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ETA??
Hurry up please as version 2.0 is getting very frustrating.... 🙂
If we had to vote for anything, I'd rather go with a barebones v3.0 earlier than wait for a "fully functional" v3.0 later, assuming the barebones version loaded quickly
Never.
BBboard forever :-)...
Just, for the love of god, allow emoji’s to work again, either on site or from the posting device keyboard. Honestly, how hard can it be? I’ve got an online source, but they’re a bit of a faff compared to just selecting from my device keyboard. [img] 
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It's a bit slow but the world isn't ending.
You have all contributed to the fund raising I presume?
“fully functional”? ????????
That was two questions marks and the rest were crying laughing emojis by the way
You have all contributed to the fund raising I presume?
No, but I pay a monthly subscription and have bought "merch" that I don't really need. I like to support local / small / independent businesses, but being asked to contribute to the coffee shop's new espresso machine seems a bit much!
I'm used to it now. Every time I click a link or post a comment I just closed my eyes and slowly recite the Lord's Prayer. And when I open my eyes sometimes the page is almost loaded.
I don't know what everyone is whinging about.
Every time I click a link or post a comment I just closed my eyes and slowly recite the Lord’s Prayer.
If you do it backwards, 3 times, the devil appears. In an STW beanie. I sold my soul* for a 5 second page load but now I'm soulless and still waiting for the page to load... 🙁
*(Cotic)
I click on threads and by the time it’s loaded I’ve forgotten why I wanted to comment, to be fair if it was really fast I’d probably forget anyway…
You have all contributed to the fund raising I presume?
Ive been on here since 2018 so relatively new and no ive never contributed, main reason why is because the website has never really worked fully, im not interested in magazines and any apparel
If the website actually worked and didnt have issues all the time and the classifieds worked and were easy to navigate id be more than happy to pay a fee
Ive also been a member of EMTB forums since 2019, that website was started in 2018 and its always worked, nice site to use, ive never had any issues with the site, can upload/host pics directly on the site, emoji's always work etc...
Im sure many other people have been put off paying a fee to use this site purely down to how bad it can be, the advice on here is great but the website always has issues
I pay my subs because the user experience as a free member was absolutely dire. It's now faster to browse logged out and only log in to comment so where's the incentive to continue paying?
I’m not bothered. It works well enough for me as it is, it doesn’t have to be perfect.
I have seen forums many times over the decades that have spent a fortune upgrading to new systems and appearances for it to backfire massively, everyone hates the changes and leaves and the forum becomes dead.
The go slow to go fast slow edition.
I use it less and less now as its just too slow, effectively STW is weening me off it by being so slow. Unlikely I'll renew my subscription again, just don't use it that much now.
Must be massively frustrating for the STW gang to still be dealing with the issues after all that money raised for the enhanced WordPress system. I hope that came with performance guarantees so they didn't have to pay out for it.
I wonder if Lings could host a forum for us 😉
You have all contributed to the fund raising I presume?
Do you really presume that, or is that some kind of shaming attempt? Cough up or shut up? Although I have contributed, I understand why some might choose not to do so. I think their views are as valid as mine.
Update:
The new forum is happily sat on our live server.
Still to do...
- Migrate 10 million posts from the old forum to the new.
- Style it up and get the look and feel right
- Make sure it integrates with the membership system correctly
While this job is the no.1 priority for Andy and Anthony, they still have other vital work that needs to continue alongside this dev work. Sometimes, like last week, we have illness taking 50% of the tech team out of action for a coupl eof days. Also, we have subs queries that are p[art of the daily routine. These can take anything from minutes to hours depending on volume and what the issue/request is.
Likley first thing you will see (and I can't put a timeline in terms of days on this) is we will open up one of the new forums for testing in a Beta sense. ie. We'll let some or all of you in to the new forum to mess with it. Because it will be a copy of a live forum we'll likley delete all the new posts when we do the big switcheroo.
Also, while the test forum is running you probably won't notivce a performance improvement due to the fact the old forum will still be live. This forum demands so much data from the database (your entire posting record is the main component) with every page request, be that in the forum or other pages across the site. But you will be able to see the new forum and try out the new toys. Your feedback at that point will of course be really useful.
Once we make the big switch, we will turn off the old forum and purge it from the database. THEN things will move much faster.
