Thanks Bob. Blessings to you and yours as well.

@tiny Merry Christmas and a Happy new Chevrolet Year to you and your family also

@tiny Since you are a monitor I am posting here for your comments.   There are no "recent Posts" showing up in the any of the forums. All are 3 days or more. Is it possible to have NO posts for 3 days now?  As far as I can tell I am logged in.    Dick

Dick

It has been slow. I assume folks are busy with the holidays.

I too have been concerned about the lack of participation. Might we open up a new conversation to address this? I have a suspicion that this is NOT a holiday issue but instead a much deeper problem.

@skidplate A lot of the long time members and site users resent the move to the new site and refuse to participate. I'll reserve my personal opinion about that point of view for a face to face if said meeting ever happens.

I have every confidence that the creation of this new sight was been nothing short of an absolute cluster. They always are. No doubt there was substantial time and expense involved... however like it or not, it is not a terribly inviting place to be. And anyone who's been involved with this task (and I haven't) will find it very hard to see (and acknowledge) those flaws. That is only natural. But there are some flaws that may not be too difficult to fix.

Again, might I suggest opening a new topic and invite some well meaning and constructive criticism? 

Posted by: @skidplate

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Again, might I suggest opening a new topic and invite some well meaning and constructive criticism? 

There were, and still are, a number of threads and posts soon after the new site was created and the old site was closed. Some posts explaining the reason for the change and some with responses to the change. Whether the criticism was "constructive" depends on the reader I suppose. Having said that I don't think there's a specific thread dealing with member's feelings about the change. If you decide to start such a thread I'd recommend it be in the Forum And Website Usage forum.

Ok. That's fair. So then let me ask you this. If there is on occasion a reasonable consciences about a particular issue (or easy fix) with the forum, will the website design team be available to attempt to make said changes... or will this discussion be just a venting session with no real hopes of changing anything?

And I'll qualify all this with, I know I'm not the only person who really wants to see this new forum\website succeed.

@skidplate The forum software is commercial software called WordPress. I assume it was chosen by the board based on cost but that's an assumption since I'm not part of the decision making process and wasn't there when the discussion took place. There have been a number of "bugs" pointed out since we started using the software. A few have been resolved but many have not. (From this point on is hearsay, what I've heard/read from others so it may or may not be factual) We were advised that the old forum software (UBB Threads) was no longer supported and would eventually fail & when it did everything would come to a screeching halt with a massive loss of data. One of the authors of UBB Threads advised the club to abandon the software. I have been told the lack of WordPress software support is due to several reasons. One being that the software is poorly supported by the developers. Another is our webmaster is part time. He's webmaster for a number of clubs and organizations and has only so much time on our "clock" each period. When member Bill Barker was volunteer webmaster and spent hours daily researching and solving issues, sometimes rewriting the software code himself, things happened in a more timely manor. I've been told the club BOD considers the forum, for the most part, to be a low priority when considering the needs of the club. If that last part is factual I strongly disagree, but not to the point where I want to run for the BOD to try to force a change. I'm 76 and have enough irons in the "fire" as it is. I understand your frustration.

I try to chime in on various topics that I feel that I can contribute to.  The old site helped me a great deal when I first got my 1936 GMC and I feel that I should pass the help on to others

@tiny I may be wrong but I believe the old CHAT site using UBB THREADS was OK for chat but not sufficient for all VCCA business and the move to the new software was done to put all VCCA business in one site. That may be working fine from a business point of view but I think it is at the expense of the Chat Site. Possibly incorporating Chat in the new site was more of a monetary decision than anything else.

@steve-d From a Zoom meeting between our webmaster and most of the Moderators: The software change was done because of multiple episodes of extended down time of the site caused by failures of the UBB Threads software. The BOD had to enlist one of the authors of UBB Threads to help fix it. He told us to abandon the software because it's not supported, won't be patched or improved and will eventually fail and not be fixable. UBB is so antiquated that almost nothing on the old site can transfer to modern software architecture. That's why the old site threads are not part of this site. Moving all of that data would have to be done manually, involving thousands of man-hours of labor. The best our small club could afford to do is preserve it in-situ for reference. Yes, the whole site is now on the same site. Whether that was by design or happenstance is unknown to me.

So then I guess "It is what it is". Positive Criticism will just translate to Unhelpful Whining. Seems to be the nature of things these days.

Anyway, just so you know, I believe I speak for a great many of us here, we really appreciate what you do Tiny. You're the best.