MNSubaru in the mobile world

Discussion in 'MNSubaru Front Office' started by WRX1, Jan 24, 2014.

  1. GiMp
    Offline

    GiMp Well-Known Member

    Likes Received:
    297
    Trophy Points:
    168
    **** finally kicked me off tapatalk and now I'm out I don't see **** for ads on mobile anyway so I don't see the point as the admin doesn't want to do admin work.
     
  2. WRX1
    Offline

    WRX1 _ Staff Member

    Likes Received:
    722
    Trophy Points:
    348
    This is ultimately just a different Tapatalk. This doesn't "solve" the fact that some people want to use tapatalk. This would end up being another piece of software that everyone would need to install to browse the forums. If people don't want to browse MNS because it is not on Tapatalk, adding forumrunner doesn't help that issue.

    ahhh, what??

    And just so everyone can be on the same page. This new Tapatalk update still has the same bugs in it that causes it to not play nice with other add-ons along with all the security issues that new users do not need to go through any of the security checks. Notice that this was found "earlier this year" and they are getting around to releasing it now. This was brought up in Feb.

    Dear Tapatalk Partner,

    This message is to notify you of a security vulnerability that was found earlier this year in the Tapatalk plug-in. The issue involves a cross-site scripting vulnerability that may allow a third party to manipulate the content or behavior of a web application in a user's browser, without compromising the underlying system.

    While our engineering team and other security apps have classified this as a low risk item and have not received any reports of compromised systems, we still recommend that you update your forum's Tapatalk plugin to the latest version available on our website.

    Plug-ins versions that have been patched:

    vBulletin 3 v4.4.1
    vBulletin 4 v5.0.1
    phpBB 3 v4.4.1
    IPB 3.4 v3.9.1
    SMF 2 v3.9.5
    Xenforo v2.0.4
    MyBB v3.9.1
    Kunena3 v1.1.5
    Vanilla v1.4.2
    WBB4 V1.0.1

    If your forum platform is not listed above, it is not vulnerable to the cross site scripting issue.
    If you have any questions, please reply to this message and let us know. We will only be communicating this issue via email to avoid broadcasting the existence of the vulnerability and putting forum owners who have not yet updated in unnecessary risk.
     
  3. Ryan FailRad
    Offline

    Ryan FailRad Well-Known Member

    Likes Received:
    1,061
    Trophy Points:
    248
    Russ, do you pay to keep this sight running? Like out of your pocket is what I'm asking, or do the ads pay the bills?
     
  4. WRX1
    Offline

    WRX1 _ Staff Member

    Likes Received:
    722
    Trophy Points:
    348
    All the ad money and donations go into a pot. We use the money from the pot to cover out expenses. It cost $650 a year to keep the site up and running. Site expenses get cover first, then the rest of it goes towards events, prizes, and merch. If the ad revenue is not there and the donations are not there, then I cover the rest. That is why I originally place ads onto the site. I cover all the cost for many years out of my own pocket.

    Russ
     
    xodad2 and Ryan FailRad like this.
  5. EricS
    Offline

    EricS Nooberator

    Likes Received:
    1,060
    Trophy Points:
    248
    Russ, IMHO the mobile site is working pretty dang good. The one thing I noticed though on my iPhone (5s, iOS7, Safari) is that the two ads (top/bottom) bust out of the right side of the alignment by something like 20pixs. Does anyone else see this? It ends up making the useful content area narrower than it could be, and the iPhone screen is none too big as it is :) I also noticed that the header image/logo seems to have quite a bit of wasted vertical space on top/bottom. Maybe on mobile view this entire header space could get reclaimed for content?

    Also I don't know if there's any way at all to do this, but would it be possible to support some sort of push notifications for important alerts? Even just having the option to have the forum send an SMS for new direct messages could be a huge help (esp. if replying to the SMS would add it to the site DB as a response PM) - I'm thinking that vendors like @Nuke would find this really useful, since they get business via PM. Maybe this could be a 'premium' feature if the user/vendor donates a certain $/year or something towards the site upkeep.

    Speaking of donations, could you enable repeat donations? I think it's pretty easy to set up through PP, and it could really help keep the income stream steady. I know I'd be happy to throw 5-10 bucks a month your way if it came out of my PP account automagically. Yes I am lazy/forgetful :)

    Lastly, have you guys looked at other server options other than Linode? From what I recall they tend to be on the more expensive side of VPS providers. I'm curious what a cost comparison would be to someone like Digital Ocean. Or if it would make sense to colo? Maybe someone on the forum, like a sysadmin, has spare space in their datacenter where no one would notice a little server that happened to get installed on the DL ;)

    Thanks for all the staff does for MNS!
    @WRX1 @tehfuzz
     
  6. tehfuzz
    Offline

    tehfuzz Well-Known Member

    Likes Received:
    1,347
    Trophy Points:
    348
    I can't take credit for being a staff member when I am not, but thank you. :) Credit goes to russ for maintaining mnsubaru for us and all the other mods.
     
