Originally Posted by Gitzy
Also to be noted.............................this would be EPIC!!!! I know when Gitzy's PB stuff was lost it was a huge chunk of the internet. I see that content shared all over different forums
Also to be noted.............................this would be EPIC!!!! I know when Gitzy's PB stuff was lost it was a huge chunk of the internet. I see that content shared all over different forums
I think it's an awesome idea to increase the strength of the forum, no doubt a very difficult one as FB is where people spend their time these days, you'll keep the members who are still active but is that enough to keep this going ? It really needs more active people to thrive & can see you pushing towards this with new platform etc & i reckon it can be done ! I've had a few people ask for info on my R1 build & sent them the link to build thread but as not members they can't access it ( before PB took all my farkin pics, which i will update ! ), i know it takes away from paying members but if all threads were visible that may help bring more traffic ? my R1 build video has 17k views on youtube now & at the end of it i've got ASF page pic & website showing, if any non members see that & decide come here how much can they access ? i've been trawling heaps of info lately on patrol4x4 as a non member & then after seeing how much info there was & seing people are daily posting i joined & posted up intro etc.
I think the uploading pics straight from phone & mobile access site would be a great idea, when out for a ride or whatever now it's so easy to snap a pic & upload to FB ( and to FB ASF site which gets decent hits ) but to come home, tuen on PC, send from phone to image host, then open forum, open image host, then start thread & drop picture, well yeah it can be done but loses that "in the moment" easy picture post compared to straight off phone
Anyway that's a bit how i see it which probably means Fark all haha !! cant hurt to see how different people think about it but
I hope so, didn't realise how much I missed the community until recently
I agree mate, early days we were against advertising and pushed for paid memberships, maybe we need to welcome more paid spnonsors?
Im happy to pay to sponsor i dont do alot of seats now days but happy to support
Seems that life and Facebook killed the forum viewing for me , got sucked into Facebook world then also having a daughter that has sucked up much of my time over the last 3 and a half years but I'm back , photobucket has f$&ked shit up but can you have a private album on Facebook that people can't see but us the image link on here to post the pic ??? Not sure .
I find the ASF facey page lacks the soul destroying banter that only forum members remember and if you tried some of the shit we used to say here there would be some serious caps lock keyboard warriorism , I want the forum back but I seem to be having a hell of a time logging on on my laptop and the work computer but mobile I can log but it's a pain viewing just size wise but tonight I grabbed the missus iPad all good other than the fact I hate apple products
All I can say is good luck with the forum upgrade I'll be 100 percent supporting I'll be linking the shit out of it to Facebook to get people to view I'll have to find a way to store pics
Around the same time as ASF dipped a little several other forums died on their arse too.
Interesting a couple bounced back in some ways.
A brand new GSX1400 forum was formed and has a not huge but OK membership.
A good social group with a passion for that model.
Another alternative forum was formed after Old Skool was relaunched with strict rules
and has a quite small membership but very supportive, lots of piss taking and an unhealthy
interest in biscuits.
Old Skool Suzuki is now a very different forum but has its pretty focused members.
Forums still work if its members have enthusiasm and really want them too.
Maybe the fact forums aren't as quick and easy is in their favour in some ways.
Last edited by Tony Nitrous; 02-10-2017 at 06:51 AM.
If everyone would stop swearing at Nudie, that would be great!
If I had a dollar for every time I thought about you, I'd start thinking about you
Hey Si,
FWIW i'm definitely back now. Moved to Melbourne, got proper net, and kid started kindy 3 days a week so I actually get time to do stuff. Also after one more surgery in January I should even be able to ride again!! So will be keen to get back into it and do what I do best: buy someone elses hard work from here because i'm mechanically incompetent lol. I love this forum, so I'm super keen to help out however I can, whether it's to update the existing vB install and do some cached/CDN'd attachments, or upgrade to Discourse. I hate how many forums are dying and this one is special to me. I don't want it to die.
One of the reasons I was recommending Discourse is it runs in a Docker container, full self contained, self updates, and self manages (eg it has test/update scripts that automatically handle all updates, roll back if something failed, handle backups, etc).. and it's open source, made by Jeff Atwood (eg he made Stack Exchange, Ghost, and more). So even if I disappear again, it'll be MUCH easier for you to update/manage/etc.
But, the main point, it can host all the images in AWS, which is DIRT cheap even if this forum grew to 10x the size, and exportable if we ever wanna move the pics (no more photofucket style collapses).
