1966Mustang
Member
A Short History of the FordSix Performance Forum:
The FordSix Performance Forum was started by J. Collins in 2001 on yaBB with it's sole focus dedicated to Ford Inline Six Cylinder engines which are used in everything from Ford Falcons and Mustangs to F-Series pickup trucks. There was a period of steady growth until a hack in 2003 disabled the site and efforts to restore it. In 2004 the community was resurrected on phpBB where it has remained through numerous version upgrades and hosting changes.
Sometime during that period Collins transferred ownership of the forum to Mike Winterboer of Classic Inlines in Mesa, AZ. Mike was an engineer of performance items for the inline six and major content contributor to the forum. Mike is most known in the community for his development and bringing to market an all aluminum cylinder head with provisions for everything from multi-carburetors to fuel injection - and increased performance for the 'Small Six' inlines.
Sadly, Mike passed away in 2014 and yet again the forum and future of the community was in limbo. Luckily, there were several assistant admins with various levels of access to the hosting environment, backups and DNS. Control of the site was established and the site was moved to a new hosting arrangement. The phpBB version was upgraded from 2.x to 3.1.x.
In 2018, we started exploring other forum options to provide a better user experience. Several platforms were researched, discussed and demo'd during that time. One of the refrains we heard most consistently was "Why can't we use whatever xyz site is using?"... Turns out more often than not - 'xyz site' was using XenForo - and those sites are the 'big ones' that everyone in the automotive hobby frequents. So, the decision was made.
On Jan 13, 2021 we started the migration. We migrated 9627 Users, 46,441 PM's, 63 Forums, 46,493 Threads, 404,611 Posts and 3022 Attachments in about 2 hours. Another several hours were spent setting up things identified in testing that I did not want to monkey with in the old phpBB system.
It hit me a while ago - that here I am a 'nobody' - running a site for a community that has been around since before 2001. The sheer amount of technical knowledge that is shared is something you are not going to find anywhere else. Sure, I can run a server and maybe I can run a website... But THESE members are awesome! I am humbled by what they do and what they know.
We have found our Xen and our journey begins again. Thank you!
The FordSix Performance Forum was started by J. Collins in 2001 on yaBB with it's sole focus dedicated to Ford Inline Six Cylinder engines which are used in everything from Ford Falcons and Mustangs to F-Series pickup trucks. There was a period of steady growth until a hack in 2003 disabled the site and efforts to restore it. In 2004 the community was resurrected on phpBB where it has remained through numerous version upgrades and hosting changes.
Sometime during that period Collins transferred ownership of the forum to Mike Winterboer of Classic Inlines in Mesa, AZ. Mike was an engineer of performance items for the inline six and major content contributor to the forum. Mike is most known in the community for his development and bringing to market an all aluminum cylinder head with provisions for everything from multi-carburetors to fuel injection - and increased performance for the 'Small Six' inlines.
Sadly, Mike passed away in 2014 and yet again the forum and future of the community was in limbo. Luckily, there were several assistant admins with various levels of access to the hosting environment, backups and DNS. Control of the site was established and the site was moved to a new hosting arrangement. The phpBB version was upgraded from 2.x to 3.1.x.
In 2018, we started exploring other forum options to provide a better user experience. Several platforms were researched, discussed and demo'd during that time. One of the refrains we heard most consistently was "Why can't we use whatever xyz site is using?"... Turns out more often than not - 'xyz site' was using XenForo - and those sites are the 'big ones' that everyone in the automotive hobby frequents. So, the decision was made.
On Jan 13, 2021 we started the migration. We migrated 9627 Users, 46,441 PM's, 63 Forums, 46,493 Threads, 404,611 Posts and 3022 Attachments in about 2 hours. Another several hours were spent setting up things identified in testing that I did not want to monkey with in the old phpBB system.
It hit me a while ago - that here I am a 'nobody' - running a site for a community that has been around since before 2001. The sheer amount of technical knowledge that is shared is something you are not going to find anywhere else. Sure, I can run a server and maybe I can run a website... But THESE members are awesome! I am humbled by what they do and what they know.
We have found our Xen and our journey begins again. Thank you!
