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Forum_Shuffle - The Forum Arranger for GAP
Copyright (c) 1993 RoboSoft Systems. All Rights Reserved.
Forum_Shuffle will allow you to quickly and easily change the
arrangement of the forums on your GAP BBS. It will do
everything except update your menus. All you have to do is
figure out what order you want the forums in and Forum_Shuffle
will do the rest, including rearranging all the files required
for GAPQWK and MainMail.
Disclaimer
----------
Forum_Shuffle is provided AS IS without any warranty,
expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, fitness
for any purpose. Use of Forum_Shuffle, and the consequences
thereof, are entirely your risk. In no event will RoboSoft
Systems be liable for any damages whatsoever resulting from
the use of Forum_Shuffle.
Shareware
---------
Forum_Shuffle is a Shareware product. As such, it is made
available to the GAP sysop community for evaluation. Users
are licensed to operate this program on their computers for
the purpose of test and evaluation on a trial basis for 30
days. If Forum_Shuffle is used after the first 30 days,
registration with RoboSoft Systems is required.
The unregistered version of Forum_Shuffle has a number of
restrictions not present in the registered version. See the
end of this file for a list of the restrictions.
Registration
------------
Registered users are those users who elect to pay for
Forum_Shuffle and register that payment with RoboSoft Systems.
By virtue of registration and payment for the program,
registered users are granted a license to continue to utilize
the program on their personal computer for as long as they
choose. This license authorizes use of the program on any
personal computer system the user may own or use so long as
the program is operated on only one computer system at a time.
Use on multiple systems simultaneously requires multiple
registrations.
The registration fee for Forum_Shuffle is $15. Please make
checks payable to:
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Forum_Shuffle v1.1 5/13/93
RoboSoft Systems
P.O. Box 2221
Orange, CA 92669
The payment of this registration fee to RoboSoft Systems
entitles the user to full use of Forum_Shuffle for an
unlimited period of time. Registered users will receive a
disk with the registered verison of Forum_Shuffle, and a
registration key file that will unlock ALL the program
features and remove the demo restrictions. See REGISTER.DOC
for complete registration information.
Updates
-------
Updates to Forum_Shuffle will be provided via BBS free of
charge to registered users. Updates on diskette are available
for a nominal charge to cover materials and handling.
Support
-------
Support for Forum_Shuffle is available on The Cookie Jar BBS
at 714-997-0350. Registered users will be granted access to
the private node of the BBS and will be given priority in
having their questions answered.
Distribution
------------
Forum_Shuffle may be freely distributed on any Bulletin Board
System (BBS), including commercial systems such as CompuServe
(CIS), Genie, and BIX. Forum_Shuffle may be distributed by
diskette by any organization or disk distributor as long as
the fee for this distribution is no greater than $5 and it is
made clear to the purchaser that the distribution fee is NOT
the same as the registration fee.
Feel free to pass around copies of Forum_Shuffle, however,
please distribute all of the original files and do not modify
any of the files.
How do I use this thing?
------------------------
Before you begin to use Forum_Shuffle, you need to decide what
you want the new forum ordering to be. It is suggested that
you write it all out on paper before you fire up Forum_Shuffle.
Forum_Shuffle will not allow you to add new forums or delete
existing forums; it only shuffles existing forums. If you
want to add new forums in the middle of your forum list, use
GAPSETUP to add the new forums to the end of the list and then
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use Forum_Shuffle to move the forums where you want them to
be. If you want to delete some forums, use Forum_Shuffle to
move those forums to the very end of the list, then use
GAPSETUP to change the number of forums to effectively exclude
the deleted forums.
When you run Forum_Shuffle, you'll first see a welcome screen.
Then there's a warning about multi-user restrictions.
Forum_Shuffle is NOT multi-user. You can use it on multi-node
systems, but all nodes must be offline when you run
Forum_Shuffle. You're given a chance to exit at this point if
you haven't brought down all your nodes.
Then you come to the main Forum_Shuffle screen. This is a
listing of all your forums (the screen will scroll if you have
more forums than can be displayed on a single screen). Down
the left side of the screen are the names and numbers of your
forums in their current order. Down the right side of the
screen are the names and numbers of the forums in their new
order (which will be the same as the left column initially).
The column of numbers in the middle of the screen is where you
indicate the new forum ordering. Just go down this column and
enter the new forum number for the forum listed on the left
side of the screen. As you enter new forum numbers, the
listing on the right will change to reflect the new order.
