Hi there,

I've noticed recently a drop off in postings (compared to say November). Is there something that:

* we're missing that you'd like to see?
* we're not doing that would help you use this site?
* we're doing okay on, but we could do better?

We'll keep this thread open for a while - I'd love to hear your feedback.

Andrew

Just as a quick note, until we've got a chance to update the software and get off this horrible hoster, I've relaxed the settings for registration. Most folks will now be able to register as getting an e-mail from us is no longer necessary.

thanks,
Andrew

On a related note, I've deleted all the newly registered members who registered but have never managed to log on. This got rid of 2800 dead logins.

This will allow *anyone* who tried and failed to register with us in the past to try again now without my or other administrator assistance.

thanks,
Andrew

Content is King
Your content is diminishing as alternate sites are established..
The AVD community is decentralising..
Can you establish links to and from competing sites?
I personally would like one "content rich" portal where all sources are centralised..

I've always thought AVD as more of a VW social forum than a VW Tech forum*. The following stat proves that

The most popular forum is General Chit Chat with 207239 posts and 15684 topics

My guess is as we are now getting the smaller breakaway forums that deal more specifically with a particular VW genre.
If you compare AVD with some of the other sites, AVD ticks over very quickly. A page can disappear in a day sometimes less. Other sites can hold the same page for a week or more.

*Just let me add AVD has some great tech threads and people willing to help. This is an observation not a criticism

[ Edited on 7-6-2007 by Stanley ]

*) It needs to be easier to join/register: I have had people email me asking why they aren't able to join: I have no idea what to say to them, except keep trying... I also have had big problems logging on from overseas:

*) Images/pics need to be able to be seen by everyone - get rid of the 'you must be a registered user to view these images' when people arrive here from Google or other search engines/sites etc. It's a dis-incentive to stay and take a look at all the wodnrful stuff on here...

*) It needs a more appealing front page. The shot of the Kombi windscreen wiper although artsy, is almost unrecognisable. How about a nice big pic of a VW Beetle?! Think of it as the 'cover of a magazine... it's what makes people 'pick it up'

*) Place more emphasis on 'Today's Conversation' or 'Hot Topics' with a nice big 'button' we could 'push' to see today's posts that stand out from all the other controls. On that note, we don't really need the colour-coded rectangular icons about whether a thread is hot, or closed, or whatever

*) get rid of useless fluff such as polls, pets corner, etc.

*) Not sure how this can be done, but discourage breakaway forums. People should be encouraged to keep it all here where anyone can look, learn and enjoy the information

*) MAKE U2U's EASIER TO USE. many, many users have lost their messages when the forget to place words in the 'subject' line; every day, almost, U2Us seem to go missing. This software doesn't 'remember' what has been typed; VERY F---N FRUSTRATING, even after several years of use. Need to incorporate some sort of reminder for this and/or put the 'Subject' line straight above the main text box so it is more obvious


Some of these suggestions are not exclusive to AVD, they are relevant to most/all the popular automotive forums

But yeah, compared to others VW forums, we seem to have a very popular little forum that is only bettered by (the more socially-driven) London-based VolksZone for 'looks' and ease of use

HTH

[ Edited on 7-6-2007 by VWCOOL ]

[ Edited on 7-6-2007 by VWCOOL ]

Hookers and Beer!

VWcool has nailed it.

Front page sux,

u2u I never use now as I have typed long letters and they have gone into nowhere.

Tech encouraged to form wiki type databases of posts. IE some of the bodywork posts make a really good 'how to' or the many snippets of wisdom hidden from the search function. Would take effort from someone to maintain and moderation is a chore enough for the pay! So prob too hard.

The FI posts are a good example with a whole heap of lurkers learning and sharing info.

Firm moderation stick to those who beat up on others esp newbies

Some random thoughts.

Thanks for asking

Buying and selling should be a form to be completed to post with all the req fields.

good suggestions KKK, especially "For sale" form

I've created some additional forums. These haven't worked in the past, but now that we have more members, maybe it will work better. Check it out - Bugs, Busses, Buggies and others!

