"Bushwalk Tasmania" Name was Dropped Last Week

[Son of a Beach]

In some respects, it was a sad day last week when I turned off the "Bushwalk Tasmania" branding of this web site early on Wednesday last week. In part it was a sad day because I screwed up the cookie settings and some people were not able to log in until they cleared their cookies, but more to the point, it was a sad day because that was the original name for these forums, and the name which many people were, and still are, attached to.

We started out as "Bushwalk Tasmania" over 4 years ago, but the site has been operating under the dual identities of "Bushwalk Tasmania" and "Bushwalk Australia" for most of it's existence, with the displayed site title being determined by the URL being used to access the site - http://bushwalk.com or http://bushwalk.com (or earlier, http://bushwalk-tasmania.com or http://bushwalkaustralia.com ). The "Bushwalk Australia" name and URL were introduced when it became obvious that most of our growing membership were not from Tasmania, and wanted to discuss non-Tasmanian bushwalks.

Maintaining this dual identity has been cumbersome, requiring several hacks to the system which always make upgrading more difficult, and which made logging in more complicated (the addition of "multi-login" options in the login form). I recently discovered that the primary modification to enable these dual identities was not compatible with the new version of an important forum software management tool, so I decided to trial removing the old name, and keeping only the more universal "Bushwalk Australia" name.

The dual identities modification was temporarily disabled during this period, but with no problems (once I got the cookie issue sorted out) it has now been removed completely, and we are now simply "Bushwalk Australia".

I apologise to anybody who dislikes this change, in particular to the Tasmanian members who've been with us from near the beginning and who's contributions have built the site up into what it is today. However, in just over a week I've received no comments at all regarding the change, so I'm hopeful that it has not adversely affected anybody to any significant degree.

Please note that the tasmania.bushwalk.com URL will continue to work in the short term. After some time, it will be switched to an automatic redirect (which will be seamless to users).

[corvus]

Nik,
As an original member of BT yes I am sad to see it go but happy with the new Set Up and glad to watch its growth over the last 4 years.
Keep up the good work.
corvus

[Greenie]

When people think of Tasmania, bushwalk.com should on same list as Boony, Ponting, Tassie Devil, Fynn etc. Something that you should be proud of

[Son of a Beach]

Sadly another "Tasmania" element has been dropped from the site today. As mentioned would happen (in the original post of this topic), the "tasmania.bushwalk.com" is no longer a mirror of the "bushwalk.com" website, but merely redirect to it.

In reality, this should not cause any noticeable change, apart from the URL in your browser being a tad shorter, and lacking the "tasmania" element. Please let me know if it does cause any problems.

All bookmarks and links should continue to work in the short term, redirecting to the correct URLs, however, it is recommended that people update bookmarks and links they may have (or ask others to do so) as I cannot guarantee how long this would remain in place for, if the site does get new ownership.

[Son of a Beach]

Posts regarding an issue that appears unrelated to this change have been split off to All Topics Posted by 'Guest' in Forum Index Pages?

[tasadam]

Oh crap... I've got so many links to this site from all over the place, most of which use the tasmania.bushwalk name.
Oh well, the forum's got a good search. If people want it, they'll find it.

[Son of a Beach]

Oh crap... I've got so many links to this site from all over the place, most of which use the tasmania.bushwalk name.
Oh well, the forum's got a good search. If people want it, they'll find it.

They'll keep working for now (automatically redirecting to the appropriate page). If the site ever goes to a new owner, they may not keep the second domain name though.