Forum Status and Future Direction

[RSTPerformance]

Please recomend a "respectful" donation recommendation.... Some people have deep pockets here and some have empty ones but we all want to help.

Raymond "Glad I will still have a place to post my success with Street Tires " Blethen

[Greg Amy]

Please recomend a "respectful" donation recommendation....

No recommendations. Give what you think it's worth, I assure you that all funds will go back into the forum.

The only suggestion I have is that this initial pledge drive is for the upgrades; anything extra can help to get "extra" features added. Then we're likely to ask again each year to keep the lights on.

- GA

[Chip42]

money sent - I sent part of what I saved switching to street tires

[Ron Earp]

Cash sent!

[lawtonglenn]

I am on two forums who did recently and both are in terrible declines while they try to walk it back (hopefully to vB4 or less) with NO cooperation from vBulletin.
One is a members only forum (NJAGC-an aquarium forum. The other is a moderately large 17 year old spinal injury forum at Rutgers http://sci.rutgers.edu/vb5/forumwith millions of posts.

Traffic is down 80% after "up-grade"
http://sci.rutgers.edu/vb5/forum/sci...iting-carecure

.

After I read Phil's post (above) I did some research, and can confirm that
the overwhelming sense in the interwebs is that vB5 is a disaster.

MANY boards are trying to, or have completed, a BACKGRADE from vB5 to vB4.

PLEASE upgrade IT.com only to vB4 and not beyond... please.

PayPal contribution completed. Greg PM'd. Greg... please post running totals, ok?

.

[Ron Earp]

I still run VB 3.8 on www.gt40.com due to some features it has that don't translate well to VB 4.X. No way in hell I'd go to VB 5.

[ajmr2]

money sent - I sent part of what I saved switching to street tires

Ditto. I have saved some money on brake pads, rotors and hubs!

[Matt Rowe]

Donation sent and thanks to Bill, Greg and all involved.

[Eagle7]

Donation sent.

[gran racing]

Sent.

[jwasilko]

Cash sent!

[Greg Amy]

Thanks all for the donations. I got an email from Bill last that we easily met the halfway mark and he's already purchased and downloaded the software. He's aware of the v5 issue so we'll be moving to v4. He's out of town this week but will be reading and planning the upgrade while away and will have a better idea of timetable next week.

If you've got any requests for add-ons, post that here.

And if you've got thoughts of donating, now's the time, no matter how big or small (every little bit helps). It will all be used or this forum only. Let's get the cash flowing and we can look into upgrading and moving forward.

Greg

[tdw6974]

Funds Sent!

[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.