WTF? What's this new site?

Uh-oh, you'll have to register and create a user account.

As referenced in our old site, an upgrade process was being planned for the DebianHELP web site. This process was supposed to (!?!) be timed to be rolled out when the new Squeeze release of Debian.

But some plans go awry.

Database issues were run into upgrading the Drupal software that runs the web site. But that only threw things behind schedule. We also were suffering from a flood of spammers, and then to top it off, we had to change physical machines/servers, causing even more problems.

With the web site migrated to new machines, we were running into errors. A decision was made at that point to roll out an entirely new web site, barebones, with no data migrated. So we are starting off on a clean slate.

This, clearly, is not the "preferred" way to do things, but I'm not getting paid for this and it does offer some distinct advantages.

The old site has been put into an "archive mode". It will be accessible from search engines, but it will not be accepting new users or new posts.

If you have material (whether a story/post or a question asked that hasn't been answered) on the old site that you want included in this new site, please, feel free to copy it and repost it. Feel free hell, you're encouraged to do so.

Okay, so what's new about the new web site? In a lot of ways, things are the same. We did not finish our new theme/facelift that we were planning on, but that will be included as an option at some point in the future.

We plan on having a finer granularity of users.

Right now, if you Register on the site, you will be put at a default access level. You will be given a wide ability to use the site. However, you are not given the ability to use the "A" HTML tag. Any links you create in posts will be just plain text. This is to try to thwart the spammers. Those assholes and Google's PageRank cause more problems than I care to remember.

If you want the ability to use the A HTML tag, no problem, but you'll have to become a user for a couple of weeks and enter some posts and become a regular user, thus giving me some confidence you won't fill the site with links for Cialis or where to buy discount shoes. If you want to use the A HTML tag, just ask.

Other user levels are to anoint users as moderators. These folks will have the power to delete non-FAQ, forum posts, etc. More on that later.

Our FAQ system on the old site was never fully developed and used, mainly due to bugs in the software. The FAQ and Glossary should prove useful to many once we develop some content in them.

It is planned to more actively use our Zorkmids and image gallery. For example, you'll receive Zorkmids if someone votes your comment up as a worthwhile comment. Also, Zorkmids will be "reset" to 0 from time to time, so don't be surprised if/when that happens.

Right now, the site is not fully developed. There are many modules not implemented and quite a few things are not fully "flushed out" and configured. Don't be surprised if something seems odd or broken (if you're confused, just post a question/something in the this forum. Over the next month or so you will no doubt see an endless stream of tweaks. There is quite a bit more to fully polishing the site than one would expect.