[alteregoeleanore]

To all Snugglepie and Real World Parenting Forum Members:

It is with great pleasure that we announce the merger of Snugglepie and Families.com.
Families.com is an online community for strengthening and connecting families. Families.com offers about 40 family-related blogs, MySite (which is similar to MySpace for families to share photos and journals), reviews of family-related products, and discussion forums on topics such as parenting, couponing & deals, marriage, fun, travel, health, pregnancy, hobbies, and entertainment.

Over the next week or two, we will be working to integrate all of the Snugglepie features into the Families.com community. The RWP forums will be imported as-is into the soon to be created "Parenting" section at Families.com that will be located at parenting.families.com. All of the forums, posts and members will be moved over to parenting.families.com. We have asked the current RWP Administrator and Moderators to stay on in their current positions and are very pleased to announce that they have graciously accepted!

We realize that you all will have questions about this merger and that is why I am here. I am Lisa Pietsch (pronounced "peach") and am the Families.com Community Manager. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have about the merger that may not be answered in the Q&A below. For a prompt response, please feel free to leave any questions you may have in this thread.

Sincerely,
Lisa

Q: Who the heck is Cocotbo?
A: I am the Community Manager at Families.com. I oversee all of the Community Operations there like our general forums, blogs, deals forums and coupon database. We also have a Forums Manager (McMama) who works with a team of Moderators in our General Forums and another team of Moderators in our Deals Forums. If you want to know more about either me or McMama,
please visit our personal sites at families.com: http://www.families.com/cocotbo/ and http://www.families.com/mcmama/

Q: How are you going to merge the sites when they both look so different?
A: The looks may change somewhat, but the features offered at Snugglepie are a perfect fit for Families.com. Of course this is a very large technical job that will be done in stages, but the tickers, forums, names, articles, recipes and everything else will become very valued parts of the Families.com community.

Q: So do I have to go join Families.com now?
A: NO. Actually, all of the Snugglepie members will instantly become Families.com members and can continue to log into Snugglepie.com using their usual user name and password. You will be able to continue using Snugglepie as you have and as each part of Snugglepie is merged with Families.com you will be automatically redirected as needed.

Q: What if I want to go check out Families.com now?
A: Of course we want you to visit and can appreciate the fact that you'll want to check it out. If you just can't wait and decide to sign up at Families.com anyway, please do not use the same email account or user name that you registered with Snugglepie.com. If you do then there will be some technical confusion when we merge the Snugglepie users into the Families.com system and your account information could be lost.

Q: When will the merging take place??
A: We expect to have your membership and the RWP forums moved on Tuesday, August 29th, barring any technical snags. Our technical team is already working on it now and you shouldn't notice any outward changes.

Q: How will I know when to go to Families.com?
A: You can continue to log in to the same address you currently do and will be automatically redirected to Families.com as features are moved.

Q: Will there be other Moderators over at Families.com, or just the ones we’re used to?
A: We have three forum sections at Families.com and each has a team of Moderators and a Manager. The Deals section has five assigned Deals Moderators, our general Forums have six assigned Moderators and our new Parenting section (formerly RWP) will have ten assigned Moderators (the ones you know now). We expect the Parenting section to grow considerably over the next few weeks and months and will be adding more Moderators under the management of the current RWP Admin, Mollymae. If you would like to become a Moderator, please feel free to send a private message to Mollymae expressing your interest.

Q: Will there be any downtime on this site, while you’re working on the servers & merging?
A: We don’t expect any. You may experience short delays but we intend to keep the site running throughout the transition.

Q: I like this small site and feel comfortable here. What if I don’t like Families.com?
A: I became a member of Families.com about a year ago when it was still very small. It really had a "family" feel about it. I know that we need to continue growing, but as Community Manager, I still strive to keep that small town, family feel there. If you ever notice anything that just doesn't feel right at Families.com, please don't hesitate to tell me about it. We always want suggestions on how to make our community better.

Q: Will RWP remain primarily a parenting site?
A: RWP will basically make up the new Parenting Forums at Families.com. We have a lot of Parenting forums in our general forums and will incorporate those in as well, but anyone who comes to Families.com for Parenting information will find RWP and the RWP Moderating Team.

Q: I see you have different categories....like spiritual, general, parenting etc. Will RWP have a whole new category all for it self or will each topic be stuck in the categories?
A: You can't actually see where we'll put RWP yet. If you go to www.Families.com, you'll see a line of tabs at the top of the page: "Mysite", "Blogs", "Forums", etc. Well, we're building another tab for "Parenting". RWP will go in there along with the active forums on Parenting that are already at Families.com.

