ay_jay

What about adding a button ‘view posts with no replies’? Might create more visibility for posts in the other topic sections and unanswered newbie questions for those willing to help?

joo5t

I am always posting the same questions in the General Discussion and the Escort RS Turbo sections, because I think that perhaps a person who owns another car wont read the Escort RS Turbo section and he knows the anwser...

Not that I post much...about 5 times a week..

MadMac

I have a hard time trying to do that on Fordsport I aint even gonna imagine how tough its gonna be trying to do it on here

Stu @ M Developments

iTrader: (12)

Firstly, thank you ALL for your suggestions and discussion, its greatly appreciated. To address a few points so far:

LOL. Talk about subtle.. Rich M answers more than me and usually gives a better quality reply too


Excellent quote:
I fear many folks havent even noticed this excellent feature exists, so here a screenshot of some usefull ones:


You will see there are:
1) View posts since last visit
2) View your posts
3) View unanswered posts
4) recent topics

All pretty self explanatory folks, so go and enjoy em.


Of course its ok, i look forward to meating you.


We already have one on every page, its here look:



There is a post at top of general discussion that deals with rules etc, titled "**TO BE READ BY ALL USERS BEFORE POSTING ON PASSIONFORD**"

And for general forum FAQ we then have this on every page:


Then FAQ about car related matters etc... well, we started it with good intensions, and thus it exists, we just need suggestions of what to put in it. When i asked for help and suggestions i got very little feedback.




Thats very unfair and is perhaps specific to your complex airflow issues lately, thereare many members who give fantastic in depth tech help like, top of my head "RichM,Itsmeagain,SECS,mike Rainbird,GarethT,KarlNorris and many more
(Sorry if you werent listed guys... your help is all appreciated)


I assure you that we have never deleted anyones username. However, if it was a few months ago we had a database problem that lost us over 5000 members. Maybe you were one of them, sorry I cant comment on your lack of reply as it was sent to Petrucci, please accept my appologies.

You will find that answered up above in the picture Weve always had it


Finally.........
Weve had 6 new members join us since i typed that 3.5hrs ago, thus maybe highlighting the urgency of these matters!!

Petrucci

As Stu said, I may have lacked an answer to the guy asking why his account was deleted, but receiving 200+ mails per day only from PassionFord (and that does not include the other 300+ mails i receive everyday for my real job ) i thought that some could read stickies to find out that when we had a crash we lost some members account... not 5000, Stu, as i managed to recover more than 3000 of them manually, but still some of them were not possible to recover.
We NEVER deleted any user's account.

cossiecrew

cossiemen, you tight git

Willem

Don't know if someone said it before, but topics wich aren't read for more than a certain time are no use, so automatically let those topics to be removed....

Smit

iTrader: (5)

I love this place.

Stu @ M Developments

iTrader: (12)

Why do you think that though? How can they be no use pal?
Say you joined tomorrow and wanted to know about something we discussed in depth a year ago?

Old posts are just that, "old" they dont do us any harm by staying, they just create a form of "Pf History"

Thats just my opinion though, many others may well agree with you

ses

Well, good to know that it wasn't anything personal when my account dropped! But as I suggested in the mail, I didn't suspect I'd been deleted by a human, rather some malfunction or perhaps due to inactivity.

Don't worry, I never claimed to anyone my account had been deleted on purpose, or ever talked badly about passionford, I was a tad chuffed tho about not getting a reply from Petrucci.. but with hundreds of e-mails per day, I don't blame ya mate! :-D

I agree on the old posts, and well, my offer of help is still valid :-P .. for example the front page is all stretched when viewed on my computer, it seems the left most section of it stretches over all the screen... I could take a screenshot, but I suspect it could be an issue of adding a colspan html attribute somewhere... or it might be some CSS problem which only shows up on firefox (my browser) ?

Petrucci

or simply a firefox prob mate, which are not quite rare to be honest

Stu @ M Developments

iTrader: (12)

Id personally opt for that.
This is how it looks on explorer:

joo5t

perhaps a posting delay of 2 minuts between posts will prefent some double postings ?!

-----

uploading photos to the passionford database (instead of using links to other websites for pictures) would be great, but I guess you dont want the bandwidth

-----

a maximum size for pictures, so it wont destroy the site layout

Stu @ M Developments

iTrader: (12)

Pets working on integrating a cool system that will thumbnail the image if you post one too big


joo5t,
perhaps a posting delay of 2 minuts between posts will prefent some double postings ?!
[/quote]

When you press submit, the button "Ghosts" so im clueless how folks post twice


Yes, its a bandwidth issue we dont need at the moment, but is a future possibility.

ADUSR33

Can we have the site called PASSIONFORD-SKYLINE?

mark

stu a clear out of the muppet room each month would help not like threads a year old are any good in there

The Sludge

AGREE WITH SEVENEIGHTS HERE-

Gonna throw a spanner in works. As a newbie ages and ages ago you could post a serious question-no replies or limited replies.

