Taking Dutchmen RV Owners Group to the next level.

[eRVm]

;-helo-:

Dear Forum Members,

I have recently been approached with the notion of taking this site to the next level. This move will entail transferring ownership of the Dutchmen RV Owner’s Group to a new owner. After some discussion, the site will be transferred to Andy R., owner of the Online Network Community, Social Knowledge. I am very confident that this move will make for a stronger community. Andy and his team run several top rated RV related forums; and with their experience, will make sure this site continues to serve the members.

Essie M.

 

[Cooper-DUTCH]

Is this the company?http://www.socialknowledge.com/

 

[Andy R]

Is this the company?http://www.socialknowledge.com/

Yes, Cooper, that's me. I tried to make the company page look professional but it's a tiny company, just me and a few others who help me out.

I know announcements like this can be awkward, especially when it's some "new guy" and hope you all will give me an opportunity to earn your trust. As Essie mentioned, I approached her about helping take Dutchmen Owners to the next level. I have over a decade worth of experience working with RV/Travel Trailer forum communities and feel confident I'll be able to provide the community with some new tools an features for us to have a solid foundation for our future growth.

I understand how special forums communities are, it's 100% about the members and we are not looking to make any drastic changes to the membership. What we do want to invest in is better software, mobile apps so you can chat from your iPhone or Androids, an RSVP system for planning rallies (great for posting what you are going to bring to a pot luck dinner) and a rally calendar so everyone can see what events are coming up.

The first forum I ever founded was Airstream Forums and I have worked with half a dozen other RV/Travel Trailer communities in the last 10 years as well. I am excited to bring my expertise with software to the owners here to empower you all. This is an amazing community, I think we can do some amazing things together.

In the next couple weeks we will be exporting the forums which are currently hosted here at FreeForums.org. We will be moving over to a new domain, www.DutchmenOwners.org. Anyone who has paid for an account upgrade will either be refunded (by me) or offered a free upgrade on our new system. I don't want anyone to feel they have been left short changed. We will have to do some test runs on the migration to the other forum software and will post an announcement prior to the actual conversion day so you all have some notice before we take the site offline to do the live move.

You will see some new faces around here who will be here to help. First off is Janet & Dirk. They are both RVers who I met on my other RV/Travel Trailer sites and will be helping here to provide support to the mods/admins and community in general. Secondly you will see an account called Tech Admin which is Jeff, our programmer. Lastly you will see an account called Design Admin, that's another Andy and he will be responsible for making our community look pretty. Feel free to PM them should you ever need any assistance.

I know that's a lot of stuff to digest in one post. Please feel free to ask me anymore questions you have. I look forward to getting to know you all in the years ahead!

 

[Wanderer-DUTCH]

Well, Welcome! I look forwards to seeing what happens to the forum.
A strong community will only help all of us through mutual support and networking.

 

[Janet H]

Hi there - just saying hello as well. I'll be available to help out as needed and am looking forward to getting to know everyone.

 

[gonervn]

I certainly sounds good. If I can help in anyway please let me know.

 

[FlyingDutchmen]

Welcome, Andy & Janet. Good to see you both. ;-helo-:

 

[lgarcia]

Thank you, Essie, and welcome Andy, Janet, & Dirk

 

[Nana & Poppy]

Welcome!!! I'm a member over on the Sunline Forum and you have done a wonderful job over there.....DH & I became SOB's (some other brand) owners and now belong the the Dutchman Group (as well as the Sunline Group)!

Hopefully the format will be similar to the Sunline Forum, as it is soooo easy to use!

 

[Janet H]

Welcome!!! I'm a member over on the Sunline Forum and you have done a wonderful job over there.....DH & I became SOB's (some other brand) owners and now belong the the Dutchman Group (as well as the Sunline Group)!

Hopefully the format will be similar to the Sunline Forum, as it is soooo easy to use!

Nice to see you here. The format and features will be very similar although the look (colors, header etc) will be quite different

 

[Andy R]

Nana & Poppy, it's great to see some familiar faces here! As Janet mentioned, our plan is to convert Dutchmen Owners to the same setup as Sunline Club but well have our own unique look & feel.

I was looking around FreeForums.org, the current free host where the forums are running and it appears the migration to our own domain name will be a tad more complex then I had originally anticipated. They are basically technical issues so everyone here won't have to worry about them but it could mean our downtime is a couple of days instead of a couple of hours. I am still digging to see if we can find a way to make the down time as short as possible.

I don't have a date for the migration but we'd like to do this as soon as possible so we can start to get settled in our new home. The way it will work is that we will close this forum with a message that we started the migration process. Once complete the message will simply tell people we moved and include a big link to get to our new home. At that time we will email all members with an update and link to our new website. We will send a couple emails in the 6 weeks following the conversion and finally shut down this site so we don't cause confusion. We will work hard to make sure everyone knows we have a new home!

I'll post more information as it's available.

 

[Nana & Poppy]

Thanks for explaining that Andy....I do remember the switch over at Sunline, as members....it won't interfere with us at all.....Like Andy said it may take a few days, but this is the time of year to do the changeover as most of our camping season is done, or at least here in upstate NY it's done, and not many questions are being posted!!!!!

 

[Andy R]

We are live on the new software. I am going to give it a few days so we can work the kinks out and then send an email to let everyone know.

 

[Nana & Poppy]

thank you!

 

[lgarcia]

The new site is very pretty. Thanks for the hard work.

 

[Andy R]

Thanks for the kind words Laura! We still have some features to add, tweaks to be made but at least we can start to get settled in our new home. If you all have any questions about features or suggestions, please post them here!

 

[knesdad]

So far so good, but when I make a post (new or reply) I don't get any Smile images. Just the dreaded X where the image should be. But the mouseover text does appear. It killed me when I was programming this stuff...

 

[Janet H]

Thanks for posting about this - we're working on the smilie issue

 

[FlyingDutchmen]

Everything looks good:-tup. Even got the smiles back.

 

[knesdad]

ME TOO!!! Thanks Guys! And Gals!