Site update help

Well, there is going to be a pretty major site update coming. Basically VBulletin is doing almost a complete redesign and we will be updating to the new system when it becomes available. I am currently working on getting my dev site updated to our current vbulletin so I can do the upgrade again. At this point in time, the new vb is just in beta, but it is giving us the chance to do some changes with the theme and the general overall site layout. So I am turning to you guys/gals to offer up some direction.

What do you like??

What don't you like?? Yes Shibbs, we know, the blue car.:laugh:

What would like to see??

Also, I am going to be looking for some ideas on some changes.

User ranks (all the subie newbie/dude/guru). They are old and outdated. What do we want to change them to and how many posts to reach each level (remember that some people are well over 10k posts).

New header. Steve-o's car needs to go. So I suck at creating pictures, so this is something that I will definitely be looking for help on. We are also able to create icons for the forums and nav bars and a bunch of other areas. I have some info on sizes and such (it is still beta software) that can help get things started.

As of now, none of things need to be changed this week. None of these changes will be final for a few months. They are current only in beta 4 and they are talking 20+ betas then getting into the RC cycle before going gold. So things are definitely going to change on the template/theme areas, but some stuff is pretty much done.

What I would like to see happen is a CONSTRUCTIVE conversation on things that people would like to see happen with the new site. So if you can't put on your big boy pants and add to the conversation, go elsewhere.

I am also looking for people who are willing to help out a bit with creating some headers/footer pictures. Maybe even get into seasonal theme changes.

And for the last time, this is YOUR chance to add what you would like to see in the new site. What you want to be more than happy to show your friends. We want something that will appeal to most people (yep, we will never make all of MNS happy).

Thanks
Russ

 

VB has changed its price structure. So there is no longer a yearly charge and for us, it was a single upgrade charge for the life of the 4.x series. As of now, it is only a beta 4 release and even vbulletin calls it unstable. And for the most part it is. My plan is to get the ball rolling with thoughts and ideas on what people would like to see changed, so that by time the have the gold release, we have a idea of what we want to change and where we want to go with it.

There has been many complaints over the years, and this will be everyone's chance to give a constructive idea on what they would like to see.

Russ

 

That's a good idea. Alienate part of the user base because their car's look like "rubbish" or aren't the "best looking" in YOUR opinion. Are you trying to troll this thread? I sure hope not.

 

Personally, I would like to see certain people assigned as a "Guru" role instead of post based. There are a few people that post an awful lot, but I wouldn't consider them "Subaru Gurus" in the least.
Does VBulletin have a ranking system, like a "reputation" system? We can police the modifications and maintenance forum all day, but I think a self policing system would also be good. Often times I see misinformation and sometimes just plain old outright fantasy being posted in there. As long as it has some sort of system in place to avoid griefing and abuse, like maybe a maximum amount of reputation allowance per day or something, so you can't sit and spam someone with + or - reputation points...or even something that shows that "This post earned *insert name* (n) amount of reputation points." To show that the advice or information given was good or bad.

 

I'm not entirely familiar with VBulletin's styles setup. But if they do have a multiple style user chosen system like PHPBB, then there is no reason we couldn't code 3 or 4 different versions of it with different banners for each fascia update to the Impreza. But then what about Legacy and Tribeca owners? I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to have a million different versions as long as whomever makes the new banner makes it layered in Photoshop so myself or some of the other Pshop types could simply change the layer to a different model/color/whatever. I'd also like to see an MNSubaru style sheet that looks plain or even styled after Microsoft Word for people that browse at work.

 

I'd also like to see something like this as well and for the same reasons. There are a few people with a ton of posts and not a lot of information, and there are some people who don't post very often but when they do it's spot on when it comes to technical stuff. It'd be nice if people could take a look at the poster and the information being given to decide just how credible it is.

 

Well, the user ranks is based off of post count. I named them dude/guru way back in the day. We can re-name the ranks that has nothing to do with subaru knowledge. That is a part of the system.

Vb does have a rep system to it. It is something that I normally turn off right away because a few of the kiddies would abuse it to the point of making it worthless (like the search cloud and threads tags). It is something that can be turned on and modded to fit our requirements, but like everything else, it goes back to the end user, using the system the way it was designed.

As for styling and themes, at this point I would love to get rid of the car all together. Use a logo (like the mn swoosh or something) and make changes from there. As it is, the software is still beta. The templates are going to change. So there is no real reason to try and get a defined theme right now, this is more looking for ideas, what people would like to see, etc.

If you want a preview of the new vb, head over to vbulletin.com and check it out. They are running the beta on their site live with the full cms on the main page. Their site is also what the basic non-custom theme will look like.

Russ

 

Maybe set it up so that you can only give and receive reputation points in the Mod/Maint forum. That way it can only be given to posts that are relevant to car related knowledge and not just rep spammed in OffTopic or General Discussion. Even better would be if VB had a "Reason for giving reputation point" field that you had to enter in your reasoning for giving that person reputation points.

 

As for a release date on OUR new site, I have no idea. The current releases of the vb beta are not ready for the public yet. They are pretty unstable. But they have moved onto releasing them to the public, so it is a step in the right direction. They haven't given out any concrete timeline on releases, and I don't really expect them to. There are way to many variables to try and keep track of and the new VB is about 80% new code. So they are bound to have some issues pop up. I have heard that they want a gold release around the new year. I guess we will see>

Thanks
Russ

 

You as a user can already do that. As for the site automatically doing that, it would never happen. The site will not know what you want the like to display.

Allowing the user to PM the mod to give out the points is a good idea. The it is up to the user to do some of the legwork to show which user is creating a useful thread/post, then the mods would verify that info and hand out the per points if deserved.

