Important Information

In response to a few of the most commonly asked questions I have been receiving since the launch of the new site I decided to put together a pretty informal question and answer type list.

• Q: Why does the site tell me my email address is unknown? I have been getting emails from you for years!
• A: The mailing list we use to send out emails to our readers is nothing more than just a list of email addresses that have opted to receive our newsletter and other promotional emails. That list does not have any login names or passwords associated with it and we were unable to transfer any of what we did have on the old website to the new one as far as user records were concerned. So, if you would like to login to the new website and participate in the forums and other interactive areas of the website please register for a new account here: http://www.losttreasure.com/user/register

• Q: Why does the website keep telling me I have already submitted an entry for the sweepstakes?
• A: There has been quite a bit of confusion and misinformation surrounding this apparent issue, so I would like to clarify it here once and for all. The old site did not have any control to limit the number of times a person entered the sweepstakes. There were numerous instances where the same individual was recorded entering 50 times and more in one day. Here, we tried to resolve that issue and force a one entry per day limit in order to make winner selection more fair for everyone involved. You may now enter once per calendar day, this should allow everyone plenty of flexibility while still keeping things fair and even. Your previous submissions will reset at 12:00am according to the timezone set in your user profile or 12:00am CST for anonymous visitors.

• Q: None of my bookmarks work and I cannot access the sweepstakes or the <fill in content here>?
• A: The new website is powered on a totally different platform than the last. The old website was run on a Windows server under IIS and was written using a mix of Cold Fusion and ASP. That resulted in pages of the website having .cfm or .asp file extensions. The new site on the other hand is running on FreeBSD under the Cherokee Web Server and is coded in PHP using Drupal as its primary content framework. This will allow us to easily maintain and organize the site content and allow smooth upgrades in the future. The result of all this means the new pages will all have a .php extension or possibly no extension at all in some cases. If you have any pages from losttreasure.com bookmarked in your browser, please find the new location of that page and update your bookmarks.

• Q: What happened to the virtual treasure/coin hunt and golden globe?
• A: Unfortunately the virtual treasure hunt had been defunct for many months on the old website and was no longer being maintained. The overall state of the old website made it nearly impossible to manage or upgrade as it was. I am sure you all remember the very frequent error messages, broken links, disappearing menus and other issues associated with the old website. These were all symptoms of the underlying problems which led us to create this new website. Nearly all of the content you came to enjoy will be available here again in the near future with the exception of the virtual treasure hunt and golden globe.

• Q: Where are the old article archives from the past magazine issues?
• A: You may be unaware of the fact that there are already literally thousands of articles present on the site. You can easily access teasers of them by simply searching for any keyword that may come to mind using the search box located near the top of the right navigation bar. To do a more in-depth search login to the website click the search button and then expand the 'Advanced Search' on that page. Currently the articles are not yet available for purchase through the new website but we will have that resolved in the very near future.

• Q: Have you removed the State Treasure stories for good?
• A: No, absolutely not. The State Treasure stories along with the anthology books are very much a trademark product of our magazine and we know the value they have with our loyal readers. In order to get the website up by our internal deadline of December 1st we had to make a few hard choices here at Lost Treasure. We made a very deliberate point of providing as much of the old content as possible for the initial launch along with all of the very much improved interactive features contained on the new website. Please just stop for a moment and try to remember the last time our community of readers and web users was even close to as active as it has been in the past few days since the new site launched. It is our hope that features such as comments, interactive polls and forums will create a much tighter knit community here at Lost Treasure. You now have the ability of letting us know exactly how you feel about anything we post the instant it is viewable and enjoy the feedback and viewpoints of others in the same community.

• Q: I am a subscriber to your magazine and would like to know where the subscriber only area has gone?
• A: The subscribers only area is alive and well and already contains the ability to view the last 30 days worth of tales posted here on the website along with a sneak peak of the stories for the upcoming day. We will also be posting the extended field tests that were long promised on the old website here in the near future. These field tests are nearly twice as long and much more in-depth than those available publicly. There are also plans underway to offer side-by-side product comparisons between multiple detectors to help you choose which detector is best for you. If you would like to access this area, simply email me your login name for the new website along with the subscriber number from your magazine. I will then make sure your account is marked as a subscriber.

Do you have a suggestion for something else that should be listed here? Please let me know by leaving a constructive comment below.