  7. EricS
    Offline

    EricS Nooberator

    Likes Received:
    1,060
    Trophy Points:
    248
    Also noticed that in the mobile view, if you click on a person's name/image it pops up the dialog box about them similar to the desktop view site, but the background is transparent so it's really hard to read the text/links for sending a PM etc.
     
  8. GiMp
    Offline

    GiMp Well-Known Member

    Likes Received:
    297
    Trophy Points:
    168
    Mobile is horriable to try and add pics. I dont think you have an option except for a URL since Tapatalk was able to post them directly. I reduced my traffic to the site along with many others.
     
    T_riggidy likes this.
  9. WRX1
    Offline

    WRX1 _ Staff Member

    Likes Received:
    722
    Trophy Points:
    348
    Well Digital Ocean and Linode are about the same price. For what we are currently running (2 2GB ram, 48GB SSD storage servers), we would need to keep pretty close to the same specs. With the shoutbox running full steam all day and just the normal traffic, we really couldn't go much smaller. And if we did go smaller, it will really limit our growth potential before we would need to upgrade again. As it sits now, we should be able to double our traffic and stick with the same hardware.

    As for the ads. This is going to be my next big project. I got all the sizing pretty close for what we use, I just need to dial everything in a bit tighter. I am also going to try and get all the responsive stuff to be served out of google DFP. That should really be able to allow for future changes without much site tweaking.

    Push notifications. That might be tough. I would have to see if anything like that is even available. I wouldn't count on anything like that any time soon.

    Repeat donations. We talked about doing a premium user account that could do something like that. The donation add on doesn't do auto payments, but if I were to set up a premium user account, that would do it. Then it would be just what benefits do we offer for the user account. It might be something that we look into.

    Once again, I am sorry you feel this way. Until Tapatalk determines that they want to actually fix their product, I will not be installing it again. The security issues, server error issues, the not paying website for ads, and all the other issues they have, it is just not worth it for me. It leaves way to many vulnerabilities open for me as a site owner. Please feel free to check out their website (support.tapatalk.com) and look at the issues that do not get resolved, or worse yet, just blown off.

    Russ
     
  10. WRX1
    Offline

    WRX1 _ Staff Member

    Likes Received:
    722
    Trophy Points:
    348
    Today I spent a bunch of time on our 3rd party add system and getting everything working on the site. Currently on the light theme, I have implemented the responsive DFP code. This will allow us greater flexability in ad placement and sizes for current and future vendors.

    I know that I still have a bit of tweaking to do on the sizes to manage ad oversizing on screens, but this will be a work in progress. I think I have the desktop pretty close and I should have the tablet stuff (that I can test), pretty close. Please feel free to let me know where you see weird ad problems (in the light theme). Once I get the light theme dialed in, I will be moving the code over to the dark theme.

    These changes will allow the site to better serve our vendors by adding a few different ad size options while being able to target certain platforms for better placements.

    Russ
     
  11. GregRoot198521
    Offline

    GregRoot198521 Member

    Likes Received:
    97
    Trophy Points:
    38
    Alright, started using this on the phone, very nice even if I miss being able to use almost all my forums in one ap (tapatalk on iPhone), maybe I'll even load up the local forum from El Paso on the browser too since they also don't do any other setups. Guess that means I don't mind using the browser in this case.
     
  12. GiMp
    Offline

    GiMp Well-Known Member

    Likes Received:
    297
    Trophy Points:
    168
    So it says I need to contact the Admin to enable Tapatalk. Please do the needful. Thanks
     
  13. GiMp
    Offline

    GiMp Well-Known Member

    Likes Received:
    297
    Trophy Points:
    168
    Tried again today. Still disabled. :/
     
  14. WRX1
    Offline

    WRX1 _ Staff Member

    Likes Received:
    722
    Trophy Points:
    348
    That says it all. They still are not paying for ad revenue, they still have some major security issues, and they still just don't care about the site owners. At this time, I doubt that MNSubaru will ever go back to running tapatalk.

    Russ
     
  15. istoptofly
    Offline

    istoptofly Well-Known Member

    Likes Received:
    114
    Trophy Points:
    228
    Shouldn't you be using txsubaru.com anyway? :p
     
  16. Ryan FailRad
    Offline

    Ryan FailRad Well-Known Member

    Likes Received:
    1,061
    Trophy Points:
    248
    image.jpg Retro mnsubaru. Just had this happen a few minutes ago looked kinda interesting, didnt know where else to post this.