As I was hijacking another thread, I've opened up this discussion here.... it was in response to "thelews" comments in this thread:
index.php?topic=8034Originally posted by thelews
Speaking for myself, while I'd like to accommodate you and use the club server, it's just too much of a pain...and I'm fairly savvy on computers. You may want to touch base with Jim Villers who is a member here and runs the 190 SL site...excellent, simple, quick uploads and archiving of photos. I couldn't even log on to the wiki technical manual.
the reason this forum started is because we had no control over our destiny on a Yahoo site... old material got deleted outside of our control. We established this community back in 2003, and the people who established it chose software they knew and that was pretty spiffy at the time.
I inherited the site and have been making changes ever since... but incrementally, because most of the value on this board is not in the software, but in the content... but then the content needs to be on the board, which is why I made point I made.
The choices that were made in 2003 limit us to a Microsoft windows Hosting platform. That means it costs more, and delivers much less performance, than a modern open source Linux based platform. We run into problems in a number of areas...
- searching, which times out frequently, see this thread... Member feedback for more info.
- Limits on memory due to the hosting package, which is why we limit picture sizes
- Different behaviour between the full member portion and the forum part of the site, and different login codes.
I've been in touch with Jim Villers on his site and its software, but actually, I am a software professional myself and can think of 2 or 3 proven, more user friendly packages that would be great. However, moving all of the content on the current board would be key, and in order to move, I'd need to remove the dependency of the site on Microsoft Windows (which constitutes all of the member pages). However, this is also a hobby for me -- not an occupation, and I don't get paid for it. So I have to balance the amount of effort I put in with the
real benefit it brings the community.
The last few posts on the
Member feedback thread document what I'm planning to do to the site. But honestly over 2000 members have coped just fine with the system for the last 4 years, and the actual real benefit to the group is very small. Now if I were paid my usual rate for this work, I could do it more quickly
(note: I'm actually quite expensive, because clients value my expertise highly and also because I charge in €) So all, please bear with us whilst I slowly get ready to move to a new site. In the mean time it would be great to post pictures that we absolutely need to keep locally...
Peter
