Hosting Provider Upgrades

[MetalHead]

Hello - Just wanted everyone to know the hosting provider is doing upgrades that will black us out for 4 hours in the US Eastern time zone in the early a.m. hours of April 2nd.

Since we are doing this I also want to ask that after that move to a new server is complete, how do you all feel about upgrading the forum to a newer version of VBulletin?

[Gerald D]

We use such a small part of vB's capability - I don't see the need to add bells and whistles. What we have now works pretty flawlessly.

[JasonC]

Dedicated Gallery!

jas

[Gerald D]

Galleries are available in current version of vB

[JamesJ]

While I agree with Jason about having a gallery I think the forum works well as it is. I also wonder if implementing a gallery wouldn't end up causing much more cost for Mike, and potentially us the users, due to increased storage needs.

Being a IT person I also see the value in having the current version of any software I am using.

I'm interested to see what other members think...

[sailfl]

Mike,

I agree with others. I don't think we need an upgrade. I don't want to see Avitars and other things that some users like to see. I like the simple knowledge based threads.

I am also pleased that you have not added advertising. Some sites have so much that it is difficult to find the threads.

For those that can, donate some thing.

[jessyjames]

I like the way it is too. The only thing I wish I could do was to be able to upload my photos from my Iphone. I find that if I have to do something the round about way I end up not doing it at all. Tapatalk would be nice plugin:)

[JasonC]

Could all posted photos be links to a gallery,wouldnt use anymore space.?. can or does it work that way?

Jas

[domino11]

Current Version is fine with me too.

Nils, get yourself an adblocker for firefox like trueblock. You will be happier. Cleans up CNCzone nicely. :)

[Kobus_Joubert]

This one works fine for me too.. Why fix if it is not broken. At my work we ALWAYS have software issues on the ~NEW release.

[Gerald D]

Mike, I took this forum through one revision of vB and then realised it was a waste of money and time - I just ended up with more things to switch off.

[baseball43v3r]

I think we might get to the point where there is too much information. The more build threads there are, the more pages one has to search through to find that one nugget. I know there are plenty of times that I was looking for a specific piece of information I'd read, but had to read through many many many pages of posts to find what I was actually looking for. And some build threads contain more valuable information then others. For me, it is getting harder and harder to go through posts these days to find information I need. Maybe more posts need to be stickied? but thats hard to do because a lot of the valuable information is in the build thread.

The other thing that would be nice is to have all the pictures of a build in one post or successive posts. Too often, guys posts pictures at one time, then not again for months, and in between then many people have posted on their and you have to go through several pages to find the next picture.

I get that those are directly related to upgrading vB, but I just saw them as things to comment on since the topic of the forum was brought up. I'm not critizing the forum in any way, just trying to offer constructive thoughts.

[IN-WondeR]

One thing that would be nice, is the ability to find posts by name. But all the thread name changing makes it harder than it needs to be. That thing I have always been a bit baffled of. Why change the name of the threads???

[timberlinemd]

I think we might get to the point where there is too much information. The more build threads there are, the more pages one has to search through to find that one nugget. I know there are plenty of times that I was looking for a specific piece of information I'd read, but had to read through many many many pages of posts to find what I was actually looking for. And some build threads contain more valuable information then others. For me, it is getting harder and harder to go through posts these days to find information I need. Maybe more posts need to be stickied? but thats hard to do because a lot of the valuable information is in the build thread.

Posts that are important to your build should be copied to your 'favorites' folder. I copy them to my 'Mechmate' folder and that folder has sub folders for the different processes needed for the build. I also have subfolders for processes needed to run the machine after the build.

[baseball43v3r]

Posts that are important to your build should be copied to your 'favorites' folder. I copy them to my 'Mechmate' folder and that folder has sub folders for the different processes needed for the build. I also have subfolders for processes needed to run the machine after the build.

Thats great when you start when there was less posts and information, but currently, there are over 100 build threads, almost 100 completed threads, and then countless other threads in different folders. My point being someone that joined today, now has to do a lot of reading just to find the nugget. What I'd like to see, and I don't know if it is possible, is a rating system for individual posts, where users can vote on their contribution so the most relevant posts can be seen first.