I've also relaxed it so that guests can now see the images. We turned that on way back when we had a 32 GB per month image allowance limit. With the new software, which automatically resizes the images, we've never really hit that again. I'll be keeping an eye on this to ensure we are not used for free hosting of unsuitable pictures, but for now, guests can see all our images.

thanks,
Andrew

[ Edited on 8-6-2007 by vanderaj ]

This is the perfect place for people that Want To Buy, there seems more of these requets in "Topic Activity" than references to Subaru conversions.
So as a WTB/Subaru conversion forum you are doing great.
As for other topics, with the amount of forums opening up that are more boutique in the type of VW they are appealing to, I think this place has lost its appeal.
It is hard to get yourself known hhere and it is a bit cliquey. People constantly referring to other users by their given names, not their usernames, so those on the outer don't kow who is being reffered to.
The buy and sell section is a total pain. Nothing but bumps and stupid comments or "nice, but out of my price range" crap.

This place is the one that got the forum ball bouncing in Australia, but I think time is passing it by.

Hi

I visit a lot of other VW forums. Almost all of them allow me to look at new posts that have been made since I last visited, I know I can do this by going to topic activity and then increasing the period postings to a larger number of days but its messy and I will often have many other windows as I'm usually in a hurry and only have limited time to browse.

Also on other sites they will have a tick next to a post that I have answered in, this encourages people to answer back a question they brought up or others have commented on in a timely manner.

Another thing that this site doesnt have, if I visit a post and then go back in my browser I end up at the top of the page again, not in line with my original post.

Keep up the good work, Steve

What can we do to make Aussieveedubbers better?

Get the email topic reply notifications working, mine hasn't worked since shortly after I first joined this forum in late 06 in spite of my frequent whinges about it--for the record it's--- NOT --my computer I get topic replys from every other forum Im a member of, as well as every piece of spam in the universe, so over to you.
regards,
Al.

[ Edited on 9-6-2007 by BASHOdi ]

Allow RSS feeds from a thread so I can just use Bloglines to track the stuff I'm interested in. Needs RSS! RSS! and a section for T3s.

@Twokombies. It is well known that I have zero love for the Buying and Selling section. I feel it is abused by folks trying to avoid eBay fees. We're not eBay, we get no transaction fees, and it has caused at least 80% of our legal woes, and at least 90% of all of the reported posts and resultant shit fights between members. But Jim likes it, and most of the members love it, so it's here to stay. That said, someone suggested that there is a form for that area to prevent bad postings. Although I agree there needs to be fewer problematic posts, I don't think that is going to be possible - it would be hard to maintain custom code for just this one forum.

@1303Steve: UltimaBB indicates visually which threads are new since your last visit. It has done this since XMB 1.0 days (2001). phpBB and vBulletin have a specific search for it, and maybe that is something that can be added to UltimaBB's search feature. Topic activity is a bit easier to use than "new posts since last visit" IMHO. I hate how if I don't create tabs of threads I'm interested in within five minutes of using "New posts" feature, it forgets my original "new" posts and I can never get them back.

@BASHOdi : E-mail doesn't work as some ISPs choose to prevent e-mail from "blacklisted" net blocks. We're blacklisted due to some self proclaimed vigilantes who refuse to remove our IP address from their shitlist - guilty forever, none of this innocent until proven guilty crap. I'm working on moving us to a new (hopefully non-blacklisted) host at some considerable cost to us. This is dead money and is a loss caused directly by the ISPs and vigilantes. Soon enough, e-mail will no longer work on the Internet due to stupidities like this.

@crewcabconnection: RSS is a good idea. I'll look into that for UltimaBB 1.0. We had a type 3 forum as at the time of your writing your request.

a facelift graphiclly speaking and more artisy stuff and music maybe

Andrew...a type3 forum atl ast fantastic work...although I'm a bit confused as to how the whole thing gels together ie country buggies are broken up even further. Will this happen to type 1, 2 and 3 eventually?

The forums are back on again - I'll get the main site, e-mail, and the gallery back later today.

Enjoy the new speed! It's a:

* 2 Processor, 64 bit machine running at 3 GHz
* 16 GB of RAM (we have upto 2 GB of that)
* Plenty of disk space
* Running latest everything

I have root access to this box (yay!), so I've turned on a PHP optimizer - the site should feel (and be) a lot faster now.

Andrew

Monitoring the MySQL database shows that folks are coming here with few issues.

