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As you are all probably aware by now I have spent the last 10 months buying a house.  It took 6 months to get to the completion and another 4 months of repairs, decorating and moving, but now I'm 80% unpacked and so I thought I would share a preview of the new dedicated Transformers display room (which has also been dubbed "The Transformers Museum") with you all.

Now, I am still unpacking some of the toys and so the layout in the cabinets it not yet finalised (and there is another cabinet still to do) but you'll get the idea of how things are going to be displayed.  Once everything is out and in the correct place I will take create a full image gallery of "the Transformers museum" as well as the other figures that I also have out on display as well as putting together a video tour, oh yes, it needs a tour ;), but that is another day.  For now you will find one preview image attached to this news story, another preview image on our Facebook page and the third preview image on our Google Plus page, so you'll need to click around a few places to see them all.

After recently moving, and having no internet line - both of which have drammatically affected our work on the site (2 months of work on Steve's house) we should finally be getting the Internet back in around 2 to 3 weeks time.

The good news is that with the extra space we've got easier access to the toys, so hopefully we can get back to filling up the blanks in our toy gallery section.

As you must have noticed the lack of updates to the website over the last 8 months has continued to increase.  This is because I am currently completing moving house into a place I bought at the end of Jan.  Due to this I have limited access to the internet outside of work and during this same period I have been promoted which has bought with it increased responsibilities and working hours.  Sadly something had to give and it has been my free time and hobbies that have taken the brunt.  I am hoping to re-address this once I complete the house move and have a working internet connection, but for now I just wanted to say please bare with me, I've not forgotten about this place, I'm just super-snowed with work and moving but ultimate both will be worth it.

 

Steve AKA Quartz

Some of you may have missed the launch of Version 9 of Transformers At The Moon, some 3 years after work first started on the new layout, code and features.  You can't help but notice the changes, the three column (holy-grail) layout that is now used, a return to the drop-down horizontal menu and introduction of "focus areas".  These focus areas are helped to show you the vast content that you can find within the Transformers At The Moon database, and website.  The area that i'll focus on at the moment is Resources.

The Transformers At The Moon resource section contains over 12 years of information that we have collated over the lifetime of the website.  This information includes images of various Transformers merchandise, from rubbers to store displays, through to concept art and production pieces.

If you click the Resource Section you will find a list of different things to read and look at.

1. Transformers Toy Galleries - over 2,200 different Transformers featured. Our 99% complete G1 (including Japanese) collection will contain toys that you cannot see anywhere else.  Of cause there are also Lucky Draw Transformers toys, that we are known for, and also Hardcopies from different lines, production samples, testshots and prototypes.
2. USPTO Database - the only place you can see all the Transformers related Patients and Trademarks, in one place.  ther are 447 trademarks and over 6500 status updates
3. Hasbro Instructions - Scans of the Hasbro Transformers toy Instructions - there are 962 scans in this area, making it one of most complete Transformers Instruction scan archive you will find).  This mirrors ever Hasbro instruction that is published, and retains those which they remove.
4. Artwork - Various differnet official Transformers artwork, from the Benchpress concepts in 2000, through Dreamwave and beyond
5. Cartoons - episode  guides and galleries of the Transformers series.  Primarily focusing on Transformers Prime and Transformers Animated, we have access to every Western Transformers episode, and 80% of the Japanese episodes (soon to be 100%).  This area will continue to grow throughout the years
6. Comics and Books - We'll admit, we've been out of touch with Transformers comics for a long time = but our Comic and Book area covers Marvel and Dreamwave issues (IDW is yet to be added) and the books cover UK, US and Japanese prints
7. Instruction Scans - Scans of some of our Transformers Instructions.  At some stage will will combine this with the Hasbro instruction scans
8. Interviews - interviews with artists, writers, film producers, computer games companies, convention organisers .. we've covered them asll
9. Live Action Movie - a small area on the Live Action Transformers Movies
10. Magazine Scans - after our Toy Galleries and USPTO Database, the Magazine Scans area is the third lastest, and most impressive, area of Transformers at the Moon.  We spent several thousands of pounds in buying back issues of TV Magazine, TV Boy, Hyper Hobby and other Japanese collectors and TV Magazines covering the last 20 years in order to give you 100% correct information on some of the little known, or unknown Japanese campaign exclusive toys.  This area is a MUST for anyone interested in rare figures.
11. Merchandise - the weird and wonderful Transformers merchandise - most of which is from G1 and most of that we own
12. Profile Cards - an area that we hope to add to (when we get time) contains scans of Japanese Transformers Profiles cards
13. Prototypes and Concepts - Another BIG area for Transformers at the Moon, in terms of content that isn't often covered.  Here you will find
    