One of the critical reasons for taking this seemingly long and very careful approach is because we rely to a huge extent on our performance in search results. 60% of our traffic comes directly from Google search. 30% from direct traffic (your bookmarks or by doing what I do and just type 's' into your chrome browser). The rest is from other minor sources. This means if we get it wrong and break every existing forum link that Google has already indexed then we risk a collapse in traffic. Now that's not neccessarily a catastophe as the new site map will get reindexed over time and things will sort themselves out but I've seen sites do this badly and their traffic loss is huge for a time. For us, with so few resources both in human and financial I'm very concerned it could end us.
I know patience is something I've been asking of you for a long time and I get that it is not infinite, but if you can give us a few more weeks then things will improve.
In the meantime, here's something for you to test out for me.
It's a bike themed wordle-like game. Don't worry - It's taken zero time from Anthony and Andy so there is no impact on their work. This is all me. If it's popular we might make it a thing.
https://singletrackworld.com/singleword/
Some screen shots. Nothing is as it will be. Colours, layout, what is displayed. All will be tweaked and customised. But..
That's a lot of toys and what's that over there on the end?
This forum demands so much data from the database (your entire posting record is the main component) with every page request
Have I misunderstood this? Every page request requires a pull of your entire posting history?
Is there a '*' in a SELECT query which shouldn't be there?
if you can give us a few more weeks then things will improve.
<thumbs up emoji> Good luck Mark. I really hope it works out as you expect.
Is there a ‘*’ in a SELECT query which shouldn’t be there?
If it were that simple.
No, the problem is down to a bad decison taken years ago where in order to fully integrate the forum with the membership system we opted to store all data across the site in a single table. That helped to create a fully integrated membership system where everything talks to everything else. But the problem is now the table is so large and everything talks to everything.. all the time - That table of data is accessed with every request. The really useful part of the new forum is that it allows us to separate the forum from the rest of the wordpress system by having them each in their own tables. The plugins and software now exist to properly connect them how we want them to be in order to keep that link between membership/subscriptions and the forum.
Do you really presume that, or is that some kind of shaming attempt?
It was absolutely a shaming attempt.
The site is noticeably slower than others I use, even here where broadband isn't great, but it's nowhere near slow enough to make me think I can't use it.
I don't understand the logic of that. Your experience is that the site is slow, but not so slow that it's completely unusable. Therefore everyone else, whether their experience differs from yours or not, should feel ashamed if they haven't donated cash?
Do we get an Avatar... Or is that for Elite People?
I guess that's all the Mods above 😉
Do we get an Avatar
please no...
What's so wrong with an user avatar ?
On other forums it's very useful feature.
Will I get access to my posts circa 2006 as I want to see how much I've regressed?
On other forums it’s very useful feature.
In what way useful? Other than novelty value? Genuine question btw.
I assumed this was the new version, that up there looks good and sounds interesting!
Thanks all involved, happy customer here
That helped to create a fully integrated membership system where everything talks to everything else. But the problem is now the table is so large and everything talks to everything.. all the time – That table of data is accessed with every request.
Oof. Yeah, that explains a lot.
Can you rent a DBA?
In what way useful? Other than novelty value?
It would be useful for me. I struggle to keep track of usernames beyond the most prolific, pictures would stick in my brane better. Back when I was a moderator I had to keep notes to track the problem children.
But a new forum wishlist is probably a separate thread and somewhat premature at this point.
It would be useful for me. I struggle to keep track of usernames beyond the most prolific, pictures would stick in my brane better.
Fair enough 🙂
That Wordle type thing.
It loads but there's no explantion of what the 2 shades of green mean.
Any clue which one means letter in the right place and which one means right letter wrong place?
Hoping the new forum works as planned and that, without the baggage of the old forum, it is easier to run smoothly and introduce new features.
The new forum had better be head & shoulders over this one as my sub just auto renewed again…
Ihave to lok towards another forum, that started about the same time as stw, RetroBike.
A few years back thee site was updated to a new system and it worked near flawlessly from the off.
Mark said 10 million posts needed moving or so, but RB is massively bigger in terms of that. There, there is multiple sections covering MTB,BMX,Road etc, with sub sections for groups both local and international.for sale and wanted for each section. Theres nore subsections than you can shake a stick at
In fact just take a look for yourself and ask why RB works, and STW doesnt.
Incidentally, there is one bloke running all of RB, not a team of ten.
I struggle to keep track of usernames beyond the most prolific, pictures would stick in my brane better.
but you can change your avatar/pic at will so how would that work for you? A username not so easy to change or unless using multiple logins,...unlike yrs ago when you could change user name at will, fun times.