What's happening with Forum since Pozible Don??

[admin]

Well this is pretty long overdue.
I guess the first thing to let you know is that the money raised is still sitting safe and sound in our account. Well, minus the monthly server bills for the forum and the website. ($ have been allocated to cover all hosting costs for the next year plus.)
Other than that, we haven't really spent anything yet.

I've put in time working on boring, invisible stuff such as researching various forum scripts* that might do a better job than our present one - and getting to grips with whether or not the RealSurf site redesign should involve a modified out of the box design or go with a "built from the ground up" theme. Basically it's been a lot of reading, but no real action. That's research I guess.

Trev has very kindly provided me with a list of feature requests and fix-its he's received for the fourms. I'm in the middle of production on Photo Review magazine right now, but my plan is to work my way through the list and report back on each item. So, I'm setting up a new section just for these requests...

You'll find it here: Forum problems and suggestions

Please feel free to dive in with your own requests and relevant comments. I'll be keeping tabs on this and will try to keep on top of it for you all.

Don

*If you have any experience in this direction, please drop me a line. The phpBB script we use is definitely one of the more popular open source options, so after a fair amount of comparing and contrasting with sites like this forum comparator (http://www.forum-software.org/forum-comparator), about the most interesting alternative I've come across is Simple Machines (http://www.simplemachines.org/). My thinking is that if we do change forum scripts it should only be to get better performance and increased features. Changing scripts would be complex and potentially annoying for users if they have to learn different ways of doing things, so I need to do more research...

[steve shearer]

to be absolutely honest, I would loathe anything to change.

There's enough technological change to absorb on a daily basis without having to get our heads around one more thing.

Everything works fine here just as it is.

new websites suck dogs balls.

[Trev]

\My thinking is that if we do change forum scripts it should only be to get better performance and increased features.

Like what?

I'm with Steve here. We've got the nude hairy chicks in the dungeon - what more do we need?

On a slightly more serious note why not set up a fund/charity thing and have somewhere like your garage where people can drop off their old boards and every six months chuck them in a half container and use the money to send them to New Guinea or wherever. This is a surf website so it fits. Got friends who do this shit - not boards but educational/playground stuff and send it to Kiribati - do it off their own back so it can't be that hard. (I didn't donate to realsurf as I see it as a commercial enterprise with the ads so take this as you like - if you can convince me otherwise I'll send you a bag of coffee Don)

Other than that give the money to http://wombatawareness.com/ now there's a worthy cause.

All good suggestions, Merks.

But just remember Don is running the forums out of his own pocket. The amount which comes from th efew ads we have is negligible. There were more but they were causing some issues with some people's virus protection so Don pulled them.

[Skipper]

I take the nude hairy chicks thread pretty seriously merks.
But yeah, sure, nothing's broke.
Go and have a nice holiday Don. Tell Marnie to get fcuked, he's becoming a tiresome old queen.

[RickyG]

Thanks for the update Don. I'm not too fussed with things changing a lot either. TBH I figured my $$ contribution was going towards keeping the show on the air, so no probs if there's no profound changes.

[admin]

Thanks for the responses. Good to have the feedback.
Since posting this, I've had a brief exchange with a guy who has been through the BB3 to SMF forum change and fwiw he said there were a few minor changes to the way people did stuff, but otherwise it went fine - and from an admin perspective they're pretty happy with it. I'm looking into the practicality or otherwise of setting up a test version of SMF to see how it looks with our content. Might be a way to run it by a few of you to get thoughts/reactions from user perspective... still in magazine mode, so not quite ready to get into that sort of stuff just yet.
d.

[Trev]

Thanks Don.
Interesting that a significant number of posters who've had "issues" over the last couple of years are silent ATM.

[--++sunstroke++--]

Thanks Don.
Interesting that a significant number of posters who've had "issues" over the last couple of years are silent ATM.

Thats because the current production environment is stable & generally not causing any issues

[Trev]

Thanks Don.
Interesting that a significant number of posters who've had "issues" over the last couple of years are silent ATM.

Thats because the current production environment is stable & generally not causing any issues

Well, no.
All the issues as reported are still there.

[swvic]

Make the search better. Searching Tangents and the Dungeon should also be available to those who have access to those areas

Make it more friendly to smaller screens (photos are often cut on my 10 inch)

Probably just me not knowing how to do it, but the ability to quote from other forums/threads would be good

Other than that I have no issues. If the money just helps to keep it going and nothing else, I'm ok with that

[--++sunstroke++--]

Thanks Don.
Interesting that a significant number of posters who've had "issues" over the last couple of years are silent ATM.

Thats because the current production environment is stable & generally not causing any issues

Well, no.
All the issues as reported are still there.

I don't have any problems posting.

[The Mighty Sunbird]

Only improvement for me is re photos: often they get chopped off on the side.
I would also like to easily post a photo: ie not through photobucket, just upload from my computer or phone, without having to resize it...
Otherwise if my money keeps RS on the web I'm happy with that..I don't need the stubbie holder now, I have a Beef Week one.

[steve shearer]

that would be pretty bitchen if could post big photos.

and embed videos.

[Trev]

I'm pretty sure the direct upload uses a lot more bandwidth with associated cost. Not a problem for the odd one but if it catches on it could get out of control.
Maybe Don can elaborate. My info might be out of date.

[Davros]

simple is king, this is a very user friendly site minus the photo posting, what does gum tree run, that is easy as pie to post.

[Trev]

Make the search better. Searching Tangents and the Dungeon should also be available to those who have access to those areas

I'm pretty sure the Dungeon search function works.
Will check it.
I've made an adjustment which "hopefully" will activate the search function in "Tangents".

[Trev]

Make the search better. Searching Tangents and the Dungeon should also be available to those who have access to those areas

I'm pretty sure the Dungeon search function works.
Will check it.
I've made an adjustment which "hopefully" will activate the search function in "Tangents".

Edit. That didn't work.