Is there an app for reading this forum, like Tapatalk or similar?
No. There's an app for the magazine but not the forum.
No. There’s an app for the magazine but not the forum.
Not even the exclusive Members' Forum?
I use an app called "Google Chrome" for it on my iPad 😀
Not even the exclusive Members’ Forum?
yes, but it only displays posts from Gold card members...
What functionality would this offer over a browser? There is a bit of an obsession over having an app for everything, most of which are better served with a good website. An app for every website kind of kill the point of a browser...
Guess it might not log you out every few hours.
plus: there are other websites?
most of which are better served with a good website.
My bold.
Guess it might not log you out every few hours.
Crazy talk!
Don’t want another damn app on my phone.
Update cookie / login duration to 30 days and we’re good.
Very little work x cost for significant improvement in usability.
That's not the issue. If it was we'd have done it.
There’s an app for the magazine
There's an app?
What functionality would this offer over a browser? There is a bit of an obsession over having an app for everything, most of which are better served with a good website. An app for every website kind of kill the point of a browser…
Plus half the apps are just a front-end which farms you straight back out to the website anyway.
Using this site with Firefox on an iPad, the pages don't wrap around correctly most of the time which is a mild annoyance, don't think it necessarily needs an app to fix this.
There’s an app?
There's a magazine?
Browser on phone > dedicated app for websites. Apps unnecessary if a decent website exists.
That’s not the issue. If it was we’d have done it.
@Mark - so what IS the issue, because most other sites don't suffer from it...
so what IS the issue, because most other sites don’t suffer from it…
This site doesn't suffer from it for a lot (probably a majority) of users.
This site doesn’t suffer from it for a lot (probably a majority) of users.
I get suffer from it though, and it's a (slight) pain. Don't need an app, though.
My bold.
Yet here you are, one of our most prolific posters.
We have two very critical but conflicting plugins that interfere with the login cookie. Neither of the plugins are written by us but they are pretty critical to the functionality of our site. Our site is more than a basic forum/content website. It has to manage complex membership and print subscriptions databases and it's buried in all that where the issue lies. It's not being ignored. It's in our schedule to try and find a solution. The problem with altering someone elses code however means that it does take it out of the update cycle. We would have forked the plugin from it's author's track and effectively taken ownership of it. Not without it's advantages but similarly there are obvious disadvantages of doing that.
Our tech guys can offer you perhaps more detailed and technical explanations if you want to use the help option bottom left. I think the plugins in question might be Ultimate members and Woocommerce Subscriptions for those that like to google these things. I may be wrong though. We use Ultimate Members to bypass the standard Wordpress login and I seem to recall that could be where the issue lies. I could be wrong.
Yet here you are, one of our most prolific posters.
I have been a subscriber in the past and the forum can be great, but the site is still functionally pretty shonky, let's be honest. At least it's mostly usable now I guess. Mind you it's always been perfect on your iPad, apparently.
I did give the site some advertising click money earlier today though cos I checked out the link from an (unavoidable) ad featuring Richard Branson just to check it really was the bitcoin scam I thought it was. :-/
I mean, how is it the site is still taking money from people advertising actual illegal fraud/scams, never mind the whole legal scam e-visa thing they were promoting? How does that happen if they are using reputable companies to serve ads?
Subscribe I hear you say, well it might just be me but 'subscribe or we'll try to sell you illegal scams designed to drain your bank account, and have click-through and autoplay ads with sound that take over your device audio' isn't a very appealing business model.
Our ads are supplied by Google. Through their AdX network.
There are no display ads for those that pay. It's an old song I know.
Third Party Cookies were meant to be on their way out about now but Google has postponed their removal until 2023. That means those personalised, targeted, tracking ads will be around for a few more years yet. I was looking forward to their end as the replacement was going to be site level contextual targeting - which means the ads on here would not have been based on your personal browsing history but rather on the subject matter of the site - in this case that would mean more bike specific ads. Although I imagine there'd be a decent amount of log burner ads in the forum too 🙂
I guess google are just too big to have to bother with stuff like not promoting fraud. Imagine if a TV company was responsible for advertising something like that. It's nuts.
