Announcement: We’re Making Site Upgrades

Hey everyone! We’ve got a few changes coming. These are good and exciting changes and there should be no major disruptions, but we wanted to let everyone know so they could be prepared if the site briefly looks weird. Additionally, there will be a few hours where no one can make a new commenting account, so if you’re anxious to tell David he’s a moron for ever defaming the AMC 360 V8, you should register now. Details below.

What are we doing?

All the info you need is coming tomorrow, but the short version is that we’re going to be giving our dear readers/commenters/haters more ways to get involved in the community as members, and we’re going to set the groundwork for a new and better commenting system. We’ll be transferring everyone’s account to a system (called Memberful) that will handle memberships as well as commenter accounts. Don’t worry, all of your brilliant comments (and all of your less brilliant ones) will be retained and transferred over and, hopefully, it should all be pretty seamless. The website will remain wide open for everyone to read; this is a car site for the people, after all.

We’ll continue to use our current commenting system for a while as we test Memberful and make sure the sign-up transition works, but we hope to have the much better system up-and-running soon.

What do I need to do?

Right now? Nothing. If you’re a reader and not a commenter? Nothing. If you’re a commenter? Ideally, in a few hours, you’ll be asked to login and then you’ll be sent a new link to make all the server magic happen. The new system should keep you logged in for a while, and you won’t need to deal with passwords anymore.

When you come to the site you should be prompted to sign-in to comment and you’ll get this page:

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All you need to do is add your email, then you’ll get a link in your email like this:

When you click that link it’ll (hopefully) recognize that you’ve got an account and this is how we’ll tie the two together:

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That should be the last time you ever have to login using the old system. From this point forward, in theory, you’ll only need a link sent to your email. If you don’t have a commenter account but decide you want one it’ll be the above, just without the last step.

If you notice anything not working please email us and let us know. After that, if you can afford to, we hope you’ll sign up as a member to support the site! If every commenter became a paying member we’d have enough scratch to hire two new writers immediately.

So in short:

1. Right now, you don’t need to do anything.
2. If you’re a commenter, at some point in the next day you’ll probably have to login twice (once in the current system and once in the new system)
3. The site will look slightly different and better and you can become an official member if you want!
4. That’s it. Enjoy reading and commenting on The Autopian!

Should I be afraid?

Of this? No. Of the world? Also no! Everything is going to turn out just fine.

Is that a picture of a Riley Elf?

Yes!

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Can We Go To Jason’s Basement To See How The Transition Is Going…

Will this ultimately be incredible and, potentially, life-changing?

Absolutely.

Photo credit: Wheelsage