Maintenance Mode

[E. Netzer]

Question: What do you use maintenance mode for?

I guess my question is, why would you need to "lock" the forum (except for staff)? If you need to do upgrades, test certain features, or write new code, can't that still be done behind the scenes without locking up the forum?

This question has nothing to do with the forum succession terms, which I understand. It's a separate question about the need for the "locked for all except staff" aspect of maintenance mode.

[Mr. Feeny]

E. Netzer,

Some people don't want their forum open to guests at all. It's just a blue screen with a yellow login button.


AFAIK, Christina just leaves everything open and running when she's creating and testing new features. Then we can tell her in real time what works and what doesn't.

[E. Netzer]

Oct 26, 2023 20:23:44 GMT -5 Mr. Feeny said:

E. Netzer ,

Some people don't want their forum open to guests at all. It's just a blue screen with a yellow login button.

Yeah, so why? What’s the rationale?

[xea989]

You'd have the ask the admin of the forum. Everyone does it for a different reason.

Some want to thwart off bots maybe

[Chris Johnson]

Maybe they want to go to extreme measure to vet who can log in or only create a group for 10 of their friends.

Could be anything

[Abyssinian]

E. Netzer,
One forum I did it because the admin got really sick. So it was a way to just prevent anything bad from happening and she could reopen it when she got better.

It stopped all activiy.

[bigballofyarn]

E. Netzer,

Every admin probably has a different reason. Some don't want to risk getting bot registrations. Some want to send out private invitations and only use their forum to communicate with people they know in person. Some use it as a way to lock the forum so no one can log in and do anything nefarious while they are unavailable. Some forums don't have moderators. So, if the admin is the sole watcher of the forum, they may want to just lock it entirely, if, for example, they are hospitalized. I'm just creating hypotheticals though.

[Great Divide]

It's like a pause button for the forum. The admin might have a new job, be sick, or anything else, and they don't want to put responsibilities on other people.

[tofumix77]

Something you can use when you want to close your forum "for now" but not forever. You pick up on it again when you have the time.

[Frosty]

I guess it's when you want to pause the forum, but not delete it completely. Then you can resume when your life situation changes.

[datboi]

If I had a forum, I'd probably use it to lock and pause if I needed to do that.

[Logan121]

I agree with it being a pause button in most cases. If there was a hurricane here that knocked out power and it was gonna be out for weeks, I'd probably MM my forum if I had one.

[E. Netzer]

Okay, thanks for the info.

Also, I don’t remember starting this thread. LOL!

[Raven]

E. Netzer,
It was probably split into a new thread so the announcement wouldn't go off track.

[E. Netzer]

Oct 28, 2023 10:38:40 GMT -5 Raven said:

E. Netzer ,
It was probably split into a new thread so the announcement wouldn't go off track.

I don't think I've seen thread splits where I'm the original poster -- and I made no effort to make the new thread. I've seen where the mod started the new thread by simply copying someone's text and then starting the new thread in the mod's name.