Forums are now working okay
Gallery is now working okay
Front page is now working, but we will be replacing it with a Wiki. The current CMS has failed to get any sort of use.
Mail is not yet working

thanks,
Andrew

[ Edited on 11-6-2007 by vanderaj ]

Quote:

Originally posted by vanderaj @BASHOdi : E-mail doesn't work as some ISPs choose to prevent e-mail from "blacklisted" net blocks. We're blacklisted due to some self proclaimed vigilantes who refuse to remove our IP address from their shitlist - guilty forever, none of this innocent until proven guilty crap. I'm working on moving us to a new (hopefully non-blacklisted) host at some considerable cost to us. This is dead money and is a loss caused directly by the ISPs and vigilantes. Soon enough, e-mail will no longer work on the Internet due to stupidities like this. .

Al,

I'm working on getting a good PostFix virtual hosting configuration running now. If this works, there's nothing you need to do. The problems we had in the past are now moot - this IP address is clean.

Also, you mentioned that you find some mods overbearing. It's all shits and giggles until someone threatens to sue, and we've been threatened with litigation at least 10 times. We received *actual* legal advice, and under Australia's laws, we have to be careful. So we are. When the other sites admins get sued, they'll crack down, too.

Personally, I'm not against the other sites - we all have a place in the ecosystem. Any site that tries to win readers by slagging other sites or plain simply doing the same as every other site is doing is not worth the time of day, in my humble opinion. I'd like for folks to come here because it is a nice friendly atmosphere, with stuff that they're interested in exploring the many topics.

thanks,
Andrew

I've imported another 10 or so themes from the UltimaBB theme collection. Try out the "Psyche" themes for a change of scenery.

thanks,
Andrew

I agree with previous posters about the banner - it sucks!!

The picture is fine (it's your site - so it's your choice), but I can't say I like the font as it should be easier to read and maybe capitalised (but then I can appreciate that not everyone has the same taste as me), worst of all, in my opinion a banner should fill the whole of the screen, to me it just looks like an advert - not the site banner.

My only other gripe about the site is those smiley icons that appear when you're posting.

Don't want to flame anyone, or be flamed for simply having an opinion, but as you're asking for opinions - here's mine - they suck even more than the banner. they look like a 5-y-old went mad in the smiley shop. I personally would get rid of the non standard icons and just retain the ones of the stock size.

Remember - on the web - presentation is everything.

But... after all that is said - the most important thing about this site is the users and their posts - and that it pretty well covered with the forum - the rest is simply gloss

I've reorganized the smilies - most of the really big ones are now on the "More smilies" area. I'm a bit surprised that the others are sticking around in the quick reply area.

We'll talk about getting a re-design in Moderator's Paradise. Strange but true - the site is using as an yet unreleased theme from UltimaBB. For most folks using XMB, it's been since 2004 since they got a visual update. We're actually a bit luckier than they are.

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

What about a "real people" forum for those who couldn't care less for "user names", don't suffer from internet fashion pressure, paranoia, or require a "shield of anonymity"

This might be the thing that separates AVD from the rest, make us (at least in this forum) like a virtual club, with real people as members, who post like they are talking face to face (in public, like down at the pub so that others (witnesses), are considered)

People will then tend to moderate their own posts and some genuine discourse and exchanges of information & knowledge may occur.

Regards,

Matt Ryan

Last time I put forward a perfectly reasonable suggestion, what was the response from the administrator?

"Care factor zero"

I find it ironic that the same admin is now asking for suggestions.

But for the sake of Jim's forum:

I don't know that you'll be able to do anything to get people back. We have competition now & with that you get natural attrition.

I don't think these new sub forums are the best idea you've ever had.
Breaking the place up into splinter groups has got to be detrimental to the forum.
If you got beetle people here, kombi people there, type 3 over the back etc etc, who's going to be left in general chat?
General chat will be left to the most mindless of topics, because anything to do with cars will be further down. Yet this will be the first thing any visitor to the site sees because it is top of the list.

As for current members, like a lot of others I own more than one, or even two, types of VW.

So to get my dose of AVD, I'm gunna have to go from here to here to here to here to here to, oh f#ck it, what else is on the net?
And I seriously doubt I'd be the only one.

So you want my suggestion Andrew? Lose this splinter idea before it causes damage.