and I do come here a lot more often than most folks, but believe me, I don't have immunity to these problems and I can get frustrated as well.More would have left if I had done nothing. Quite possibly, everyone.
We were restricted on pictures, the sizes and the amount we could upload, and we don't have to be reminded that the staff and regular members here spent a good deal of time combating spam. We were bombarded with spam sometimes 20 or 30 times a day, we were banning spammers at about the same rate and it just wasn't fair for anyone to have to spend all that time away from doing what we like to do. And yes, we lost a few good people because of the changes, that's a shame, but it's a fact of life that some people just can't deal with changes. During the course of the year we will always lose a few members that were regulars, we could even lose a member of the staff now and then. What some are overlooking is the fact that we have picked up a bunch of good people and great modelers as well and we don't want to drive anymore away by not making this forum accessible.
I'm sorry that some people couldn't stick with us through these changes, and I'm particularly sorry that some of you are having problems staying logged on and that some of these changes have resulted in the loss of pictures and links. I think these problems are minimal compared to what things would be like had we stayed with the old server and old software. I think these same people would have left for other reasons had we not made these changes.
Just be aware, when Peter changed servers, we were only down for a few hours, AMR is now going to change servers and they're saying they'll be down for a few days.... We wish them luck and we hope they won't lose too many members in the process.