Forums
Overview
We’re excited to announce that the AAVSO is transitioning to a new forum system. The new system is modern, faster, and easier-to-use. This change is part of our mission to improve our technical infrastructure this year, and will introduce several long-awaited features as well as some new ones:
- Better Navigation: Users can now easily and quickly find categories they’re interested in using the navigation menu on the left.
- Group Chats: Communicate easily with other observers using our messaging features for quick queries, without having to create a topic!
- Enhanced Subscriptions: Now, you can subscribe to entire categories (not just threads!). For example, you can click the bell icon on the subcategory page for Observing Campaigns to be updated about new campaigns.
- Improved Moderation: The new forum system has a robust permissioning system, which will allow us to keep our community safer.
- Attachment Uploads: Due to better moderation capabilities, we are now allowing trusted users to upload attachments to the forums.
- Additional Features: The new platform includes features such as post voting and badges, further enhancing user engagement.
The new forums can be accessed at forums.aavso.org. For an in-depth guide on how to use the forums, refer to this article (also available in Spanish). The existing forums will soon become read-only. For questions about the migration, please see this FAQ. If you have any questions, you’re always welcome to contact us.
Migration Timeline
| Date | Action |
| August 22nd, 2024 |
New forums are rolled out to our community. |
| August 29th, 2024 |
Existing forums closed for new topics. Discussions without any activity in the past month will be locked. |
| September 5th, 2024 |
Discussions without any activity in the past week will be locked. |
|
September 12th, 2024 |
Forums will be made read-only, with active discussions moved to the new forums. The existing forums will redirect to forums.aavso.org. |
Sign-in with Google
This week, we are also releasing Sign-in With Google, allowing users to quickly sign in to their existing AAVSO accounts using their Google account. To be eligible, you must have signed up with AAVSO using a Gmail account. You will see the Sign-in with Google option on the login and sign-up pages, allowing you to access your favorite applications quickly.
Both of these new features are part of AAVSO’s efforts this year to modernize its infrastructure, made possible by contributions to our annual fundraising campaign. These technical improvements play a major role in our larger strategic goals, such as lowering the barrier to entry for variable star astronomy and improving the user experience for current users.
Earlier this year, we made significant changes to our underlying technical infrastructure to reduce our operating expenses, as well as upgrading to a unified and secure authentication system. We continue to follow through with our strategic goals by upgrading our entire website later this year. We would like to thank our sponsors and community once again for helping make these changes possible.