The "clicky" people on here can post crap and get loadsa replies from the other "clickies" If there werent so much crap posted ti would be easier to post in general discussion. It's like there is a divide between 1 post and 10,000 posts which is totally wrong. Get rid of all members post counts that way ot will be fairto every one. Does it really really matter if you have posted 1 or 10000 replies?

Soory but thats my opinion. I LOVE PF, but..............rant over

Stu @ M Developments

iTrader: (12)

This is my point tough Mark, help what exactly?

What would clearing the muppet room so its only got one months worth of posts in it do for anyone or thing?

Eagle

iTrader: (2)

one thing i have noticed is the amount of for sale posts that have stuff sold.
could these not be deleted??
also the posts where people actually discuss a topic i.e anti lag be transfered to technical q&a etc .. when the topic has had a resulting outcome .
i think some of the posts could be pruned of un-relivent answers, while i know this is very time consuming it could help in the search of answers.
and yes i would quite happily volunteer to do the above

ses

Petrucci: could be a Firefox bug.. plenty of those just like there are plenty of IE bugs, it's just that if you develope using IE, you'll avoid those ... Also, I did some testing and the problem seems sporadic, so fixing it could be insanely difficult, but still not totally unimportant, more and more people are switching over to firefox due to security problems with IE, and for now less people seem bothered with trying to abuse firefox security ...

But another idea I have, which could help with the other issue I mentioned .. on my puny 600mhz machine, the page is quite slow to load.. making it adhere to some standard, such as XHTML/1.0 Transitional, would make it load quite a bit faster.. that's one of the reasons why at work (my dayjob is programming icelands busiest website, mbl.is) we use XHTML.

Also, I'm curious about DB issues, I assume this is running on MySQL, possibly PostgreSQL... the load must be incredible... extremely busy forums such as this one are lovely hard work for Databases it seems :-P ... I'd love to hear war stories on DB tuning, if you've had to do that

The Sludge

no reply

mark

stu there in the muppet room so was silly to start with havent been posted on for over a year so no point in them taking up space

Petrucci

of course i did a lot of tuning on our DB, and i do it almost everyday... the DB is 1 Gb, so as you can imagine that's a quite big DB
In fact, i tune absolutely everything, from server hardware to software, DB, code etc etc. This is necessary when sites become that big

Load on the DB is absolutely incredible yes, that's why we need huge sepc hardware and lines speed... and some ppl here often did not understand this

mark

and how about deleting users that havent logd on for 8 months or more

Nikki

Just an idea but to get things outta the general room etc!
I see there does seem to be alot of the time,,,the "Has anyone got Mr Potato Heads phone number,,,,,,?"

(sorry above name for example,,lol)

For about a A - Z Contact forum!!

Ok Stu / Pet don't panic I'm not thinking you two have to sit there and build this forum up!
But Pet is there anyway you can create a form,,,,just like you do with peoples profiles, then if someone wish's to add peoples numbers, useful ones of course lol!

Then passionford can have like its on A-Z of a most helpful phone book!!
Anyone could add a number to this basic form and once complete,,,,when you hit submit, its automaticall adds it to the already growing list

Its just an idea but you would lost alot of the Can I have number,,,,has anyone got number!

Plus think how handy this would be also well personally I think it would anyway!
Ive had peeps text me before,,are you on the pc,,,if so can you look on pf "somewhere" for .......?........ number please!

What do you do, you either search for god knows how long, or,,,,,post a new topic!

Just a thought but think it would also be a very hand tool for users of this board and also at the same time,,,,,YEY less posts in here,,,which is what your looking for

x x x

Stu @ M Developments

iTrader: (12)

The problem / or benefit, depending on how you look at it, is that folks love a post count as it gives tem something to aspire to and makes them feel as though they "belong". Im not in favour of losing them, even though i hate my post count.


Yes, all we need is a PM from the user when hes sold his items. The reason ive set the permissions so you cant "Self delete" is in case we have any issues with sellers description etc... ALL DELETED PF TOPICS ARE SAVED IN ANOTHER FORUM

Again, agreed, just needs more moderator power and vigilance policies.


I disagree with this as we will have hundeds of discussions about "Where did my post go? Why didnt Mr X have his deleted, blah" Although i DO see your point.

Stu @ M Developments

iTrader: (12)

Give me time, i had to drive home


You could have a vaild point Mark. I may set it to auto prune.


Alternatively, you could shove your number in your profile if you wish folk to have it. Simple.

M K

iTrader: (9)

most good ideas already been said by others,,,

whichever you choose to run with im sure you will carry on making this forum bigger & better with help from pet & the other mods etc,,

Nikki

no stu,,,lol!!
what I ment was people are always asking for tuners / local garage's / basically company numbers,,,,,why not have a page / section with useful contacts on, so that people can just go to this forum, rather then creating another post in general!!



