and, since direct comments in Steve's update thread are closed - yes, I'd say the main reason there are few comments is that these forums are workable enough to be acceptable, vs. the prior iteration, which were abysmal. However, the switchover seems to have cost the forums the active user base we had, or, at least, their participation. Not the end of the world, exactly - presumably, in time, if the forums aren't nuked again and again and again, in either format or content (thanks to Steve, the bulk of the prior content was salvaged), an active participating group of users will evolve. If that doesn't happen, then that's likely a reflection of the forum-software ease-of-use & functionality. There's a few things that, from a user perspective, were more convenient with the v-bulletin forum. The v-bulletin forums, thanks to a cookie, kept me logged in. Save the page on my bookmarks menu, hit that with a mouse click or double-cick, and I'm right into seeing all recent threads, and replying wherever desired. No having to take extra clicks, page-switches, and wading through a log-in process to get right into the forums. Considering most of the other forums are using v-bulletin and have that ease-of-use, familiar design, quick functionality, and one-step access, at least from a useability perspective, the club forums are at a bit of a comparative disadvantage. Steven, no need to defend the reasons for the switch, you've already explained it - my point is the problems the national office had in administering the old forums were almost wholly behind-the-scenes for users, and once a user was registered or any issue with a user registering for the forums was resolved, then the v-bulletin forums had excellent ease-of-use. The forums were changed, afaik, to meet a variety of desires of the admins and the national office, not because the user-base was finding a plethora of issues that generated a public outcry for change. Good or bad? I don't know, time will tell - thankfully, something much more useable replaces those horrendous drupal forums, even if, as I see it, these don't quite equal v-bulletin in some aspects. By the way - the ornaments are still seasonally fun
The ornaments are a little late. I was on vacation last week. Regarding vBulletin. No one is updating to the current version of vBulletin which is v4.1.9. v4 is horrible. I have it on my http://www.nccbmwcca,org site and every time I update it, something breaks. I can't wait to install something else there. Version 3 is no longer supported and those who are still using it are pretty much locked in due to modifications installed. Ask any vB3 admin if they are going to update to v4. I saw this as an opportunity since the forum would need to be modified anyway. vBulletin v4 wasn't an option. The other option was phpBB, but I honestly feel that in a few years this forum software will be more common than vBulletin. Also please note, the developers of this forum wrote vBulletin and the software is just 1 year old. Every single post from vBulletin was brought over, including all of the drupal posts. I wish I could do something about the logging out. I've been overruled on that one. Activity is slowly picking up. With the next forum I will be able to see changes from month to month. It would probably help if people could find the forum easily. Right now I use the link in the footer.
I do what I did before - a bookmark link, this time to "What's New"; then, log in, which puts me back in the forums. From what you've discussed already, I know v-bulletin is out - comparing what we had to what we have is my only means of offering up some speculation about the status of the current forums as far as user feedback & participation goes. I hope you had a good vacation!
