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Final shutdown and removal of Astaro.org

ruckus

Hi All,

The time has come to shutdown the https://astaro.org site.  With the migration of the forums and threads to the Sophos Community complete and the Astaro site in a static read-only mode I wanted to post and let you know what's happening next.

Having initially posted to the moderator's board (hidden to most) about the plan and to get feedback I don't see anything that blocks shutting down the site.  Therefore we plan to take the Astaro.org site offline on January 20th (one week from today as of writing) and redirect forum links on that site to the corresponding forum here.

I'd like to thank all members of the UTM group for their patience while waiting for the migration to complete - moving several hundred thousand posts was no small task. 

If you have any comments or questions please post below.



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  • Am I the only one in favor of keeping it open for searching and consultation? It takes so long here to scan posts and threads - it's like trying to hike througha pit with mud up to your knees!
    When I remember a particular post, I go to google and search with site:astaro.org. At least that way I can find what I was looking for quickly. Then, I select a distinctive phrase to search for here so that I can supply the Community link in my post.
    Cheers - Bob
  • Hi Bob,
    I agree with you. Having shut down the original forums has killed off most of the support and the new forum format is not user friendly at all. Finding information is very difficult.
  • Hi Bob,

    another very stupid management decision!

    I was be able to understand such a decision, if Astaro products were bad, unreliable and users unpopular. And the management is trying to cut such a step from a bad past.

    But I think we all could agree that the opposite is true.

    Instead it , the Sophos management is trying to tell us that XG Firewall is a great bright future. That product is, I believe, only a stillborn child. Unstable, unusable, unfriendly product. Whether you look at any post on this product you can only find the negative assessment of all those who have tried the product to install and operate.

    And again, I think we all can agree that it is unfortunately the sad truth.

    alda
  • As with others, I do still search astaro.org first, before searching the community.
  • in reply to BAlfson

    BAlfson said:
    I go to google and search with site:astaro.org. At least that way I can find what I was looking for quickly. Then, I select a distinctive phrase to search for here so that I can supply the Community link in my post.

    Is there a problem with search that I'm not aware of?  Search is, to my knowledge, working well.  Since you cannot search Astaro.org directly, as you say, you have to use Google and can restrict to a particular site.  However whatever phrase you use in Google against the Astaro.org domain will work with the community.sophos.com domain or in the search box on community.sophos.com.  I don't understand why you feel forced to go to Google with a phrase on an Astaro.org site search when that same phrase will work here, or as a community.sophos.com Google site search?

    SearchResult

    Google site search of Astaro.org:

    site: astaro.org "I assumed that you had set it as VLAN 1"

    Three results:

    Google site search of community.sophos.com:

    site: community.sophos.com "I assumed that you had set it as VLAN 1"

    One result:

    Direct search on community.sophos.com:

    "I assumed that you had set it as VLAN 1"

    One result:

    Since you must be using a phrase in the Google site search of Astaro.org, can I ask you try that same phrase, in quotes most likely to match the Google site search format, on the community directly and let me know if it fails to find the information?

    I'd really like to know if search is a problem.  We are looking to change the site navigation but that's a separate item to any search problems.

  • I agree with Bob, Scott, and Ian. When I am having an issue with my UTM 9.x (XG still has some issues with features for my home network)I tend to start with google because practically every modern browser has it in the address bar when you type a phrase it will automatically use your default search engine. How much heartache is it going to cost when google searches (muscle memory) are done and point to bad links or forwarders that do not have the answer you googled for.

    From a home users perspective the transition from "astaro.org" to these forums, the code release of XG, and the major bug in UTM 9.X branch that as far as I can tell (hard to track what is read vs unread in these forums) other than work arounds has not been patched or corrected yet.

    Other than the cost of the domain and the bandwidth what is the risk of keeping astaro.org online till the negativity drops to a minimum.

    -Ron

  • Let me preface by saying I believe change is often quite beneficial; however, from a user’s standpoint, I have yet to experience a single benefit of the migration but of course I’m beating a dead horse since I’m just a lowly user that’s not capable of understanding the genius of the move. I’m guessing security, reporting, managing and supporting of the new system is perceived by management as much improved. Oops, I left out user experience.

    As far as the closing of Astaro.org, I believe commenting in this thread is not going to amount to a hill of beans since the decision has already been made. I stopped visiting Astora.org when they disabled the search functionality. What a loss.

    By the way, it appears that some of the threads did not migrate. I have some "reply" emails of threads I've posted in. When I attempt a search of either site, no results are returned and the threads appear to have been removed from Astaro.org when I visit the URL's of the threads listed in those emails. It looks like some threads did not make the trip!

  • I'm totally on board with Bob, Ian and Scott. The old forum software was much better for end users. It just was. But, for better or worse, and it is certainly worse for the forum's end users, I can see that this decision has been made. Tough s**t for us.

  • OK Guys.

    Like I wrote before, it seems we are barking to the moon.
    There been a lot said about this forum by all of us - not much seems to make any different.
    Sophos Idea of what user forum should be like and look like, is deferent (for my own opinion – wrong) than before, and after all they are the boss now.

    Ruckus,
    You wrote "moving several hundred thousand posts was no small task".
    May be it only me, but I couldn't find the most important thread like "UTM Tweaking Guide 2.0" by Sascha Paris, Rulz by BAlson, FAQ/Howto by BarryG, Useful shell commands by me and so on. Hope I'ts all there.
    There was allot of remarks about the way this forum build and act and feel, but Sophos choose its own way.
    The strongest point of the former forum, was that it was running by the users and felt this way. We all felt like one big community, helping each other, and helping improving "Our product".
    In the new forum we (at least I) don't feel this way, and that's why I don't pop in much anymore.
    I know it's hard to get our trust concerning the new forum, but If you really mean it and want to make a different, start by inviting guys like Balsoft, Scot and BarryG to take part of managing together the new Forum.
    Bring us back the feeling that it's "our forum", and that Sophos is not just another UTM company, but "Our UTM company".

    Goldy.

  • Another way to send away followers to move to another product. Astaro.org = UTM, Community = XG.

    They are destroing what a good product was and still is UTM. Now, astaro.org (bye bye).

    On this community Sophos appears only when they need to communicate some decisions and not to share them. No way. At the end of this Year, I would like to know how many people have moved to another product and Sophos reveneu at the same time. Sophos UTM is still sold because Astaro followers keep their information and share them (very difficult in this community).

    This make me cry!

    Have a look at XG: People from Sophos are not there from months already and they will retire UTM soon. Anyway Sophos will return to sell Endpoint and Email filtering again.
    Astaro.org was the best community that I found in my IT life since today. Easy to read, follow and nice people.
    Here even simple options are missing:
    Pages, Fixed Tags, who viewed your profile and so on.
    I really really miss UTM time and astaro.org too.

    Bad idea, Sophos.

    Luk