This was the ad:
You can report those ads by clicking the little cross in the corner.
<We have two very critical but conflicting plugins that interfere with the login cookie. Neither of the plugins are written by us but they are pretty critical to the functionality of our site. Our site is more than a basic forum/content website. It has to manage complex membership and print subscriptions databases and it’s buried in all that where the issue lies. It’s not being ignored. It’s in our schedule to try and find a solution. The problem with altering someone elses code however means that it does take it out of the update cycle. We would have forked the plugin from it’s author’s track and effectively taken ownership of it. Not without it’s advantages but similarly there are obvious disadvantages of doing that.
Our tech guys can offer you perhaps more detailed and technical explanations if you want to use the help option bottom left. I think the plugins in question might be Ultimate members and Woocommerce Subscriptions for those that like to google these things. I may be wrong though. We use Ultimate Members to bypass the standard WordPress login and I seem to recall that could be where the issue lies. I could be wrong.>
Fair, 100% not worth forking or messing around with that guessing current scale / revenue generated vs potential for it to constantly break and cost of fixing.
You should def sign up to some affiliate networks and post links to all the major investment Apps every time someone asks an investment or bitcoin question, while your at it get in early and sign up for pizza ovens too 🙂
Since you ask ...
Here's why I think an app would be a good idea.
Using this site on web is great but on mobile it is really annoying.
This is the main forum homepage. Why is there a big banner about Mexico City bus drivers?
Why is the nav so small and difficult to click? Where's the content? (below the fold).
This is a sub-forum homepage. On a Samsung Note (large screen), I can only actually see one line of content. The ad - which might ordinarily be reasonably inconspicuous- is right over the only bit of content I'm interested in. And I had to dismiss an interstitial full screen advert to even get here.
This is the private message page. Again, actual content is bumped below the fold.
No native push notifications also a niggle.
A mobile optimised website might work. Something like Ionic Framework could allow you to do both.
Subscribe I hear you say, well it might just be me but ‘subscribe or we’ll try to sell you illegal scams designed to drain your bank account, and have click-through and autoplay ads with sound that take over your device audio’ isn’t a very appealing business model.
To be honest, I'd be doing the honourable thing and having nothing to do with any of it.
Philip Schofield is advertising the scam now too. I tried to report it, didn't work.
The site behaves differently on different devices and in different browsers. It's a pain but it's worth trying a few to see what works best for you. If you have a specific browser just for this site then it's sort of like an app 🙂
I use Chrome an a tablet and opera on my phone. The navigation gets messy if you zoom in but tbh the nav doesn't really work on mobile anyway
Re Tapatalk as mentioned by the OP:
I set up a forum using PHPBB and looked into Tapatalk. PHPBB have a verification process for plugins (i.e. making sure that the plugin plays nicely with everything else), it seems Tapatalk submitted theirs and it failed the verification, they were told what the problems were and that was the last that was heard from them.
I've an old iPad that now struggles with certain sites, including this one, as things have just moved on regarding web technologies. Not worth it to me to get a new iPad as I can view this site on my desktop.
I have been a subscriber in the past and the forum can be great, but the site is still functionally pretty shonky, let’s be honest. At least it’s mostly usable now I guess. Mind you it’s always been perfect on your iPad, apparently.
Is that a saucer of milk to go?
I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s perfect, but it is perfectly adequate on mine as well, apart from the time of the Tudor Watch and Maserati adverts, but that was ages ago.
I subscribe now, purely to give support as I haven’t bought the mag in years, and my browser setup stopped most adverts, I certainly never ever see things like those posted above! It’s just a combination of the right browser with the right search, and I don’t use Google or Chrome, and haven’t for a long time. Privacy is my main concern so I choose wisely…
I can put up with the occasional request to log in again, but it takes seconds, because my password is in my keychain list, so it’s easy to just tap and go.
@jamster, you know you can turn off the ads as a subscriber, right?
If you have to log in every single time you visit the site even as a subscriber then it almost negates that benefit, doesn't it? I'm a subscriber, but I also use other means to avoid bullshit like the Branson Bitcoin stuff mentioned above.