Russ

 

Well, if they come up with something like that for 4.0, I can look into it at that point. But as it is, that mod is for the pretty old VB sites.


So no takers on doing some graphics work?? YOU could be the person that creates all the buttons/headers/footers/etc.

Russ

 

We don't have the CPU bandwidth for something like that. it would pretty much kill our database server. We experimented with an SQL chat room type environment on t3hw00t, and after about 10 people it would bring our database server to a near standstill.

 

Just use the Mibbit client and connect to #t3hw00t on irc.xsirc.org. Or if you use Trillian there is a built in IRC client there. Eventually, I want to host the IRC from home. But for now, this will work.

 

This works in theory. But often times, I've seen situations where people are looking for a quick answer, and unfortunately for them, only the people with the stupidest answers are online. It is nice to have a few knowledgeable guys you can turn to for reliable help.

One huge problem with the search feature here is that is assumes that what you are searching for has been spelled properly in the past. "Oil Pressure" does not equal "oilpressure", "oil presure", "oil pressare" and all the other moronic variations that are likely found on here. You can blame the lazy half-wits that don't spell check for this. It's almost better having it search individual words because there is a better chance of nailing more properly spelled words.

Maybe instead of a ranking system, we should have more of an award system. Maybe have awards for +1 Auto-X info, or +1 Rally-X info, +1 General technical info. That way posters are graded on specific knowledge. Which can in turn, indentify posters that are good with specific topics. For instance, if someone posts alot of helpful info about Auto-X, they will eventually have a very large amount of Auto-X Rep points. Making him an obvious go-to person for that information.
I just don't think MNSubaru is big enough to warrant the need for that sort of division of forums.

 

To add to that last bit of my last post, if we add too many different specific forums, well....I don't know how to put this nicely, so I wont. Essentially what will happen, and this goes back to the "lazy half-wits" bit from the previous post, is people will just haphazardly post wherever they click first. You'd think it wasn't that complicated, but seriously, people mix up "general subaru discussion" with "for sale/wtb/group buy" alot. Those two forums don't even sound the same. And if you are trying to sell something on the site, the OBVIOUS choice is the FS/WTB/GB forum. Because that is what it is for. It sounds like common sense, but expecting common sense from people is foolishness as I've found out over the past 5 years being on here, and running a completely different forum of my own that is populated by these same MNSubaru people. As a moderator here, I can tell you right now, if you think my reign of terror with the banstick was bad before, make me suffer 6 months of filing everyone's misplaced threads because they are too lazy to do it themselves or too stupid to just flat out read the damn forum titles, and I can guarantee the herd here will be thinned out quickly and without remorse.

 

I would love to get the search better. I know for 4.0, that is something that they are working on. OUR biggest problem is that 99% of all theads go off topic. So we are giving garbage to the search engine, and then we are expecting the search engine to dig through the garbage and give us what we are looking for. So that is why we started using thread tags. Hoping that everyone would use them properly, we can to the quick conclusion that damn near everything got tagged with manbearpig and barrel chested women (amongst other things). So and help that the tags would give the search engine just got thrown out the door. Some goes for the tag cloud. Some of the kiddies figure out that if you keep clicking on the same "thing" in the cloud, it gets larger. Then the kiddies decided to use the search cloud to attack other members. So, much like the tags, the search cloud was also turned off. And that is why we can't have nice things. And until people figure out that garbage in=garbage out, our search will continue to suck.

As for chat, it sucks up a bunch of CPU time. We are a little better off with the new VPS, but at this time, we will have to wait it out to see how the new VB will run before we want to start adding any cpu intensive things to the system.

Russ

 

Listen, I knew what I was signing up for when I agreed to do this. That isn't my point. My point is that if I add 5 sub-forums to Mods/Maintenance, I am making more work for myself because nobody reads or follows rules. The gain-to-pain ratio would be enormously slanted towards the "pain" side since I honestly don't feel there would be much benefit in further categorizing threads and I'd spend 5x more time sifting and sorting threads that were posted in the wrong place.

Essentially:

Categorized Modifications/Maintenance/Tech Forum....

Pros:
More organization for tech threads.

Cons:
Nobody reads the rules for posting in the forums and will post their threads in the wrong place more often than they post them in the correct place.
More work for Moderators spending more time filtering threads to their proper places
Not enough tech info being posted daily to require >1 forum.

 

Not to mention, we've made minor site rule changes before, and it leads to epic, apocalyptic flooding of butthurt and tears on the site when people get "moderated." New rules seem to cause people to go absolutely sideways. Proof Positive: the FS/WTB/GB rules change from earlier in the year. We had a couple bans from that event I think, because people really just did not want to follow the rules. And when told the rules, they not only continued to cry about it, but they insisted to our faces that they were special and shouldn't have to follow them because <insert dumb reason here>.

If we categorize threads, there will be butthurt. And I can almost guarantee where it will be focused.
A) Bitching because "my thread falls under 2 of those categories"
B) Bitching because "my thread got moved to a different category than I posted it in"
C) Bitching because "why was my thread deleted?"
D) Bitching because "they don't do this crap over at <insert car forum name here, you're the only site that does this and it's stupid>"
E) Bitching because "the rules shouldn't apply to me since I'm not on here that much or <insert dumb reason here>

 

This is still a open request for anyone that wants to help out. Graphics help is going to be the biggest thing. It looks like the VB crew is putting in some time and they are talking before christmas for the gold release. Looks like the first rc will be this week.

Russ

 

I got your back Russ. Let me get PS loaded up on my laptop and I'll start crackin on stuff when I'm in GB.