Patrick

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. We recognize one member every month as the KarateForums.com Member of the Month for their positive contributions to this community. Our honoree for April is... wildbourgman for the third time! February 26 marked 10 years that you have been a member of our community, wildbourgman. That's an amazing amount of time, and we're grateful to still have you after all these years. Thank you for all of your contributions. Thanks, Patrick

I've added spoilers to the title of this thread just to be safe. Fighting next to a saw blade when you have a kid on the way at age whatever Johnny is is definitely an interesting move... really?! Haha, but that's the show. I can't resist it. I was kind of annoyed about how they picked the squad to send to the tournament. Just alternate picks or something. Finding a flag in the woods doesn't have anything to do with the brutal fighting they engage in.

Thanks for adding that, Ken!

Wow, what a story. Thanks for sharing it with us, JazzKicker.

Thanks for the update, Bob. Sounds like good news overall and positive progress. Your next appointment is my birthday, so I'll look forward to more good news.

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. We recognize one member every month as the KarateForums.com Member of the Month for their positive contributions to this community. Our honoree for March is... RJCKarate for the second time! June 19 marked 18 years that you have been a member of this community, Reece. I'm so glad that you are still with us. Thank you for all of your contributions over the years. Thanks, Patrick

Thanks all. It was a little hard to picture at first, but I thought the interactions were fun. They included all of the cover art and variants at the end of the book, and I really liked these two covers: https://www.midtowncomics.com/product/2218156 https://www.midtowncomics.com/product/2226956

Thanks for the update, Ken!

I think this counts? I was able to read the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles x Stranger Things collected series during my holiday travel. It was fun. A lot of great artwork.

Hello, Thank you for visiting KarateForums.com. We recognize one member every month as the KarateForums.com Member of the Month for their positive contributions to this community. Our honoree for February is... sperki for the second time! April 19 marked 15 years that you have been a member of this community, sperki. It was great to see you pop back up recently. Thank you for all of your contributions over the years. Thanks, Patrick

Congrats on making this changes, Ken! I didn't have the scare you did, but several years ago, I decided I was trending in the wrong direction (weight, cholesterol, etc.) and decided it was time to make adjustments. I did a bunch of things, numerous gradual efforts, and it made a difference. So, I hope you find the same! Will second Brian in the fact that eventually, logging my food became part of this. Yes, to keep the calories where they needed to be, but also to get a real sense of how much I was eating. At one point, I would have never thought I would log my food, but I am currently on a 2,621 day streak, haha. I kept it simple, though. I only log food with calories, don't get into macros (just for my own sanity), and don't log water, sleep, etc. May or may not be right for you, but regardless, all of this effort is good! Happy for you. Patrick

Testing has now concluded. I want to publicly say a big thanks to DarthPenguin, KarateKen, and Zaine for their time in offering feedback, reviewing the new site, and identifying issues to address. I'd similarly like to thank all of our staff - aurik, bushido_man96, Nidan Melbourne, sensei8, and Wastelander - for doing the same. Between all of their efforts, along with the time I and my engineer friend have spent testing, I feel very confident that we're ready to make this new site a reality. Our next steps are to finalize our migration process, in reflection of this feedback, and schedule a time to take the site offline. I'll obviously keep you all in the loop. Please stay tuned for a new announcement with details! Thanks, Patrick

Congrats!

Wow! That is a lot, Ken. Glad you are alright - and that you are now back on track with tests, appointments, etc. Hope it all looks good from here.

We are now closed to new testing participants. Testing remains ongoing. Thank you to everyone who has volunteered and offered feedback. Once we have a clear timeline as far as when the migration will happen and when the site will come online, I will provide an update in a new announcement. I am going to leave this thread open for now, for any additional questions. Thanks again, Patrick

Thanks Ken! All set. Sent you a PM with some details.

Hey all, Testing is going well! I'm really getting excited about the new site. I wanted to call out that I have decided to close the window for participants a week form today, on June 11. Testing will remain ongoing, but if you'd like to raise your hand, you have 7 more days to join. Thank you! Patrick

This was announced early this month, but the sixth season of Cobra Kai will be released in 3 parts. July 18, November 28, and a finale in 2025. I'm ready.

The new KarateForums.com is now open for member testing! Thanks again to DarthPenguin and Zaine for volunteering. If anyone else would like to join them, please let me know! I'll keep it open for now, and will provide some advance notice here when we close to new folks. Thanks, Patrick

I will be opening up testing tomorrow. At that time, I will send you private messages with the details, DarthPenguin and Zaine, and invite you to a private forum to share feedback. If anyone else would also like to join, there is definitely still time - just let me know. Thanks!

