MANN Migration FAQ:

Q: Why is mensactivism.org changing?

A: There are two main reasons. The first is that the software (web engine) that runs mensactivism.org is not maintainable. That is, making changes to it to improve the site are not worth the hassle because the code base is so dated. The second reason is that the server that runs mensactivism.org is too slow, and the hardware it uses is getting dangerously old. While backups exist, the thought of having to rebuild the software the server is running again is more trouble than it's worth.

Users have also been reporting strange timeout problems when accessing the current web site. I have been unable to determine whether this is a software or hardware problem, but either way, the migration to a new platform has been tested and is known to be free of this problem.

Q: How long will the migration take?

A: www.mensactivism.org will be unavailable starting Saturday morning, July 1, and probably for the next 24-48 hours after that. The mensactivism.org wiki and planet sites will still be available and usable during the process.

Q: Will all of the news stories on mensactivism.org still be available?

A: Yes. I have spent weeks ensuring that I can migrate the news story data from the old site to the new one. The new site will start off with the 5,500+ articles that exist on the current site.

However, due to the complexity of dependencies user accounts pose, user accounts and comments will NOT be migrated to the new site's database. Users will have to re-register at the new site in order to post comments of their own.

Q: But the comments on MANN are one of the most important aspects of the site!

A: I agree 100%. I have spent weeks to develop a compromise to avoid losing the comments posted on the site. Here is how it will work. On the current site, comments are "archived" after a period of two weeks and saved as a static web page. I will be copying all of these static pages to a special area on the new site so that they can still be accessed.

Each news story that has been migrated from the old site will have a special notice appended to it, that will read something like this:

NOTICE: This story was migrated from the old software that used to run Mensactivism.org. Unfortunately, user comments did not get included in the migration. However, you may view a copy of the original story, with comments, at the following link: (link address)

When you click on that link, you will be taken to the archived article page that includes the comments. I will also do my best to create an auto-forwarding system so that saved bookmarks to these old articles get automatically forwarded to the static pages.

If that explanation doesn't make sense, I encourage you to wait to see the new site. A picture is worth a thousand words. Furthermore, I will continue to keep the old MANN server available in case any mistakes were made or further changes are needed.

I welcome any questions or comments below. This is a very exciting change to mensactivism.org, and while very time-consuming on my end, these changes are going to set the site up for much greater flexibility in the future, as well as increased growth.

- Scott