Because of the swapping done by Forum_Shuffle while you're
changing the ordering, the right hand column may look horribly
out of order while you're in the middle of the process. Don't
panic! Just continue entering your new forum ordering. When
you've entered all the forum numbers, then take a look at the
right hand column and see if it's what you intended.
At this point in the process nothing has actually been
changed. When you've got the new order the way you want it,
press ESCape or click on the upper left hand box with your
mouse. You'll then be asked if you want to commit these
changes or cancel the whole procedure. You can safely cancel
at this point and nothing within your GAP system will have
been changed. Once you begin the commit process, there's no
going back. It MUST run to completion or you'll end up with a
real mess. (Forum_Shuffle DOES make backups of all the
critical files before changing anything so you can restore the
old ordering if necessary.)
Once you've begun the commit process, Forum_Shuffle will start
making all the necessary changes to the GAP data files. This
process may take anywhere from a few minutes to well over an
hour, depending upon how many forums you have, how many users
you have, and how fast your equipment is. (I have 95 forums,
about 1500 users, and a 386-33. Shuffling my forums takes
about 15 minutes.)
As the forum data is being updated, you'll see a status screen
that can give you some idea of how far along things are.
Once the process completes, all you have left to do is update
your menus.
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Forum_Shuffle v1.1 5/13/93
WHAT IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG?
Before any changes are made to the GAP control files,
Forum_Shuffle makes backups of all the affected files.
Specifically, these are FORUM.DAT, MEMBER.DAT, and MESSNO.DAT.
The backups all have the same root as the backed up file only
with the extension of .OLD. If something catastrophic happens
part way through the shuffle, do the following:
1) CD to the GAP\MAIN directory.
2) Type: copy forum.old forum.dat
3) Type: del forum.idx
4) Type: copy member.old member.dat
6) Type: copy messno.old messno.dat
6) If you run MainMail, type: copy mmdat.old mmdat.cnf
7) If you use GAPNet
7A) Type: copy qwkforum.old qwkforum.dat
7B) Type: del qwkforum.idx
8) If files.old exists and has a current date
8A) Type: copy files.old files.dat
8B) Type: del files.idx
9) CD to the GAP default directory
10) Type: GAPREBLD
Once you've determined that everything is fine following the
run through Forum_Shuffle, you can delete the .OLD backup
files.
A FEW POTENTIAL PROBLEMS
While the forum rearrangement process will be largely
invisible to your QWKmail callers, there is one potential
problem. Forum_Shuffle will make sure that if a caller had
the Blotz forum selected in GAPQWK or MainMail when it was
forum #15 he'll still get the Blotz forum now that it's
been changed to be forum #117. But, if the caller uploads
replies from before the change, his Blotz forum replies will
go to whatever is now forum #15 and not to forum #117 where
the Blotz forum now resides. This will only happen on the
mail run immediately after you change your forums. Once the
caller downloads a new mail packet with the Blotz forum as
#117, his replies will properly go to forum #117.
Unfortunately, there's not a really good solution for this.
About the best you can do is give your users sufficient
warning and hope for the best. If you're so inclined, it may
help to either hold off on mail runs for a couple days prior
to the change or to disallow downloads of new mail from the
forums you plan to change. It's unlikely there will be a lot
of replies or new messages uploaded if there was no mail
downloaded.
For those of you who are net-mail hubs, you will need to alert
your nodes to the changes you plan to make and to when you
plan to make them. The nodes will need to change the forum
mappings on their end at the same time you make your changes.
We're working on some ways to automate this process, but it
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will most likely only work for those nodes using GAPNet.
Those running non-GAP software will be left to their own
devices.
For those of you using Postlink or PCRelay, sorry, but
Forum_Shuffle can't automatically change any of the Postlink
or PCRelay files. It is extremely unlikely that Forum_Shuffle
will ever support either of these programs, however, I've been
told the Postlink "tmanage" program will take care of the
changes as long as all your forums have unique names. I don't
use Postlink so I can't help with the changes required for it,
but the "tmanage" information came from a very reliable source.
SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THE DEMO VERSION: The demo version of
Forum_Shuffle has a few restrictions of which you should be
aware. It will only allow five forums to be changed on any
given run of the program. Also, the update to the databases
has been purposely slowed down. The registered version runs
about three times faster than the demo version. It is
regrettable that such devices must be employed to encourage
registration, but "invisible" utilities such as Forum_Shuffle
have a poor registration rate if very persuasive registration
encouragements are not used.
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