Kerm, glad to hear that you may reuse some templates! I'll clean up my code so it's easier for me to edit for people to tack onto in the future. On that note, I may want to mod those TPLs slightly so users visually know they are browsing UTI. Whenever you make them or are about to, let me know.

Something that would be cool, to pay hommage to UTI, is a Cemetech/PhpBB rendition of their 2004-2010 theme.

You could just change the red to something more blue-ish and make the gray slightly darker, so it would still be Cemetech-style, but closer to United-TI's long-lived skin, which could be selectable as alternate forum theme.

EDIT: Extremely quick mockup of what I mean:

other similar new in casio world, now casiokingdom is casio-scene

I have to say I like that mockup very much and think it would be a great look for use when browsing the UTI section of the forum however the merger is done.

For those of you who don't know I did a backup of the old Tifreakware forums a while back and have them mirrored(converted to phpbb2 in the process) on my home machine with another copy of the DB backup sent to chronomex. You can view it at http://home.jonimoose.net/phpBB2/ posting and registering is disabled and hopefully Kerm can take some time to merge it with the new TIFW site sometime in the future. But this way no matter what happens to the old free hosting tifreak used we will always have a copy, especially all the interesting m68k projects hosted there, along with the great PP project thread.

I definitely like the blue version better, it calms you down. Kerm should seriously consider it.

So long as red is an option too. I prefer red.

One issue that has been nagging me is: What if a spambot posts 40 bazillion times right before you are merging? Will you still be able to delete it? Also, as a heads up, Most of the spambot registrations in the past months have a common interest in the number 143040, so instead of saving all those as members, you might be able to just get rid of their accounts.

Also, what will happen to the still slightly active topics? Will I just have to post updates to Cemetech?

As for an idea, maybe you can make it so that by request of the topic starter, a topic can be "unlocked" so to speak. Then, you can make some indicator to tell people browsing the topic which posts were made pre-merger and post-merger (like color of the posts, or some other idea). That way, if it is possible to preserve posts in an active form, you don't need to review every one (you can just have members request unlocking).

Finally, is there going to be at any time a mass email to members of UTI letting them know of this? One of my IRL friends who browses UTI when he has internet outside of school would not have known about this had I not told him. It also might give folks a chance to pay their respects, so to speak :/

UTI merging with us? Wow, that sounds wonderful! While it is a bit sad that UTI is no longer what it used to be, I think this is a good opportunity due to the amount of information and whatnot being put onto cemetech, which will allow it to be more available and have active people for discussion of material.

I'll have some fun going through those topics...

According to his site updates log, he has started to merge user accounts into Cemetech's DB or a PHPBB one. He states there that all 0-post users were deleted. I assume

What I would suggest to NETWizz is that he disables posting/registrations completely on UTI, since it's gonna merge anyway. That's gonna save Kerm some work, although I believe certain bot posts sneaked by without anyone noticing before, so after the merge, Cemetech mods might have to scan the content for possible spam.

Btw Xeda on Cemetech the bot filters are pretty effective, even more than Omnimaga. I think only about 10 bots got in this year here. So basically, don't worry.

You may have noticed from this post in the General Site Updates thread that I am doing cleanup and consolidation while beginning to bring over the UTI data. I will be building a small custom PHP script to display subfora, threads, posts, and profiles within the UTI section on Cemetech, along with links to where the discussions may be continued. As I noted on United-TI, the threads brought over are going to be read-only. I will be going through all the threads and content transferred to look for and remove spammy or otherwise useless threads, to keep the highest signal-to-noise ratio and help people find items more easily within UTI's posts.

The latter. It would be a lot of work to keep all the threads post-able and police two separate but nearby fora under the same roof. I don't think that's too much of a hardship, hopefully.

I will have an administrative tool where administrators can associate a current Cemetech topic with any old UTI topic that is continuing on the Cemetech forum, with appropriate navigation to make the connection fairly obvious and seamless.

Yes. I'll be sending it out in coordination with Justin when I get the initial contents copied over.

Cemetech's database server, but not Cemetech's forum database. And also not a phpBB forum.

Oh I see. I was sure the UTI posts were literally going to be integrated into forum database (kinda like the old Invisionfree Omni forums a few months ago). Also will it be possible for quick reference to access respective sub-sections from similar sections on Cemetech? For example UTI's TI-BASIC sub-forum in Cemetech's, z80/68K ASM inside Cemetech's ASM forums, etc, even if not literally part of the sections in question but rather being links.

Anyway good luck with this

United-TI was one of the pillars of the TI community for a long time, so to see them disappear as a site is a rather sad day. I still remember when the site merger happened to bring about United-TI. The Calc Site and Cirrus Programming, in particular, were really exploding with activity -- lots of cool, interesting projects, new programs and games being released almost daily, and a steady stream of new people getting involved in the community. Those were really fun days to be a part of the TI community; they seem so far away now...

Will the UnitedTI domain name also be transferring here?

Yes. The UnitedTI domain name will point to the Cemetech section holding the UnitedTI archives.

Good idea

What third party anti-spam would have been good?

Elfprince13 wrote a great one, which we use here. Zero automated spambots have gotten through, and I bet it blocks more than a few utterly brain-dead meme-posting users too.

aye, and I wish I hadn't lost all of the phpBB3 modifications I made to it (and SAX) when I deleted my UTI subdomain.

The basics of the United-TI Forum are in place! Some of it needs work, still, particularly in the area of avatars, profile linking, and BBCode adjustment (translation?), but the content is all more or less there. Please report (big) bugs to me, but don't bother with the little stuff, like where I've left myself obvious notes or where it says Cemetech instead of United-TI when it shouldn't

The United-TI Forum Archives
http://www.cemetech.net/projects/uti

Looking really good Kerm. Very good.