I got an email from Jim Woodson :

Hi;

I am the younger brother of John Woodson of stanleysteamers.com. His estate is in probate - we do not have access to his website, but would like to keep it active for his legacy.

Can you put me in contact with anyone that could be of assistance with the website?

Thanks
Jim Woodson
281-217-2571

So if there are any one interested in working with Jim, pls let him know.
I told him I was intrested, but am limited as far as IT skills go, but we will have a conversation

Tom L

Hi,

I'm the president of SACA and I just sent an e-mail to Jim Woodson regarding continuation of the site. We have a firm developing a new site for the club and it should be online in the near future; finally we will have a fully professional website. With the framework the new site provides, I believe we can preserve John's work and extend it because our own efforts are parallel. I think we can also provide some continuity for this forum because so many participants also post to the SACA forum and, more importantly, Pat Farrell has agreed to take over forum moderator duties when the new site launches.

Regards,

Ken Helmick

Lots of great information on both of these forums. Is there any way or discussions of transferring this forum data to the SACA forum? Maybe it could be preserved/moved into a new section on SACA?

That was one of the questions I wanted to ask the people putting the new website together. They are going to directly transfer the SACA files from our old website to the new one, but we don't have owners access to this site. On the other hand, I WAS able to archive this site and I would think we could transfer those files into the SACA forum. I suspect people only posting on this site would need to get a password for the sACA forum, I have no idea if we could readily transfer that data from site to site. It might be that Pat's moderators access to this sites forum would permit direct transfer of passwords, files and everything else.

Ken

I was looking into it and trying to see how to save the information (and also have archived the site). The problem is with the forum. The "Phorum" software is used on both sites, but someone needs to get the administrator passwords/rights to the server to do a proper download/archival of the phorum files. I believe this is beyond Pat's moderator access.

If you are in contact with Jim, I would ask him thoughts and what he has for passwords and rights. If this information was secret to John, then it might be a failing battle. The files could be on one of his computers up to the last time it was downloaded, but it would be best to get the access to the current server to download the system. From there I think this forum could be put on SACA's site (like I said, maybe as another section in the forum list and maybe as an archive where all new posts would go into SACA's current section.

As far as the website files and information, that is pretty easy. It could technically be put up as is in a section of SACA's server space, it's the phorum thats no so easy.

I have been the moderator to this steam car forum for about 17 years. My access to this forum as the moderator is limited only to deleting messages, splitting threads, hiding messages and replies, and editing posts. The website provider screens the new forum members and assigns them their first passwords and retrieves their lost passwords. John Woodson's job was to update the website's home page, want ads, and to do new design on the website. During the last couple of years, John had little work to do on the website as the website was almost self maintaining. I am looking forward to the new perpetual life that John Woodson's Stanleysteamers.com will have. My hat is off to the people that can make this happen.

Good news. This website has a SACA member that has managed to pay the website provider for another years subscription. That will give us another year to sort out the direction that future will take Stanleysteamers.com . Thank you very much.

SSsssteamer, thanks for continuing to monitor and delete the junk advertising that shows up here sometimes. Might there be a way that you could gain the additional rights needed to terminate the user that is posting them?

Kelly, The last time that I had a pesty junk advertiser that I could not get rid of, I went to John Woodson for help and I don't know exactly what he did, but John was able to get rid of the advertiser by going through the website provider, I think. That's the only way that I know of to get rid of them, of which we don't have an access to the website provider at this time. Another problem that I have is that I had changed my email addresses and my old email address can only be accessed by going on line to check its mail box. That slows down the moderator notification process. Ken Helmick is working with Alex Beamer to get all of this sorted out.

By working with Jim Woodson and FATCOW, the website host, I have been able to pay the fees to keep the website going for three more years. We can keep it going longer than that.
I have gotten the administration ID and password for the website. I also have the administration ID and passwork for the forum. I have access to all of the website content and the phorum content.
Jim Woodson and Shannon Woodson have told me to do whatever is best to preserve the website and its contents.
I know there is interest in integrating the website contents into a new SACA website. I see comments about somehow combining the SteamGazette Forum and the SACA forum on the SACA website.
I would also like to keep the Stanleysteamers.com website up and going just as it is, with updates as are appropriate. I have looked at the website for many years and used it to gather information to help me restore my 1911 Stanley Model 63. It seems to me it should just keep going as it is.
I would like to hear from the steam community what they would like to see happen with this website. Please let me know here on this forum or contact me at my email alexbeamer at comcast.net .

Thanks for taking this on, Alex.

I find that this forum is angled more toward people who are driving and restoring cars. The SACA forum, despite the "Automobile" in its name, is more oriented toward light steam power in general, with a strong dose of theoretical automotive powerplant discussion. I don't know that these focus differences were intended, but that's how they have evolved.

And I like it that way. Both forums are equally accessible by all, and I don't see any advantage to heaping all the conversations into a single pile.

Kelly

Combining both this website and the SACA website has merits in that there would be less people needed to manage all of the website information with them becoming one website. The down side of combining the two is that I feel that the vintage steam cars may loose some of their identity being merged with the modern thinking steam inventors. The pencil pushing inventors seem to do a lot of thinking, but not getting much done in their arena. By keeping the two steam groups a safe distance from each other, it will help the both of them in their causes: keeping the steam cars running, and the other of discussing steam theory. Keeping two different web sites would accomplish this need. As I see it, the whole success of maintaining the stanleysteamers.com web site hinges on having a website manager that will maintain the stanleysteamers.com web site. Without the stanleysteamers.com manager, the only choice is to merge the two steam websites together. An interesting concept would be to have two different websites managed by SACA, one being a vintage steam website and the other being modern steam website. The Steam Car Club of Great Britain is most all vintage steam and presently their forum is very quite at this time, so I do not think that their forum would be much competition with Stanleysteamers.com and SACA,Inc. either way.

I agree that a separate website serves the two distinct interests....that would be my vote.

Actually, the intent would be to maintain the two forums separately on the SACA site...much as SACA already does.

If you go to [www.steamautomobile.com] you will see that the Forum software can accommodate a variety of categories in parallel. It would be quite simple to add a new category such as "Steam Gazette Discussions" or whatever would be deemed appropriate.

Regards,

Ken

Ken Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Actually, the intent would be to maintain the two
> forums separately on the SACA site...much as SACA
> already does.
>
> If you go to [www.steamautomobile.com]
> you will see that the Forum software can
> accommodate a variety of categories in parallel.
> It would be quite simple to add a new category
> such as "Steam Gazette Discussions" or whatever
> would be deemed appropriate.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ken

I like that. SSsssteamer

My vote is to keep them totally separate entities.

I don't own a Stanley, but I LOVE being able to read the stories by owners of the adventures is operation that they have. Fixin' driving, all that it's great. I say this as one of the yammering tech-heads on the SACA forum.

Beyond my opinion though. To the best of my knowledge Woodson never was a member of the SACA.

If this website is anything, it is his legacy.

I can't imagine that he would have wanted his website, his legacy, to be combined/under the wing of an organization that he was never a member of.

It makes me imagine disbanding the Navy and placing it under the thumb of the Army.

Caleb Ramsby