    1. Series Bibles (concept and character art from the Transformers TV show) - the largest collection on the web
    2. Concept art work
    3. Concept and finshed box art
    4. Hardcopies
    5. Prototypes
    6. Testshots
14. Toy Collections - group shots of people's toy  collections.  If you want to get yours added then get in contact with us
15. Toy Sheet Scans - complete scans of our Transformers toy sheets .. we own over 2500 Transformers, 99% of G1, so with that we have most of the old toy sheets for you to view
16. Website Mirror - old mirrors of some of the Japanese and Chinese websites
17. UK Store Locator - Currently offline, this told UK vistors the nearest stores selling Transformers

Welcome to Transformers At The Moon - Version 9!  Yes, I have finally completed the work I started 26 months ago which was re-writing the entire Transformers At The Moon platform from the ground up.  The only thing that is the same is the server.  I've re-engined the database, redeveloped all of the libaries, the website is entirely bespoke, re-jigged the look-and-feel of the website and have introduced a new message board.

My professional career lead to the significant delay turning what was originally a 6 month project into something that has taken over 2 years.  For that I am sorry, but these things happen.

One of the first changes you will notice is that we have moved back to using a drop-down menu for navigation.  This is to help group the content we have created since the site first launched back in late 1999 so that you all will be able to, hopefully, find the content much easier.  It also helps highlight all of the content we have to offer from News Services, through toy galleries, trademark databases, instruction sheets, concept art, character models to videos (an area that we will be expanding with a back catelogue of convention videos we have taken over the last 10 years), events and our much over looked community.

You will also find that we have introduced a "tab" system into the "introduction area" of every page.  For instance, on the home page you will notice three tabs under the welcome section.  Clicking on the tab will display the content on that tab.  These tabs come into their own within the News and Resource and Toy image gallery sections of the website.  Within those areas of the website, you will find that these tabs contain alternative ways to search for content.  Most commonly you will find a tab that lists each of the categories as well as a tag cloud and a tag index.  The tag index works just like the index of any reference book you may have read.  Simple choose the letter and all of the words starting with that letter will be displayed.  You can then click on the work to filter the section by that word.  Give it a go, the tag indexes are cached locally ensuring they performance improvements once you've clicked on a letter.

You will also find that every news article, gallery or resource article now contains the ability for logged in users to post comments as well as rate the toy / article / news story.  Those of you on Social Media sites will find shortcut icons allowing you to easily share pages and galleries with your friends.

As part of the change we have also upgrade our exclusive and popular In The News section, now called "Other Sites News" which now contains even more sources of news that have been freshly categorised and sorted into alphabetical order.

Another major overhaul is the way that the image galleries and "other sites news" stories are displayed.  Image now use a lightbox-esque feature rather than opening in a new tab or overriding the main site.  Once the image appears you can quickly browse through the rest of the images within the gallery be using the navigational arrows or using the cursor keys on your keyboard.  The images are automatically scaled but you can switch to the full size view by clicking zoom or by pressing the down key.  Pressing "up" will then re-scale the image.

There is another handy keyboard shortcut you can use whilst looking at our image galleries and that is to press the ctrl key on your keyboard and then type in the page number of the image you wish to view.  For example is you want to jump to page 2 simple press ctrl and then press 2. The page will automatically jump to page 2.  If you want page 14, just press ctrl then type in 14.  Simple!  You can test if be clicking on the images within the additional image section of this news article below.

