forum

[Hobby]

Considering the yearly costs of running a car £18 is peanuts...

[ian drew]

Without the club and the forum it would be incredibly difficult to maintain and restore our cars. From that angle there shouldn't be a minimum number of members requirement, as long as there's 2 people interested they need to communicate and share ideas and experiences.

I hate using Facebook and avoid it at all costs, so this forum is invaluable. Personally I've had no problems with load times, but I access at work during my lunch break where we have a fast connection and internet traffic is probably slow. I do however not like the new layout, it looks very bland.
I assume that "New Topics" is the same as the old "New Posts" button despite the meanings being very different? The "New Posts" button was the way I would read the forum.
But what ever we do we all need to support those doing the work to keep the forum and club going. If you have a Maestro or Montego I expect you can afford the £18 as it will soon be repaid 10 fold with the great advice being shared.

Ian

[efiman]

Like others above I'm not a fan of this new forum format.
Private messages are not accompanied by an email notification in my case. Has anyone else noticed similar?

On a wider note I am not sure that the forum resources are being directed towards an achievable goal.

The Maestro/Montego pool of cars is very small in comparison to other marques and it is getting smaller.
What is the minimum number of members this forum needs to justify its continued existence? I suspect we're close to, or have dropped below, this theoretical figure anyway.

I believe the future for the forum lies in co-operation/affiliation/partnership (call it what you want) with a similar group of people within a related marque.

I am not a "glass half empty" type of person, quite the opposite in fact, but I am a realist and you can re-arrange the deckchairs anyway you want over and over but the ship......................... well, you know what I mean.

This is not to criticise the achievements of those directly involved in the forum as they are giving of their time freely and it can be a thankless task.

efiman

[Sussex Pete]

With a number of forum users indicating here that performance is slow, it is probably worth advising everyone, that if that have not been on this site for quite a while, it may be beneficial to clear your browser cache. This will ensure that only the most up to date pages are loaded, and the browser "does not spend time loading from the cache, only to find it needs to download the latest page". I'm not saying that it will fix everyone's performance, but it may go a long way.

[Hobby]

It's not just the forum being slow , it's bloody awful Pete.
It's so messy, I'm on a model railway forum rmweb.co.uk which is modern but very easy to use.
Have a look and see if we could have something similar

It is slow I'd agree but I remember when RMWeb switched and many people had issues with it until they found how to work the new one, it's always the case when you go from an old one to a new one that many people dislike it until they get used to it.

I've just opened a few pages at random and none opened in less than 10 seconds, most well over that. If you don't do anything to the Forum you really need to sort that out! I'm on my PC at the moment so could see what was gong on, if it'd been my smartphone I'd have given up.

[E_T_V]

I think Tanya may have also missed that Beaker doesn't just use many different forums, she has set up and run many (including this one) too and is a top 10 contributor to this forum. Indeed if I can blow her trumpet for a minute (As she won't), she arguably oversaw the period of greatest membership growth for this club when she was chairperson, (along with all the extremely valuable contributions the other committee and members made of course).

My job is marketing now for my sins and whilst whitespace is good this is a bit extreme! Cold clinical and unwelcoming. Well thats how I see it anyway.

Site responsiveness varies hugely from good to quite frankly woeful. I'm not sure if this is a forum or a server issue - I'm not a techie. I know the hosting in recent years wasn't as good as previously as you fairly regularly saw site unavailable error pages, but I don't get those anymore just pages that take forever to load.

I just clicked on the membership page link from the homepage and it took 28 seconds to load! Yes I was that sad to time it! And when I eventually got there (most people would have closed the window after 5 seconds), there was no link to join nor form to download to fill in and post off. Really pretty poor to be honest from a club which is bleeding members.

There are many bugs although no official bug-list was to be seen. Bugs happen so let your users report them and mark them done when they are fixed.
The biggest value that the club had for many was the technical advice given via the forum which it seems does not have the focus/community that it once did.

Don't get me wrong - things must move on, but if it doesn't benefit the membership or the wider community then don't be surprised when people are vocal to voice their disapproval.

[Russ]

It was getting bad before Tony but now I think you are lucky if there is a handful of posts per day. A far cry from a few years ago

[tony]

i am a none computer person but to me this site is no longer user friendly, i dont know about v4 and v5 and the rest.
what i do know is if we dont change this site people will/are leaving.
soon this will be the best site on the web that nobody uses.
is there no stats showing site trafic? see if just me?

[Russ]

Thats fine Tanya, but less and less people will use the forum and I think you may have saved me eighteen quid!
BTW where are the new members going to come from? There isn't many MMs that aren't enthusiast owned these days. Those that are in everyday service are pretty much run into the ground and are not likely to be desirable models

[Tanya]

Beaker and Russ, I respect your views but beg to different and I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. Beaker, as a user of many forums my views are just as valid as yours only different!

Security is the priority and I'm now satisfied that the website and forum is as safe as we can make it, and I find it dead easy to use and great on my phone. Either 'New Topics' or 'Today's Posts' are just there for me to click on - I don't need to look for them.

Thanks for the feedback Mike and we'll try to get the broken links sorted as soon as we can. I'll also ask about the banner and let you know.

You can never please everyone and I knew this would be the case with the website and forum. However, I agree with Jez and hope to be motoring soon and gaining new members even though I know forums do face tough competition from Facebook etc.

[Mike Brock]

To me this site is massively improved over the old one - remember the security issues with that? If anything this one however - can be slow initially on entering the site even with a 70mbps connection. My browser is set to clear every session though to be fair. Other than that it's perfect on every functionality I have used from this site so far. Only criticism being there are a lot of broken links on the links page that need to be updated or deleted what ever the case may be? Oh - it would be absolutely fantastic if we could add a banner to our signature like you can with most other forums?

[Beaker]

Likewise Russ I hardly bother opening anything as it is just too difficult. Tanya I have used plenty of forums over the years, maintained and installed several as well. The site in its current form has to be the worst site I have ever used.

[Russ]

I hardly bother with it now, too difficult to find unread posts etc which is a shame as people who post technical help questions are probably getting missed by a lot of members

[Jez]

While I am getting the hang of the website in general, I also seem to be losing personal messages. It would seem they get sent, but then are deleted, or never to be seen again.
There are also a few links that still do not work.

I know how hard it is doing anything in IT and the website probably needed to be updated to a newer code. A little tweaking here and there and I am sure we will be motoring!

[Tanya]

Sorry, I am working very long hours this week so don't have time to reply to everything. However, while initially I did have problems with the speed and occasionally do now, for me (a non tech person) it is very simple and straightforward for me to use. I have used it on my PC, table and phone - it's great on my phone and I find it so easy to get round. I've used (and when I have time still do other forums) but for me this is definitely one of the easier ones - it just feel right for me and I can easily find everything. Personally I haven't had any problems with the messenger.

In short, some of this boils down to personal choice etc and we all work in different ways and like different things. You'll never please all the people all of the time exactly because of this.

While how a website/forum looks isn't a significant priority for me, I do really like the look of this one. To me it looks professional but friendly, but we're all different.