Hey everybody, I wanted to give you an update on what we’re doing with the upcoming changes to SOFREP.com so you’re not left in the dark.

First, we’re going to merge Team Room into SOFREP.com. Team Room is currently on the subdomain https://teamroom.cms.sofrep.com/, which makes integration with http://staging.cms.sofrep.com/ unnecessarily difficult and more challenging than I want to deal with. So we’re going to move some stuff around.

SOFREP TV and SOFREP Radio are essentially duplicated on both websites, so we’ll only keep one instance of that and comments will be lost from one site. Warning Order and Reading are easy sections to move, and making the PX work nice for subscribers will be easy enough.

But the Forums are a real challenge. Jaycel has done a lot of good work with the Book Club, and there’s a lot of good and important information within the forums that y’all have invested in, so we definitely want to keep that intact. But the forums application I chose doesn’t like to be moved around. Yesterday I was thinking that we might be forced to scrap it all, but fortunately SOFREP Dev and I have done this a time or two before and we know how to use brute force. It looks like we’ll be able to move the forums over to SOFREP.com after all. We’ll know by tomorrow night.

Regarding payment systems, up until now we’ve relied on our friends at PayPal, and they have provided us with great service. But two issues have proven difficult for us: recurring payments are quick to be cancelled by our membership system if there’s even the slightest hiccup in processing, and some people just don’t like PayPal. So in addition to PayPal, we will use a leading, standard credit card processing service, and we may also use Stripe. With this upgrade, credit card payments will be even more transparent than with PayPal. The systems and processing we will use are PCI compliant and have solid anti-fraud measures built in. We host the SOFREP network in a very secure facility, and our SSL encryption is very good. We have continuously improved our systems and security to provide you guys with the best performance and the best security possible. We don’t know and never will know your financial/credit card information. Just like any of the leading news sites, just like any of the leading commerce sites. (I don’t like to talk about it because over-assurances can seem like a cover-up, but you need to know that we are solid on this stuff.)

So the big change is simple: Team Room and SOFREP.com merge into ‘One Team, One Fight’ on SOFREP.com. You’ll login on SOFREP.com then read and comment much as you do now. You’ll also find the forums and Shoutbox on SOFREP.com. One easy experience, and hopefully an even better community experience.

Coming tomorrow: Charlie maps out the new SOFREP.com! (preview below…)

New SOFREP Sitemap

 

(Featured Image Courtesy: DVIDS. Sergeant Michael Dowell, a reconnaissance Marine serving with Alpha Company, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, sights in his .50 caliber sniper rifle during a raid exercise here, July 10, 2013. Dowell, 29, from Elko, Nev., serves as the sniper for his team as well as the pointman.)