Anyway,,,my numbers there for a reason & look,,,it worked, cos now its HUGE



x x x

Eagle

iTrader: (2)

the point is if your in the middle of a realy interesting technical thread and someone has made a totaly of point comment etc then might be worth sticking to the point of the thread , im not talking about current posts but mainly ones that are a bit older and mainly technical in content

ses

Petrucci: yeah 1GB .. that's fairly large! :-D ... Well, hope you consider the XHTML thing... something to add to the end of that 20 page long TODO list, I imagine :-P But you didn't answer one thing, are you using MySQL or postgres, or neither?

hooked_on_boost

After reading this post I think I agree with Mark J when he said about making the pages larger. Could this be done? And to any detrament to the sites DB/load times?



I don't think the General Forum should be split at all.

I like the "mixed bag" feel, one min you are reading about somebodys new bling-bling garage, then its Screamer Pipes, the next the weather(complete with pictures!!).
I think this is alittle bit to do with the popularity and if we change this and split it up, we might change the fundamental dynamics that have made us so strong.


I also very much apposed to the idea of seperated Gold and Standard members.

Kindest regards,

P.

foreigneRS

i like pf just the way it is.

i browse the general forum, then the tech forum, then the sierra forum regularly and it's just fine.

of course there are posts in the 'wrong' place, we're all 'guilty' of it, but it keeps the general forum more interesting to have the odd discussion in there. and the impression of busy, is a good one as it appears lively and popular like a busy pub (as has been mentioned).

the tech help section is termed tech help q & a, which to me gives the impression that you only post a question in there and hope someone will kindly answer it for you, rather than discuss technical things. so i would suggest a renaming to technical discussion.

the individual model forums are then the place for technical questions specific to models which is what a lot of people object to (not everybody is interested in frst subjects, or cossie subjects etc)

Stu @ M Developments

iTrader: (12)

Something like this one perhaps?
https://passionford.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36075


You lot do a bloody fantastic job.. fair play to you all


I 100% understand your reasoning and fully agree too, its just where do you draw the line that i expect will cause masses of aggro for the webteam...



ses,
Im not ignoring your replies pal, but they are Petrucci's dept as your knowledge will far exceed mine in this matter as youve already proved Please remember Pet is French as well in case any language barrier shows itself in your technical discussion, as not many folks realise he is in Toulon.


It certainly can be done yes, i just feel 40 is enough, but we can try more i guess, all it will affect really is load times as you have to load and draw the screen before you can view it.


I tend to agree with this myself, and thats why it is how it is at the moment, but theres no getting away from the fact that shifting a whole topic page in 17mins is no good for "Ease of use" or decent discussion. "Out of sight, out of mind"


Me too, so dont worry too much

Stu @ M Developments

iTrader: (12)

This is a good point and i will deal with that soon

Rs Baz

does this really happen aj ??????????

there is alot on here that fight with each other and put posts up to
run others down on parts etc so everyone else can read it, i find that
is unfair for some that have done nothing wrong,

what you said is true but only some members on here do that

rs shawn

Don't think that would work: how would gold members know which forum to post it in, and if it's GENERAL, why should non payers be barred? If you start this then you might as well say that everyone has to pay to view the site...and that ain't gonna happen.

Some of the posting about tech stuff may also be warranted. I would say that the majority of people who look in the model-specific forums own one of those cars. I for example have never looked in some of the forums (fiesta, puma, even Cosworth to name 3) because I don't have one & don't know much about them, so am not going to look in there. If it's in the GD forum, then I'll hover over it & if it looks interesting then i'll click it. It doesn't matter what car/subject it is then. On the flip side to this, any topics in GD will also get a better response, as just b'cos you don't go into the set-model forum, doesn't mean you don't know about a particular subject & are more likely to get a good reply, it may be something non-model specific, and one of the traders who knows a lot about most cars will reply to you..but may not have done quickly if it was in the Escort RST section for example.

For me personally a lot of it comes down to time to view the forums. I don't have access at work so am normally restricted to the weekend & the odd hour in an evening 1 or 2 nights, so I look at the ones that are of most interest and don't look at every post since I last got on.

The separate forum idea may work, but then if something like another 'had a rubbish day' came up in the 'social' forum, then people may not bother going in that forum. Again, if it's in a big GD, it will get a look by most people, and again it may come down to the time people have to browse individual forums.

rs shawn

Just to add to this. Just because someone is near to you doesn't mean they well know about a problem. Someone from miles away probably will know. Getting local help is a good idea, but you could post that in the topic: "Can someone local to 'x' help with this".
Baz, you are right..there seems to be a bit if bitchiness/ snobbiness/ clicky-ness/ (aRSe-lickin even) going around..similar to how RSOC went...but not as bad at the minute.
Some poeple get loads of replies, whereas some get nothing back.

Zetec Andy

Thats a good idea and im up for that, the trouble is when you move something from general discussion to the muppets room (for aguments sake) and then go back into general discussion there will be another post titled "where did my post go" so you cant always win.

CasperR

A FAQ bit that explain's what "pmsl" means and stuff like that.. for foreign users.
And yes I know what it means but it did take me a while