The new web site is ready for testing. There is still some construction going on, but the big stuff all seems to be working, and most of what can be seen and done on beta.uschess.org can be done on the new site now, too. There will be rough edges showing, content missing or a little wonky here and there, and places that aren’t polished now, but will be later on. You should find lots to enjoy, and lots to complain about. In the balance, hopefully you’ll all feel at home quickly.
So here is an invite to all forum users to come look it over and try it out. Instructions are at the end of this post. Please excuse us if you see this in more than one forum.
The new forums include a general discussion area (All Things Chess), and comments made on Chess Life Online and CL Magazine articles are also handled by the new forum software; there is a link to make or view comments at the end of every CL/CLO article. (If you find one missing, please tell us via the Contact page, subject: Website Issue).
The MSA has been wrapped into several entryways, and so have the Club/Affiliate search and the TLAs. USCF has been experimenting with getting organizers to enter TLAs into an online system, and until now, you could not see all the results on one page, but we’ve cobbled that together, too. The integration of these searches is still only partway to Mike Nolan’s and our long term goals; please let us know if you find it better.
The site is (hopefully) more organized, but it is hard (or even harder) to satisfy everyone; try the Search and look over the Site Map and let us know how helpful you find them. We’d like to make it friendlier for (possibly overwhelmed) newcomers, as well as to veterans.
All comments - pro and con - will be appreciated. Here are the keys:
Go to: main.uschess.org and when challenged by a dialog box, enter the following username and password:
username: chess
password: wizard
(you can tell your browser to remember this for you)
If you have an account with a username and password here in the forums, you can use this in the Login Panel on the left side of any page. Let us know if there are any problems; anyone who had a valid login as of a week or two ago should be recognized.
If you don’t have an account with a forum username and password, try setting up an account on the new site. Usernames will be checked to make sure no one gets one that belongs to a forum user who has posted or who has an active account. To convince the system to trust that you are a USCF member, you’ll need to have your ID number and PIN from your mailing label.
The forums will seem a bit different -it’s a newer version of the same basic software - but all your PMs and all the posts here up through some point last Sunday should be there. Test everything! Once we are satisfied that the forums work well, we’ll wipe the slate clean on the new forums, close up shop here, and move it all over again (but your accounts will stay - no need to do that again, too!), and then these “old” forums will be left closed.
Ah, yes. The moderators will be themselves in the new forums. But they may have new powers, too - and they may be testing them. Caveat emptor!
And thanks to so many of you for encouragement, assistance, and patience. We hope the wait will have been worthwhile.