Please consider upgrading to a more modern forum

sp3ctre said:
First off, changing the forum would cause a massive drop in traffic, there's no two ways about it. Google simply hates mass change of content and url's. It may recover, it may not, but organic traffic to forums across the internet is at an all time low, so it's simply not worth the risk

You'll definitely notice a drop off to begin with but Google is pretty smart and you'll get re-indexed soon enough. Google (and other SEs) actually love Discourse because Discourse shows a very basic SE friendly site to bots (you can see this yourself by turning off JS on a Discourse forum). Out of all the forum platforms I have worked with, Discourse has been the best for SEO.

sp3ctre said:
(and Discorse is awful, btw!).

I'm not sure which Discourse forums you have seen but Discourse was created by the same people who made Stack Overflow, and they have over 100 (paid) staff/developers and have received millions in funding... as a developer who has worked with all the major forum platforms I can confidently say that they really are currently the best forum platform around in terms of features, user-approval(once-they-get-used-to-it), etc.

There is probably one major drawback though, Discourse is aimed more at larger corps/sites and so other than basic customisation, you'll probably need a dev for customising it beyond a superficial level. Another downside is if you run ads (I'm not sure if you do, as my browser usually blocks them) then you will be limited by their ad plugin and placement, so this could be frustrating.

If these are a consideration for you then you may want to look at Xenforo instead (currently the 'best' of the forums that is closest to this one, and easy enough for non-developers to customise).

Whatever you decide, good luck - I much prefer supporting independent platforms like this than big US-tech companies like facebook, twitter, instagram, reddit etc, hence thought it was worth making this suggestion.
 
ok, bit of low hanging fruit for you guys this morning... we now have the ability to post youtube videos simply by pasting the url:

https://youtu.be/9k25ltd-Ybw?si=32NXRvAQm1th00nW

We also have reactions available... need to see how that one goes as it was a b**ch to install and my concern is reliability etc.
 
sp3ctre said:
ok, bit of low hanging fruit for you guys this morning... we now have the ability to post youtube videos simply by pasting the url:
Wow. How did we ever manage before? :D
Now I can watch youtube adverts, sorry videos, directly.

There is no 'reaction score', though. How can I tell how amazingly popular I am? :lol:
 
Pondrew said:
sp3ctre said:
ok, bit of low hanging fruit for you guys this morning... we now have the ability to post youtube videos simply by pasting the url:
Wow. How did we ever manage before? :D
Now I can watch youtube adverts, sorry videos, directly.

There is no 'reaction score', though. How can I tell how amazingly popular I am? :lol:

Deliberately left that out.... don't want you to get a big head ;)
 
sp3ctre said:
Deliberately left that out.... don't want you to get a big head ;)
Presumably you haven't noticed the amount of abuse I get?
I was thinking of reporting it to admin, but don't know who they are TBH! :lol: :lol:
 
sp3ctre said:
ok, bit of low hanging fruit for you guys this morning... we now have the ability to post youtube videos simply by pasting the url:

https://youtu.be/9k25ltd-Ybw?si=32NXRvAQm1th00nW

We also have reactions available... need to see how that one goes as it was a b**ch to install and my concern is reliability etc.

Mega! Thank you!
 
Pondrew said:
sp3ctre said:
Deliberately left that out.... don't want you to get a big head ;)
Presumably you haven't noticed the amount of abuse I get?
I was thinking of reporting it to admin, but don't know who they are TBH! :lol: :lol:

I mean you ask for it... tone of voice... lost on certain gens :tumbleweed: thankfully, the majority of members seem to get it.
 
I’ll have a look at some other changes we can make in the next few days. Really not up for doing a complete migration to a new platform but if there are some quality of life improvements I can make then I am more than happy to do that :thumbsup:
 
I have been a member for eight years and it is my go to place for information. I also use zedshedcymru run by Colin Bryan because they are local. In any case, they are all on here too. I am very satisfied with it. I like being able to read a thread in chronological order. It’s impossible with FB. Similarly, threads do not so readily fall into chaos/tangents as they do on FB. More so, they rarely fall into arguments which is par for the course with FB. The only time we do get stroppy is when a newcomer wants to sell something and then they get arsy when we say the ad needs more info, etc. I quite like those though sometimes as it’s great light entertainment. Thank you Pondrew (particularly). I am am also happy with the structure and the fact that it DOESN’T have graphics and pop ups. Nowadays I regularly close an app down if it becomes too awkward to (you know) READ. Most Gen Zs seem to have lost the knack……
 
Lastly I use this site mainly on iPhone as I am often away from my computer and I don’t find a big problem with writing on it etc. the only probs I have had are: often can’t see the date/timeline of posts (it’s blank) and 2) it often crashes when I try to submit a post…. Sometime losing it. That’s annoying. But that could be my phone rather than the site. Admin might know.
 
Update... I have changed the avatar system so you can upload proper size images and it will resize it for you.
 
IRD said:
Over the years I have had some challenging experiences with IT updates, supposedly made to benefit the user. On occasion this has proved to be irritating and sometimes stressful. I am thinking of changes made, for example, by my bank and also to my Apple equipment. I am sure that there are other forum member who would be able to give such examples too. Bad experiences with anything do tend to colour your judgement.
But I do hold up my hands and admit that increasing age has made me resistant to change. My requirements for this Forum are more than met by the current arrangements. So unless it could be clearly demonstrated in advance, that any changes would be beneficial to all users without adding extra layers and complications I would be reluctant to support them.
However, I do agree that it is important to encourage questions and imho eBrooker has been very reasonable in how he has approached this issue.

You remind me of my time in a bank... I was woking in dividends and the bank was setting up a new system to automate it, so dividends would be automatically allocated to the correct accounts with no need for manual processing. We spent ages testing it, but it didn't work properly, but management still insisted it was implemented.
 
Pondrew said:
Fred Smith said:
But it is not just stuck in my ways, it is more that I know what I like and works for me.
TBH those are the same thing, Frederico. :D

To be fair, as I said before you are right. But I have been pondering it, and I think I might be able to explain what I believe to be a genuine difference.

Imagine that you accuse me and my dad of being two people who still listen to the music they listened to when they were young. You think we are both stuck in their ways.

But, my dad was born in 1942, and as far as I can make out he has never had any interest in any music more modern than Trad Jazz and 50s rock n roll. He was literally 18 in 1960, yet he never even got into early Beatles records!

In contrast I spent my 20s heavily searching out new music, and there is plenty of music (admittedly usually back fromt he 70s and 80s) that I only discovered in my 30s or 40s. I have made a fair bit of effort to listen to modern music but hate autotune and how bland so much modern rock and pop is.

We are both stuck in our ways, but, IMHO, my dad is 100% guilty as charged and deserves all the negative connotations, me much less so.

I think it is better to be stuck in your ways in the way I am than simply buy the new tech simply because it's the new tech, even though you have no idea whether you will prefer it or not.
 
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