Brad

Today is halfway to Christmas!

Some new things you may or may not have noticed. On the home page there are 3 ways to view the forum. The traditional table format, a new "cards" interface (along with awesome stock photos) and a "fluid" format which shows threads from all forums on one page sorted by new with various filtering options. There are 3 little icons at the top of the forum listing to go between these options. We suggest you upload a new avatar / profile photo. The new forum software supports higher quality avatars, so consider switching to a new one (or uploading a better quality version of your existing one). Also update your profile with things like your location, social media and anything else you'd like to share. Some of these settings were lost in the upgrade so you might have to add them back. You can also set up your notifications for each type of alert. You can customize them so some will send you emails, others will notify you on the forum, etc. The new forum software is fully responsive so it works great on your phone. You can add a web app to your phone's home screen and even get mobile notifications using that web app. There is a new Leaderboard page where you can see stats about posts and "reputation" (basically the "likes" and the other reactions received). Speaking of reactions, there are new reactions you can give a post. There's the old standby "Like" but also others like "Haha", "Love", "+1" and more. To see them (and give them out) click or hover over the thumbs up on the right of each post. Please use these so others know their contributions are being appreciated. The forum search should be much, much improved over the older version. We've also brought back the "Today's Birthdays" list at the bottom of the home page. Anyone who has posted on the board will get their birthday shown if you have it set up to be shown publicly.

New forum software! Note the new reactions available for each post if you hover over or touch the thumbs up. You can even give someone a cookie!

Overstock.com wins auction for Bed Bath and Beyond's assets https://www.cbsnews.com/news/overstock-com-wins-auction-bed-bath-and-beyond-assets/

As you can see we've updated the forum software to the latest version. If you come across anything strange, any error messages or have questions or suggestions about the new software, feel free to post them in this thread. Thanks

Looks like we're going to try the site update starting tomorrow morning, so expect the forum to be unavailable for the entire day tomorrow (Thursday) and possibly part of Friday as well. Wish us luck

It's likely we're going to do the upgrade this coming week, so be ready

Just an update: we started a test upgrade of the forum and after some issues, it finally worked The actual upgrade is going to take some time, as will setting everything up so when it happens you should expect as much as 2 days of downtime. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up.

With GottaDEAL in its 20th year, it is time for some long-overdue changes to the site and these changes will be taking place relatively soon (i.e. in the next few weeks if all goes well). Since I'm posting this on the forum, let's talk about that first. I will be upgrading the forum software to the latest version. The version we are currently is pretty close to a decade old I believe. We're going to be doing some testing this week to see how smoothly the upgrade will go and if all goes well you will be seeing a brand new forum very shortly. We have a very big database so the conversion could be tricky but fingers crossed everything goes well. To go along with this, the current forum app that some of you use is being deprecated. The new forum software has a much more capable mobile version (with newer features such as web notifications) so you really won't be missing much not having the app anymore and there is big upcoming software update for the forum that will make the mobile experience even better. And then the main GottaDEAL site is also getting a refresh. With Black Friday becoming less and less significant each year, I've combined the current main site and the Black Friday site into one single site. That took a lot of back-end changes over the last few months. Rest assured we'll still be posting the ads and there will be a Black Friday page that has all the updates like the current Black Friday home page - most of the changes are behind the scenes to make things easier for us. The new version of the site will also finally be mobile-friendly - something that should have been done years ago to be honest. I kept the overall design pretty close to what we have now because it's what we've had in various formats for the entire 20 years the site has been around and it works well. The new site structure will allow for new features in the coming years as well. So that's about it. I'll try to give as much notice as possible when I have to shut things down for the move/upgrade/conversion but if you visit the site or forum and things look different or the site is down, this is likely the reason.

Happy "Halfway to Black Friday" Day!

https://corporate.bestbuy.com/my-best-buy-memberships/ Sadly you may now have to pay $50/year if you want early access to their BF sales.

Scans: https://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/Catalogs/HallmarkOrnaments Also available in PDF and on browse-able product pages on https://www.hallmark.com

Down to 48 members

3 prize club members in danger of dropping out....

Lost 6 members in January so we're down to 56 members.

Party City files for bankruptcy https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/18/business/party-city-bankruptcy

Some good/bad Best Buy news this morning: Thank you for being a My Best Buy member. A couple of changes are coming to the program that we'd like to let you know about. Shipping change: Starting now, as a My Best Buy member you'll get free shipping on all BestBuy.com orders, with no minimum purchase required. You'll also continue to have access to exclusive member offers, order tracking and your saved purchase history. Reward points change: The second change is that on February 14, 2023, earning points on eligible Best Buy purchases will become an exclusive benefit of the My Best Buy Credit Card.

Also if someone wants to start a new never-ending BF story thread, feel free

Looking like we could lose several more retailers this year. Bed Bath & Beyond getting close to bankruptcy https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/bed-bath-beyond-coupon-future/index.html Party City nears bankruptcy https://www.dallasnews.com/business/retail/2023/01/06/party-city-nears-bankruptcy-as-it-runs-through-cash/ Macy's closing a few more stores https://www.axios.com/2023/01/05/macys-store-closing-list-2023

Only 320 days to go lol Not much anticipation for BF these days but here is the thread.

Thanks to Bopeep for doing this yet again. Closing these threads now.

Down to 62 members. The script I run says these members dropped out: dropped out: aprncess dropped out: biomajor dropped out: bpr dropped out: christinajoy7 dropped out: dgiesb21 dropped out: gr8girls dropped out: Iliveforblckfri dropped out: Midnight55 dropped out: mjbateman dropped out: MuffinGA dropped out: redraccoon dropped out: sas377 dropped out: Sim31 dropped out: smurfgirl dropped out: starbeck96 dropped out: Stowasser dropped out: Suzy Crampton dropped out: tanner08 If you're on that list and did post during December, send me a PM so I can look into it and fix any errors.

Merry Christmas

10 days left in December and 26 members are in danger of dropping out...

Add me to the list after Kanyon