Will do, DarthPenguin! Thank you for your kindness and your help, too, Noah and Brian. It means a lot. Everyone - it's definitely not too late if you'd like to be a part of the group who tests. If you're interested, just drop a reply here or send me a PM. As mentioned, I am expecting to let folks in toward the end of this week, but the invite will remain open for a while after that. I'll continue to update the thread here as that process moves forward. Thanks again, Patrick

Thanks.

Thanks so much, KarateKen, Montana, DarthPenguin, Zaine, and Bob, and for being a part of what has made this community enjoyable for so many. DarthPenguin and Zaine - I appreciate your interest in testing. I'll be in touch, probably toward the end of next week. I look forward to it. Thanks, Patrick

I'm a Rangers fan.

Hey all, Today is a big day. Not just because KarateForums.com is now 23 years old. Although yes, that is a big milestone, and I'm grateful for everyone who has contributed to the community over the years. I'd like to give a special mention to our biggest contributors over the past 12 months: KarateKen, bushido_man96, DarthPenguin, sensei8, aurik, Zaine, Fat Cobra, Montana, Wastelander, Spartacus Maximus, Nidan Melbourne, ashworth, Luther unleashed, ryanryu, Drew, Wayofaswede, opr1945, JazzKicker, Himokiri Karate, Wado Heretic, and Revario. Thank you for making KarateForums.com a part of your day. In honor of this milestone, I have some big news. After several years of work and mentioning it at various stages, we are now close to migrating KarateForums.com to new, current generation forum software. If you have a great memory, you might recall that I teased it when KarateForums.com turned 20, a full 3 years ago. Job switches, moves across the country, getting married, and having a son all pushed this back. But we are now finally here. And I'd love for your help in testing. I don't want this post to be 2,000 words, but it is hard for me to succinctly sum up the work it has taken to get to this point. It has had a substantial time and financial cost. Beyond a lot of my own time, I have also brought in a programmer friend of mine to help who, while paid, isn't charging anywhere near his actual hourly rate. And part of the overall effort included the forum reorganization in 2020, where our staff did a lot to reshuffle the deck to present our community activity in the best possible way. What the New KarateForums.com Represents The new site will have all sorts of enhancements. I wouldn't describe them as big new features. Mainly, they are focused at making the site easier to use and modernizing it. Among them: - A responsive, mobile-friendly website. - Robust, customizable notifications and the ability to tag members. - Making it easier to follow conversations. - Reactions (not simple likes, but ways to express respect, gratitude, and support without making a short reply). - Links to sites like YouTube will automatically embed the linked video within the forum. And so on. But I think it's important to highlight the 4 key most important things about this move, and why it isn't something I'm doing for fun, but out of actual need: 1. Preserving the future of KarateForums.com. If you're an engineer or software developer, I don't have to tell you that running old software is risky. Each day, we move closer to a reality where something here simply breaks - and that's it. I don't want that to happen. I've run this community since pre-launch to now, 23 years old. I don't have any plans to stop, but if I do, I want it to be able to continue without me. This move helps to make that possible. 2. Migrate all posts and profiles. It may not seem like much, but making a move like this without losing a single post or any profile data - especially passwords - is very hard. It's taken a lot of work and consulting with not only the developer of our new platform, but with others. It was always my goal that we don't lose anything and that people be able to login using their existing passwords. That last piece was the trickiest, but we got there. And we aren't just migrating the conversations - they look amazing, with BBCode and formatting preserved. Not jumbled garbage. It took a lot of fine tuning and not simply settling for "well, that's close enough." Which is mainly a credit to my programmer friend. 3. Fix the problems. As you may know, features here are slowly breaking. Avatars have been broken for years now, and the use of curly quotes causes posts to be rendered blank. There are other issues, too. This is a result of the outdated software. All of these are fixed on the new site. 4. Stay familiar. I don't want too jarring a change. When you see the new site, it will look different, but it won't be a completely new experience. The overarching point here is simple: Although the site will have so many random new features, the emphasis has been on keeping things familiar and ultimately saving this community to live another day. It's not been on trying to reinvent it or trying to look like Facebook or Reddit or any of that. Help Test! As we work through the final tweaks, I would love to have you test and offer your feedback. If you would like to do so, please reply here or send me a private message. Please note: I am requiring that you have at least 10 forum posts at the time I post this message, in order to test. You aren't able to send private messages until you have 25 posts, so if you have 10-24, you'll have to reply here. At some point over the next 2 weeks, I'll create a private forum, add all testers to it, give you some steps to test, and ask for any other feedback, and then we'll go over all of it together. I don't think of it as a massive time commitment, but it will take at least 20 minutes probably, and I'd love to have you. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and Happy 23rd Birthday to KarateForums.com. Patrick