Panoramio Forum Migration

On March 2010 we announced the possibility to Sign In to Panoramio with your Google Account.

This improvement allowed us to leverage Google technologies within Panoramio like Geotagging photos using Google Latitude or the most recent launch of Panoramio Groups.

When Google acquired Panoramio we migrated all our code to Google technologies with the Panoramio forum being the last piece to complete. The Panoramio forum is a very important place for our community and this is the reason the migration of the forum is very important for us. The new technology in use will be something similar to Panoramio Groups and for this reason every Panoramio member that wants to participate in discussions in the forum will need to have the account linked to a Google Account.

The migration will work in different phases:

Phase 1: We will first migrate the content.
We expect that this will happen sometime between 21-25th of November. The whole archive will be migrated to the new forum technology and all the posts will be associated to the correct Panoramio usernames. Those users who have migrated already to Google Accounts will just see no problem in the migration. Their posts will be correctly migrated and associated. Users whose accounts are not associated to Google Accounts will need to do the association to continue using the forum, and will have to wait to Phase 2 to be able to have the old posts associated to your account.

Phase 2: Association of old posts.
In this phase we will associate the old posts from the archive to the users that have migrated to Google Accounts after the forum migration. We expect this phase to happen along the first quarter of 2012.

Small Q&A:


Q: What can I do to help us in this transition?
A: Please migrate to Google Accounts before we start the transition to the new platform, that means do it now.
Q: What happens if I have already migrated to Google Accounts?
A: Your transition to the new forum will be seamless. Your posts will be transferred to you and you will be able to use the forum without any difficulty.
Q: What happens if I migrate to Google Accounts before phase 1 starts?
A: The same as if you have already migrated, no problem.
Q: What happens if I migrate to Google Accounts between phase 1 and phase 2
A: You will be able to post in the forum after you migrate, but your old content will not be associated to your account so you will not be able to modify it until phase 2 is finished.
Q: What happens if I migrate to Google Accounts after phase 2?
A: As soon as you migrate you will be able to post in the forum and your old content will be associated to your account.
Q: What happens if I do not migrate to Google Accounts?
A: You will not be able to use the Panoramio forum. You will still be able to use Panoramio as you did until now.


Remember there is no problem if you want to migrate later, you will just need a bit of patience until we finish the process which may take a couple of months.

Many thanks to all of you that help us by migrating to Google Accounts before the transition of the forum happens, and also many thanks for those who will migrate afterwards but still will be patient until we complete the process.

Posted by Gerard Sanz, Panoramio Community Manager