We have also including a series of Easter Eggs into the website as well, let us know if you find how to access them.

As well as the layout changes I have also improved the performance and scalability of the website by introducing more caching which should speed up your browsing.

You will also notice that the URLs for all of the pages have been cleaned up but do not worry most of the old links will still work and will simply load the new version of the content.

New Look Message Board

We are no longer using PHPBB, which will please many of you.  PHPBB is the most popular free PHP / MySQL message board on the internet.  It's also one of the worst written and bloated message boards you will find and is often targetted back exploiters.  It also has some rather annoying interface issues which I was fed up with so we are no longer using it.

The new board is very much a work-in-progress and over time will be re-skinned so that it can be fully integrated into the main website.  All of the posts have been copied over as have the user accounts however we need to re-instate the moderates as those permissions were not carried over in the change.

Mobile / Tablet Users

I realise that the new layout of the website is not suited to a lot of modern smartphones.  Do not worry, a mobile version of the website will be launched soon that will be "thumb friendly".

 

So take your time to explore the new look site, I'm sure you will discover you never realised we had.

 

Steve - AKA Quartz

The geek-fan event known as "Squirtle-con 2011" took place yesterday in the Cambridge area of England.  The one-day fan event featured your usual convention activities such as toy trading, a video games area, episode screening, social discussions and lots of food and drink.  The event also saw two exclusives per attendee that went down a storm with everyone in attendance.

When trading slowed down at the event most of the attendees could be found popping to a local Tesco's store to pick up more items.  My brother himself picked up most of the Thundercats 2011 figures in a mad collecting spread.

Final attendee figures are still be collated, but the event was universally deemed a huge success with representatives from the UKs two biggest fan sites Transformers At The Moon and Full Metal Hero both strongly supporting the event.

Pictures from the event till no doubt be doing the rounds on Facebook (other social media sites are also available).  You can read about the hauls of some of the attendees on our message board.

I'd like to thank the organisers and attendees for a great event and I look forward to the next one

Now that Google have officially launched Google+ for business, Transformers At The Moon is back on the Social Network website. Yes those of you who have been on Google Plus for the last 5 months probably remember that we had a page for about 3 weeks back in June / July until the page was pulled along with companies such as Marvel and Disney. Well now we are back with a dedicated page which you can use to find us. Simply click the button below and add us to your circles.
­ ­

12 years ago today, 29th October 1999, Transformers At The Moon was first launched.  The website, at that time, operated from the domain www.transformers.themoon.co.uk which was based from the email address transformers@themoon.  It was by registering this email account that we decided to settle on the name for the site.  Whilst both the email address and the domain have since moved to domains owned by us and to better reflect the focus of the website, Transformers toys, the site has continued to be maintained by the two brothers who first launched it.

We had hoped to launch the 9th version of the website to coincide with the anniversary of the site, however due to my computer at home failing, that project is still outstanding.

We will, however, still run the 12th anniversary celebrations, in terms of new special content and announcements, just as soon as wee are able to.  But in the mean time we would like to express our thanks to all of you who have visited the website over the last 12 years, joined the message board, Facebook group or follow us on  Twitter.  So on behalf of thhe pair of us, THANK YOU.

Steve and Dave AKA Transformers At The Moon

Did you know that Transformers At The Moon was actually launched on the 29th October 1999, though the official launch was not until the 11th November 1999. Either way the site will soon be turning 12, how do you think we should commemorate this event?­­ Let us know on our Facebook page, facebook.com/transformertoys

As mentioned a few times, our internet speed in our hotel is really slow, so we have uploaded a few BotCon images to our Facebook page.

There are 60 images from the trip which you can see on Facebook

­For those of you who use Facebook we recently relaunched our presence on the social networking giant with a brand new "page" dedicated to Transformers At The Moon.  The page will be automatically updated with the latest Transformers news stories as they are published to the website meaning if you are cruising Facebook you can stay up-to-date even easier with the latest in the world of Transformers.  We'll be adding more updates and Facebook apps / widgits in the future, but for now it joins our Twitter account twitter.com/transformertoys and RSS Feeds as yet another ­way in which you can find out our latest headlines.

