Forum Status and Future Direction

[JLawton]

Really? Only half way? I would have guessed we'd be way ahead by now.........

Paid mine!!

[gran racing]

Yeah, me too Jeff. Or maybe the final amount is different than I thought.

[Flyinglizard]

GA please state the mission for this site.

Thanks, MM.

[Matt93SE]

While playing with forum software, I'd like to see Tapatalk plugin installed. It's free from Tapatalk and makes the site mobile friendly..

[mossaidis]

I sent $20.

[kcolbey]

I haven't been on much lately with work and all. However, I like the direction that has been discussed and donated a few $.

[Greg Amy]

Really? Only half way? I would have guessed we'd be way ahead by now...

No, what I said at the time was "we easily met the halfway mark" which was Mr Webmaster's benchmark before he'd begin committing the time and money for the upgrade.

I had a brief email exchange with him last night, and we've met our funding goals, with enough left over to cover operating costs. Thanks to everyone! Mr Webmaster has purchased the software and is beginning the planning process for the upgrade; he assures me that he's done several of these and is well-versed on the process. We have no schedule yet, but once something is nailed down I'll let you know when.

There will be one maintenance task that I'll need help on. If you go to the user list you'll see that we have something like 15,000 registered users, the vast majority of which have no posts. In addition, you can usually pick out the spammers, which have random characters or obvious advertising in their userID (e.g., "All AmericanStorage" and "plquumber5f"). We'll need to prune all those outta there. No way one person can do it. So at some point I'll be asking the current admin staff to clean these up on a regular basis (no rush, long term process) and ask if anyone else wishes to help.

I'm also likely to purge out old classified ads, ones that have been inactive for over a year or so, clean up the database.

Other than that, we'll get upgraded, add in some challenges to reduce spammers, and move forward.

Greg

Edit: Although we made our 2014 funding goal, please do not hesitate to donate if you've been procrastinating. 100% of that you send, no matter how large or small, goes toward current and future costs of the forum, and is sincerely appreciated. Mr Webmaster is hosting and doing all the work himself without charge, and your administrator staff here is all voluntary.

[Bill Miller]

I realize that I'm a little late to this. Greg, I know many of the folks that run VWVortex, a REALLY big VBulletin site. I can speak to them and get any tips/pointers/etc. if you or Bill would like. I'll be sending some $$ later.

[Greg Amy]

Any feedback appreciated, especially for any add-on requests.

[ajmr2]

Well done, Sir! Just in time for the winter doldrums!

[Greg Amy]

Well done, Sir! Just in time for the forum silly season!

Fixed...

[Ralf]

I realize that I'm a little late to this. Greg, I know many of the folks that run VWVortex, a REALLY big VBulletin site. I can speak to them and get any tips/pointers/etc. if you or Bill would like. I'll be sending some $$ later.

Especially find out how to avoid the meltdown they had when they upgraded. Not sure if it was software or hardware, but they were down for some time while they straightened everything out. A lot of the FAQ/DIY posts didn't fare too well.

[highwayracer]

Just saw this thread as I'm exploring the new format. Daily visitor but rarely log in and even more rarely post, but appreciate the content and discussions. Donation sent. Hopefully it can be put to good use. Thanks for all you do!

Larry

[Greg Amy]

Thank you, Larry. All donations appreciated, funds reserved explicitly for forum maintenance and improvements.

[ajmr2]

Hi Greg. The new site is looking good, however one thing I can't seem to find is the old quick "Today's Posts" link which I could save as a favorite. I liked that function since it only showed very recent posts rather than a long list of them, some of which haven't been updated in weeks. The "New Posts" doesn't seem to work the same way. Thoughts?

[ajmr2]

I was trying to be nice! haha

[Campbell]

Really nice to have this back, thanks for your time and effort!!