Copied, as in just copy paste? or is there some sort of "save post" functionality i'm missing? if its the former, then thats what I do, but if its the latter i'm going to be frustrated haha.

[baseball43v3r]

I looked up some stuff in vB and apparantly there is an option for people to rate posts, maybe some combination of settings in there and then showing top posts might make things more easy to search through? IDK just an idea.

[bozona1]

I agree with those who say that there is nothing wrong with thew way it is now. Actually much better than most other forums.

[KenC]

This is a great forum & I like it as it is.
The forum is based on solid technical knowledge & we all know in real life, learning & cost saving don't come without some amount of work.
I reckon what many want is a step-by-step cookbook tutorial for building MechMate. Once you produce such document, there will be steeper demands & the vicious cycle will continue....
Let them dig all the post & if they think its too much hassle, IMHO, they are not serious about building a MM.

[baseball43v3r]

I'm not advocating for the overthrow of the forum, or even drastically changing it. I think the forum provides a huge insight of information into the build process of the mechmate, but with more and more threads and posts being added daily, it gets harder and harder to sift through what is useful and what isn't.

Since the topic at hand is upgrading, I'd assume that also includes enhancing the forums through upgrades. the one thing I'd like to see implemented, which wouldn't change the makeup of the forum, and is trivial to implement as it already exists in vB, is the post and thread rating system.

Here is a little on why I think it would help. As of this posting, (11:18 pm PST, on 4/4/12) there are 51512 posts in 2472 threads on this forum. That is a lot of information, and I know a lot of the guys that have been here a long time clamor for newbies to read every thread, but for a new person that is quite a lot of reading. and then you may say "well if they don't want to read that much than they don't have the drive to build a Mechmate", to which i ask you, when you started, did you have that many threads to read? did guys who build the first 30 or even 50 mechmates have to read 50000+ posts? I think everyone should be required to read, but how about only relevant posts? or posts that are important?

I wasn't like many of you, who filed away or printed documents that you thought was important, I simply just tried to remember the items and if I was lucky, that information from a particular post might be retrieved from a sticky, but if it was from a build thread (which do contain a lot of information) than forget it. To add a little more than that, the top 5 buidl threads by replies have a mininum 500 posts in each. How daunting for a new person must that be to search through? How does a new person know which build threads are better than others?

I'm not opposed to new people doing the work, but the amount of information this forum collects will continue to grow, and there comes a time when better organization of that information will come to be needed. So why not start now?

Once again I'm not advocating for a complete overhaul of the forum, or that new people shouldn't have to do the leg work in reading, but we can at least help them out and point them to what exactly to read and understand, as the current amount of posts makes that task quite daunting. So this is my push for the ratings of posts and threads to be implemented, so that the cream of the crop, rise to the top, and knowledge can be passed in a more effective manner.

[Gerald D]

My original idea was that this forum has two main areas: Build threads and "Technical" threads. When I found something relevant in a Build thread, I copied that to the relevant Technical thread. The idea was that a newbie would not be required to read Build threads at all. Banter was cleaned out of Technical threads and redundant Technical threads were archived. Really important Technical threads were made sticky at the top. This took a lot of time and concentration - it shouldn't have been a one-person task. . . and I don't know if it really achieved anything for everybody.

[KenC]

John,
Consider yourself lucky, you have twice as many examples & information than I had when I started my built ;) When I stated mine, the belt reduction design is still in development/refining stage.
You don't have to read very thread & memorise them, just see read & hop along the thread. I didn't print any thread nor did I memorise anything...
It took me 3 week of 18 hour reading to go through the whole forum once over.... started off with the sticky & then the completed builds. Had a great time doing that. because I learnt in leap & bounce!

[darren salyer]

378 hours to read the forum in it's entirety. Impressive?Yes.
Excessive? Yes again. 2 years from now it will probably take 800+hours.
Metalhead is the one who needs to have the forum financially viable or it won't be here for any of us. my opinion is the more daunting the task appears the less he'll sell. Therefore the decision should be his.

[Quadro]

Does the upgrade have the ability to have automatic translation of language?
This would help non english speaking people which seems to be a barrier for them to build.