You'll be forgiven if you didn't realiase, or if you forgot, but yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of Transformers At The Moon!

That's right, this site has been online for 10 years - that's longer then most of the "mainstream Transformers sites" and longer than many of the visitors to this site, and our other sites, have been interested in Transformers!!  Shocking.

On 25th October 1999 we uploaded the first rendition of Transformers At The Moon, hosted by our then ISP Freeola.  The sites name mirrored that of the email address we chose that Freeola hosted (an @themoon.co.uk)  domain which read as "Transformers At The Moon".  The domain / name was chosen as a tip of the hat to the Ladybird Transformers Tell-A-Tale Books, which features such names as "Decepticons At The Poll" and "Decepticons Underground".  We felt that an "at the moon" gave it a little bit of a spacey feel.

Anyway that was then, this is now.  We've been busy over the last 10 years, spent lots of money on the website and toys (one day we'll break even on the cost of the site, which has only seen sponsorships and advertisements over the last few years) and even more time.  Although the time spent updating the site this year has been far less then we had hoped (due to other commitments - namley work) we still have lots of plans, many of which we've had since the very beginning.

Thanks for visiting the site, we hope you continue to do so and if you'd like to contribute anything then please feel free.

Due to a network glitch our live webserver expired last night rather than being renewed for 3 months whilst we worked on the new server. As we hadn't been planning on moving the site over just yet, and as the old webhosts are hard to contact (they are only open 5 days a week anyway), we have had to revert back to a backup database which was taken on 29th March 2009.

As you can guess, and see, this means that 2 months worth of news stories, Transformers Animated episode reviews and latest Transformers toy galleries have been lost. Whilst we can recreate the image galleries and episode guides the news stories are lost to time ... and the WayBackEngine.

We had already mirated our email over to the new server, as well as a few other domains, but our larger domains were left on the old site. Here's a basic summary of what has been lost:

Transformers At The Moon - 2 months of news stories, 2 months of message board posts, message board configurations, two toy galleries (Gold Big Convoy and Silver Big Convoy) along with various feeds and robots.
Transformers Animated - 2 months of episode galleries / reviews, new character listings, 2 months of news stories
Lucky Draw Transformers - 2 months of news stories
AFA Transformers - any ebay auction information from the last 2 months
The Visionaries.net - everything
Steven Mapes.com - everything
Project Rock Education - not effected
Hertfordsire School of Rock - not effected

We are slowly trying to bring the sites back up, starting with Transformers Animated.com, and will look to re-populate the missing data as best we can. The message board will remain unavailable for the interim period, as we need to investigate the full damage.

This has happend at the worst time for us, due to work commitments, so please bear with us whilst we rebuild the site. For those asking why it wasn't backed up more regularly. It was, only that backup server was part of the same hosting package which has expired as the payment was not processed fully due to a network glitch.

After yesterday morning's problems we've managed to get the majority of our websites back up and running Transformers Animated, Lucky Draw Transformers and AFA Transformers are all back online, with Transformers Animated just missing episode summaries for the last 2 months (all the galleries are back).

Transformers At The Moon is now back working, missing two galleries, 2 months of news and most noticibly having problems with the stylesheet for the message board.

We will be looking at trying to resolve the remaining issues later today.

As many of you have found out we have been experiencing a few issues with the load on the webserver over the last few days, which has resulted in limited access to our websites Transformers At The Moon, Transformers Animated, Lucky Draw Transformers and The Visionaries.net.

Steve spent half of the day today optimising various areas of the site and the server to help with the load, but this has proven not to be effective enough.  We will continue to work on a fix for this over the weekend and throughout the week until the site is back up and running permanently.

We simply ask for your patients and suggest trying the website again after a 5 minute delay if you receive the errors.

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