Woah. I don't even know where to start.
This has been one heck of an adventure and I'm very grateful you guys have been along for the ride.
I will preface this by saying that answerMug is not run as a business (as if that couldn't be more painfully obvious at this point lol). It was given to me by a good friend of mine a few years ago when it had about five active members on it. I'm a single mom of three, plus I seemed to have picked up a few strays over the past year or so, and I'm also a guardian to my disabled mom. answerMug doesn't earn an income, so I do work a real full-time job outside the Mug, which makes these days a whole lot crazier than normal. But, I love this place and really love interacting with you all.
I've always seen the site as a community venture. Our rules and guidelines flow where we need them to, depending on what people want and that makes us a little different than anything else that's out there. Leading it, though, that's a whole different ballgame. In May, I realized that the platform answerMug was built on was headed south fast, and so I started building this little slice of "heaven" for us to migrate to. It wasn't quite ready yet, but we were getting to the point where that platform was failing us so much that people were locked out for a week at a time and we had outages at least once a week. So, we jumped.
Now, before I brought the beta testers on here, I thought the site was flawless. They ripped it to shreds. Oh, man, did they tear the site up. Our list of repairs was a mile long on the "perfect" site, but I was glad that they caught the issues, because that meant that when you all got here, the site really would be perfect. (Insert giddy laughter here.)
I knew we needed to fix the way the activity feeds and notifications worked a bit, but I sincerely thought that was it. We know better now. lol But, even though we jumped before things were perfect, I still believe this was the right thing to do. Our old site has been off quite a bit in the past week. there's no signs their service is getting better. So, while we may have a ways to go, we are here. We made it. We are together. Most of you came from EP or AB, so you understand what this means. Yes, we still have things to fix, but the community is here. Jumping was the right choice, or we wouldn't even be able to say that much.
Because we came from a platform that tried to hold us hostage and botched nearly every data pull we tried, rebuilding has been tough. To give an example, we ran several backups of all the site's data. On the first run, we had 3807 members pulled. On the second, we had 3840. And 2906 on another. Our site now says we have 2496 Muggers. Really. Try to wrap your brain around that. It's not that we didn't try. The old site corrupted the data every single time we pulled it. This is something we couldn't possibly know until we migrated. The devs have done a really good job of untangling the data. MJ, our lead right now, was right there with me through it all. He has been awesome. During the initial migration, I was up for about 48 hours straight. I don't know how much he slept, but I do know he was right there, for at least 15 hours in a row, trying to unscramble Ning's messed up data. And, he came right back at it after a few hours of rest. Just getting back up was an amazing feat.
Yes, we did lose some data. Old questions still need some untangling, the groups have a few holes. The photos may need to start with a clean slate. Every time the data was pulled, it mashed it up wrong. Presently, we have questions from one person as the title of another person's photo, set in another person's album. It is so beyond anything I have ever seen that I don't know if it can be fixed and pulling the data again will just result in another tangled copy. Believe me, I understand if you're frustrated. I am, too. If there was any other way, I would make it so.
So, where does that leave us now?
Groups Are Up: If you haven't joined the adult network yet and want to see adult content, make sure your
profile info is complete and then visit the "
Join Adult Network" button under Muggers on the main menu.
You Can Make New Groups Again: Just double check that it is not a duplicate and look for the "Create a Group" button near the top of the groups page. I'll hijack it and approve it as soon as I see it come in.
We have an FAQ section: If you're feeling stuck, check the
FAQ area, below "Home" on the main menu. If you don't see the answer there, by all means head to the Q&A or shoot me a message. As I hear new questions, I am adding them to the FAQ so others will have a roadmap. I've also made several video tutorials, which are in our videos section and in the FAQ.
Going Forward...
We have a ton of stuff to fix and I am making notes of all of it. Some of it will be fixed ASAP, while less urgent things are going to have to wait for the dust to settle and for our ads to help generate enough revenue to continue with development. If you have ideas for future development or you come across an issue, feel free to drop me a line or use the feedback tab.
Thank you to everyone who has played a part in this so far- the devs, the beta testers, the mods, and the wonderful Muggers who have jumped in where they could, either with donations or clicks, or ideas. I love that this is still a fun and inviting place to be. You guys are awesome. :)