@whitestone Oh yes, for sure, Tapatalk are a bunch of ****. I paid for lifetime "Pro" subscription once upon a time. They reneged on that.
In terms of their products, though, they are the best of a bad bunch.
Look at the reviews for the Discourse app (Discourse itself is actually pretty good - better than wordpress-plugin forums - but clearly making notifications / mobile integration work properly is an afterthought)
It's almost like forum owners *want* everyone to move to Facebook or Reddit
If you have to log in every single time you visit the site even as a subscriber
I have to log on every 3-4 weeks or so.
Google Chrome on Windows 10 - every single time
Mark - at least there is an acknowledgement of an issue - as it seemed like Gofar were in denial that their users/content generators/customers suffer from this problem. I'll certainly not be paying for a P whilst I still get ads until I login if you can't keep me logged in!
Just so that you know though - this is what I actually heard, despite what you typed:
We haven't designed our system very well so have two very critical but conflicting plugins that interfere with the login cookie. Despite the web being a core channel for the business we don't write our own stuff even when its critical to the functionality of our site. Our site is more than a basic forum/content website but we chose to build it on a basic web platform and cobble bits on. It has to manage complex membership and print subscriptions databases and it’s buried in all that where the issue lies. It’s not a huge priority for us. It’s in our schedule to try and find a solution. We're too tight to commission the provider of the module to solve our problem so that means that it does take it out of the update cycle. We would have forked the plugin from it’s author’s track and effectively taken ownership of it. Not without it’s advantages but similarly there are obvious disadvantages of doing that.
Google Chrome on Windows 10 – every single time
Also Chrome on Win10, Chrome on Android and Chrome on Chrome(book).
I could be wrong.
If we're talking about the 'being logged out' complaint, that has been present as long as I've been a member and that's over a decade. It predates UM and it predates the forum upgrade.
Here’s why I think an app would be a good idea.
An app isn't the answer there, different formatting on the mobile version of the site is.
Google Chrome on Windows 10 – every single time
Google Chrome on Windows 10 – doesn't do it to me. What's different? What are you running that I'm not?
Just so that you know though – this is what I actually heard, despite what you typed:
You can buy an off-the-shelf package that does 95% of what you need with a few quirks, or you can write your own from scratch? Who on earth does that? That's not "being tight," it's not being a mentalist.
Very few systems these days are "written from scratch", things like security are really, really hard to do right which is why sites like this use plug-ins but you do rely on those developers playing by the rules and not relying on hidden features or similar.
@Mark - sounds like the plugins are hosted on Github or similar - depending on how complicated the fix is (assuming you can fix it) then forking, fixing and issuing a pull request *should* get it pulled back into the next release. Also depends on how actively the plugin is being developed, one or two check-ins/releases a year and you could just merge the changes across to your branch, but you wouldn't want to do that weekly. I've worked on big projects that do both and they both have their problems so no one right answer.
As for log-in, I "see" the standard WP login with the option of being logged in for 2 days or 14. For me both options work as stated. Google Chrome on MacOS.
Google Chrome on Windows 10 – doesn’t do it to me. What’s different? What are you running that I’m not?
I'm on a Google Pixel with Firefox at the moment and I'm staying logged in, which is nice. The Win10 pc though, who knows? It's a work computer so there may be something going on behind the scenes but other things like Spotify web player stay logged in.
I use a work Yoga, W10 and Chrome a d have to log in every few weeks (same as on Android phone and Chrome)
If my work ICT dept could do anything to **** up the experience they would, they are pretty risk averse so lock loads of things down.
We seem to be getting into solutioning here.
Isn't the first step to decide that there is actually a problem? It seems that the majority of us are saying that there is, but there's some resistance to this. Is that a fair summary?
It seems that the majority of us
😂🤣😂🤣😂
There’s 25 voices on this thread, not all of whom have an issue, and that constitutes a majority? How many folk use this forum?
120k+ registered users
1.6 million site visitors in June.
To be clear. There IS a problem. We know generally where it lies. It is scheduled for attention but there's a lot of outstanding work to get through for our two tech guys first.
