[TheDon]

Good morning!

As a team of automotive and powersports enthusiasts at AutoForums.com, we are pleased to announce that we have joined forces with Al and Dot McKenzie and their suite of classic Chevrolet enthusiast forums. The web sites include Chevelles.com, Novas.net, Camaros.net, Impalas.net, El Caminos.net and ChevyTeam.com.

Relieving site owners of the burden of administrative tasks and hosting issues, AutoForums.com brings experience from running more than one hundred enthusiast sites on the Internet. Our role here is to support the forum Moderators technically and help put in place features that will grow the community.

As an example and part of the transition, the classic Chevy sites are now hosted on Intel Core I7, Xeon 5500 series, Quad Core CPU servers, with 4 Gb RAM.

We also understand that each community is different and work to accommodate those differences. Successful sites quickly grow to the point where the founder will struggle to keep up with administrative and technical maintenance issues, leaving little or no time to participate in and enjoy the topical discussions that are fundamental to the site. It is those fundamentals that we have learned to preserve in our process of transition.

As Al has said in his announcement, he will still be around and possibly even more than he has been able to recently. The moderating team has committed to remain and continue building the various communities and we at Autoforums.com look forward to assisting in that objective. The existing leadership of these forums remains intact.

My name is Don Roy and I am your contact for any issues related to the transition and future of these sites. I am old enough to remember seeing most of these cars when they were new and I have worked on a couple of them over the years. I look forward to your questions and your input. I am particularly interested in any outstanding issues or new features that you feel would help grow the community. You can reach me anytime by emailing af-admin@camaros.net

The majesty and history of these cars, as well as the knowledge of them contained in these forums, needs to be preserved and enhanced. That was Al’s mission and now it is ours. Please join us in making it happen.


Don

[Camaros-n-Chevelles]

Hi Don,
Welcome to Team Camaro, the best site on the net. I have been a member of Team Chevelle since 1999 and purchased my first 64 Malibu SS on the site. I have been hooked ever since. Please keep the integrity of the site set at the high standard left by Dot and Al. I browse the sites several times a day and look forward to you keeping the tradition.

[SPARKY69]

Welcome don, glad to have you aboard!!

[DOUG G]

Don, Welcome to TC.

I've also been here since '99 and as I stated in my post to Al and Dot, I've seen this place grow. Every site I've been to get compared to TC... there is NONE close to TC and the sister sites

This IS the place

[Dougs72Nova]

Please tell me we are not going to start getting the highlighted words that show advertisements in a window when you pass the cursor over them?

[keypilot]

x2 ^^^ and ads on every page.

[8ballracing]

Welcome Don,

We all appreciate the efforts required to maintain this site.....I am not sure of the costs we will be incurring with autofourms.......As mentioned most would rather pay a little more then be bombarded with ads.......Site sponsers seems to have fit in very nicely.......

.I think a suggestion for now would be any plans for major changes to the site be discussed in the fourms before triggers are pulled.......

I know for me that change is not always easy.......ex. most ISP's change/improve things over time.....it then becomes a learning curve after transition for the user and the question in the back of the mind is why did they have to go and change that......it was perfectly fine.......I hope you can see what I am trying to say here........


Good to have you aboard......
8 ball

[Moonpie]

I'm too cynical not to ask what Autoforums.com is getting out of this. I hope it works out for all.

[Skeeter55]

Don welcome to the Team Camaro...

I understand Al & Dot up coming changes as i myself own a business with no time to spare except on Team Camaro's...

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by Dougs72Nova

Please tell me we are not going to start getting the highlighted words that show advertisements in a window when you pass the cursor over them?

Those may show up for unregistered users, but would not be there after login.

[Guest174]

....and so it begins

[TheDon]

Originally Posted by Moonpie

I'm too cynical not to ask what Autoforums.com is getting out of this. I hope it works out for all.

Well, that's a good question. We can talk about that because of the maturity of everybody here. There are some things I won't mention, because they're nobody else's business, like ..."Hey Al, how much did you get?"

So what did Autoforums get out of this? Well, first and foremost, we got some new forums that we believe in. We believe in their values, their worth and their future. We appreciate what is here today and where these forums can go in the future. We see growth, not stagnation. We see quality interaction, not mindless chatter about everything except the topic of the forum itself.

We see an owner that is going to stick around to be our source of perspective. We see a Mod staff that will continue to understand the daily goings on at a fundamental level. And, we see a group of members that are less about daily drama and more about sharing their enthusiasm for their cars and caring for their community.

There is no progress without change, though not every change is progress. I invite every one of you to share your suggestions with me. This is a dynamic place and it needs to remain so. There will be opportunities to participate in the future direction, bit it won't be about things like... "should this button be on this side or that side?"

There were alternatives, but Al chose this one. If you know him as well as you say, you'll also know that the last thing he wanted was for the Team sites to be torn apart, stuffed with ads and left to be a cash cow. He also didn't want them to languish for lack of technical support, stability and expertise. You are already on new, high end servers on a distributed network that can handle the traffic demands for a couple of hundred sites. Your experience on these sites should already be better and will continue to be so, regardless of how many more members join up.

As you said, I also hope that it works out for all. We've got a great start and all the resources needed to support a vibrant community. There's no reason that we came here to fail.

Thanks for reading... Don

[SPARKY69]

Well said!!! Cant wait to see what the future holds!! No doubt you have a tough job, we are all here for you!! Thanks for listening and responding to us so quickly you must be bombared with questions from all the other sites too!!

[DougP]

Don,
Thanks for the information -- although you have a tough act to follow, if you and your staff are half as good in supporting the sites as Al & Dot, you'll be fine.

[wiskeesour]

Welcome aboard Don. Course, this means you have to find you a muscle car to more understand our.....'Passion'...for our hobby. Thisis a greaat site for lots of resources for lifes..."lemons'... I hope the long standing membership will not change.

Thanks and again, welcome aboard.