Q: Do we get a place of our own or are the threads going to be sorted?
A: Yes - you'll have a place of your own. As I mentioned, we have some Parenting threads we'll add to the Parenting section just so we can keep all the Parenting conversations in the same general area, but this community is going to make up the bulk of the Parenting section. We’ll also be adding some more parenting threads in coming weeks, so you’ll see those being added as well.

Q: So is your site a group of smaller forums put together to form one larger one?
A: That's a tricky one.
Way back when, we started out with just the Forums (now the Forums tab at the top of www.Families.com).
Then we added Blogs on various topics of interest to our members. (We now have about 40 Bloggers!)
Then we added MySite so that people could keep in touch with family & friends through personal online journals and photo sharing.
Then we added the Photos section where people could share their photos with the whole community.
Then we added the Reviews section where you'll find reviews of everything from Baby supplies to vacation destinations.
Then we had a coupon trading website merge with us. For that, we created the Deals tab. They brought lots of new members, coupon trading forums and a coupon database with them.
And now we're creating a Parenting section and adding all the wonderful things that Snugglepie has to offer too!
It is all pretty exciting stuff


Q: So we will remain a forum in our own right? But in a community of forums?
A: Yes, but the forums won't be called RWP or Snugglepie any more.

Q: My other question is will the web address change?
A: The web address will not change. When people go to www.snugglepie.com they'll just be automatically redirected to the parenting section at www.Families.com.

Q: What if I don’t want all that stuff at Families.com?
A: Please don't feel as though you need to explore every inch of Families.com before the transition - you don't even have to do it after the transition! If you are only interested in the Parenting forums, that is just fine. But if you want to take advantage of all the other great free services at Families.com you are always welcome to!

Q: Will we have to register our names?
A: No, you won't have to register at Families.com. In fact, one of the earlier Q&A mentioned that. We'd prefer you didn't since it can cause some technical problems and we may lose your post counts and other information that should transfer. Your membership will be automatically transferred, so you need do nothing.

Q: Will our post counts be transferred over there?
A: Yes, all of your post counts will transfer as well.

Q: We have the Featured Member of the Week along with Open House going on. Will we still be able to do those at the new site?
A: Absolutely! The Featured Member of the Week and Open House look like great programs and we're excited to have them. In fact, they'd work really well with our MySite Feature. (You can check out mine here: http://www.families.com/cocotbo/)

Q: We were going to have Post the Most Contests. Will we have those at Families.com?
A: We often run programs like this at Families.com. In fact, during the last one, we gave away iPods as prizes. Before that, we gave away Nanny McPhee DVDs. We've also had photo posting contests that paid cash prizes.

Q: Will our karma be transferred too? Is that something that you do?
A: We're not sure we'll be able to integrate the Karma system.

Q: Will we still be able to use our tickers and all over there?
A: Absolutely! You'll be able to use them in your signatures and on your MySite.

Q: Can you explain why exactly we are merging?
A: The owners of Snugglepie have decided to move on and the owners of Families.com feel that the two sites would be perfect complements.

Q: Are we still going to have the ability to make Snuggle Pie tickers on Family.com?
A: ABSOLUTELY!

Q: Will all the boards transfer (for example we have household, piggybank, whiningward, games etc... will those transfer over OR just parenting ones?
A: Yes, all of the boards and features of the entire Snugglepie site will be transferred over to Families.com.

Q: Are all the actual posts going to be transferred to Families.com?
A: Yes.

Q: Will we be able to keep Expecting Mother of The Week (EMOTW)?
A: Yes!

Q: Can you tell me what the signature guidelines are--meaning, are there size restrictions, or restrictions on what we will be able to have in our signatures? Are we able to have avatars?
A: The signature guidelines are pretty generous. (You can fit a whole lot in a Families.com signature.) You can have over 900 characters in your signature and 15 lines. We recommend that you go THAT far and haven't seen anyone do it yet, but those are the current parameters.
Yes, we encourage everyone to use a photo or avatar. It makes it a lot more personal.

Q: How about the photo's in the photo gallery? Will those be moved also or will we have a different way of adding them?
A: Those will be moved to our Photos section and we encourage everyone to keep on posting!

Q: What about the smaller boards that are barely ever used like the Fertility Treatment board? Will the board get deleted if it isn’t as big as the other boards??
A: Regardless of the size of the board here, it will still come to Families.com. We don't leave anyone behind! BTW Fertility issues are actually fairly big with many in our community, so you may find yourself meeting a lot more people who want to talk about these issues.

Q: Ok so when do we move?
A: Our tech guys have been working on the technical end of the move 24/7. They ran into some delays on Tuesday night but I'm hoping they have them ironed out. The first part to be integrated will be the forums (and membership, of course). Their goal is to have the forums moved in to Families.com by Tuesday morning (Pacific Time).