If you make your own dedicated image host, you're taking on a whole new site of responsibilities. Another site, database, scripts, security updates, people abusing it, etc. I'd highly recommend not doing that, and just go vB attachments, or Discourse with attachments on AWS.
It also has social integration built in, so we can integrate to FB/etc and keep pulling people over here, while satisfying those that live inside the borg-world of FB. Oh and it's mobile-native. No apps, no plugins, not some stripped down version. People can even attach pics and shit from their phones directly just using the standard phone browser (works on all modern phones).
If you want, in a couple weeks I can grab a copy of the DB here, setup an instance of Discourse on my own server, import all the users/posts/data, and we can have a play and see if we can get it to a point where you like it. If so, it's a simple matter of moving the Docker container over to your server (or a better/newer one now they're so much cheaper, my other goal here is to optimise the setup and save you some running costs), and change the DNS to point to it and it'd be done overnight. No one should need to re-sign up or anything like that.
Stuff got a lot lot easier since we last did this adventure! (That was a lot to type drunk).
You sir are a abosute legend
yeah, yeah, what he said.
Cheers CK. From what Sen has been saying we might not even need Tappatalk. I know there are a fair few old members out there that would come back if the forum was as convenient as Facebook has become to them. Once you have had the simplicity Facebook provides, the "Can't be fucked" syndrome kicks in for anything else. Essentially, Facebook moved the goal posts, and we just need to catch up.
Ha. I never realised just how far and wide his collection got!
Facebook has 2 defined groups, those who are just bored and it fills time on the shitter, and the group looking for information and photos, who essentially are not familiar with forums (too young to remember them) or just want to go where all the action is as there's more chance of finding things. If we had a forum that I was CONFIDENT in linking back to, I reckon we could get interest, especially if the end location was as easy to use as Facebook. The forum will never be one long brain-dead page, so you'll always need to delve deeper, and this is what screws with some people, but after getting used to it, it may become the norm again.
So, the members area scenario. This was only ever created to give the guys that supported the forum a little something extra for their generosity. It used to get a lot of the good stuff in there when we were busy. If there was nothing as an incentive, most new people could not see why they should become a member if everything was just free anyway. The members area really helped get the memberships happening. Can you see why they are there now? If we were to move the members areas and everything was fully accessible to everyone, what would you suggest would be an incentive to become a donating member?
The other things you said at the end about images etc will be fixed with the new forum, so that's the big deal currently.
Cheers mate
It actually amazed me how many people got involved in that Messanger posting that Ozzy created. I couldn't read it as it drove me nuts, but a lot of guys made the effort. I would say you are not alone in your sentiment Rod.
there are a few guy that have been consistent paying supporters for year and who I still always push people towards both here and on Facebook. (Steve at Rate R Parts is a prime example!)
You maybe also noted that I added Google Adsense to the forum to try and combat the lack of supporters. While this is handy for getting bugger all every few months, it can also be a repellent for some advertisers where the Google ads conflict with their own (Jeff was alerted to this problem from some of his mentor's websites). Maybe we could invite the small businesses back in and combine them with the Adsense, but the big players would want to see BIG numbers before they got interested, plus, its a very niche audience, which is also a tough one. Open to any suggestions though!
Top bloke! Cheers Kev
This: "got sucked into Facebook world" is the main culprit for most the of the forums dying off. If 1000s of people are queuing to get in somewhere, everyone wants to know what they are queuing for and want a look as well..... Now everyone has been into the Facebook club and it's playing the same old songs, over and over, but with even more adverts and control over you, a lot of guys are leaving out the back door. Facebook is nothing more than the real time chat thing we used to have on here, just everyone is there. Other than that, there's no depth to it.
Don't stress about the image thing; we'll have that covered by the looks of things.
Ha, those banter hissy-fits got me a lot of shit over the years. It was always "My fault", even though I never even saw or read half of them.They were funny though, especially the Pete and Dylan ones when we had the rating system turned on. Fuck I pissed my self laughing at those ones.
The conflicts with laptops and browsers etc is also Forum based mate. This will also clear up with a new forum.
Proactive people like yourself linking back to full topics here is what will bring the forum back to life Scott. I have no doubt about that mate.
I'm not sure the heavy handed "Your name's not down, you ain't coming in" attitude of the new OSS is a winner for getting numbers in. But if that is not their aim, then so be it.
Again, if there is good content, then people will want to come in. If it's just as easy to stick your photo directly into the forum from your phone and then share it with Facebook (rather than the other way around) then everyone is doing the same amount of work but showing which platform is their preferred home.
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