Changes to Access World Forums

[Jon]

Access World has been fairly static for a long time, so we are considering some changes.

1. A new Publishing Suite version of vBulletin (our forum software) will become available in the near future. This allows promotion of good posts to articles, maybe have your own blog and more. This will mean that the rest of the site can grow, rather than it being mainly a forum only site.

2. Adverts down the right hand side of the forum, in its own column. They will always be visible, whether looking at the forum index, a section or a post. As you can imagine, our hosting costs are considerable and changing to vBulletin 4.0 will also require an upgraded host.

Let me know what you think.

 

[namliam]

1. This is our current references forum, more or less.
2. Meh, adverts, can imagine the costs/gains aspect but I hope you understand us not beeing to overly happy about it

 

[boblarson]

I think anything that can improve the site will be good. A few OTHER things you might consider:

1. We need more moderators ASAP. Wazz and DCrake are doing a good job but they are the only ones doing it and we have a HUGE hole in time zone coverage. I posted some suggestions (in the VIP area) as to whom might be good moderators and fit into the missing time zone coverage we have. We need them to be able to respond to the spam that has gotten worse lately.

2. Whatever has been slowing the site down needs to be addressed. It has been more frequent than ever that we can try to come to the site and can't get it, or it runs so slow it takes a long time (minutes) to get to one page. And that causes newbies to post the same thread 3, 4, 5 times because they don't have a response like it should.

3. Perhaps you might want to put into place a donation collection area where interested parties can help out with the funds to run the site. The Developer Barn forum does that and I have helped them out with 5 bucks here and 5 bucks there. So, perhaps setting something like that up would help defray your costs and help you be able to do more improvements.

4. SJ is no longer coming here except when absolutely necessary. We need someone (DCrake is the newest Admin) to have his powers to be able to run the site effectively. So, please do that soon so that we can manage to take care of things now that SJ has basically gone in other directions.


So, thanks for popping in Jon and letting us know this. It is helpful to know you're working at making this an even better site as it is one of the best Access support sites on the web (at least in my mind).

 

[davesmith202]

Thanks Bob for your excellent suggestions. We are waiting for the beta version of vBulletin 4.0 publishers suite to come out and might go for it early, without waiting for the most stable release. It is a huge task, since we will have to recreate the entire site structure. But, I think it is the right long term direction for the site.

The benefits are many and I especially like the facility whereby you can promote certain forum posts so they become articles within the main site section. This way, we can cream off some of the best posts and build a really good knowledgebase inside the main site, all categorised.

I am aware of the hosting issues. It is a real pain and we are looking at alternative hosting but with a viable budget. In an ideal world, we could afford the best hosting around, but we try our best. I hope a new host we are looking at will prove more reliable.

 

[Brianwarnock]

One plea.
Please don't do what UA did many years ago and change to a smaller font so that us visually challenged guys have to fiddle with our settings to quick read it. They ignored, ie did not respond to such comments from many users.

Brian

 

[boblarson]

One plea.
Please don't do what UA did many years ago and change to a smaller font so that us visually challenged guys have to fiddle with our settings to quick read it. They ignored, ie did not respond to such comments from many users.

Brian

I'll SECOND that one! I have to run at a lower screen resolution to be able to read things as it is.

And Brian, just as an FYI - You can increase the font size here by just holding your control key down and using your mouse wheel to increase or lower your font size.

 

[Brianwarnock]

And Brian, just as an FYI - You can increase the font size here by just holding your control key down and using your mouse wheel to increase or lower your font size.

Well I'll be damned , aren't things simple when you know how.

Still prefer to have a reasonable font first off tho'

Brian

 

[Rich]

Just curious, why isn't KenHigg a member of this hand picked AWF hand picked members club along with one or two other long term posters?

 

[genesis]

One plea.
Please don't do what UA did many years ago and change to a smaller font so that us visually challenged guys have to fiddle with our settings to quick read it. They ignored, ie did not respond to such comments from many users.

Brian

Can't "CTRL+Plus Sign" and "CTRL+Minus Sign" zoom in and out the browser page so that the font will get bigger or smaller in UA pages?

 

[DCrake]

Bob,

I have been on to Jon about my privelages and I am still awaiting a reply. As a SM or Admin I have suggested to him the following:

1. When banning a user as a spammer and they are still on line that the system automatically boots them out.

2. When looking at the banned user list to have the facility to sort by IP as there are certain IP addresses being used on a pool and by banning the IP it would cut down on the spammers.

I agree that we need more SM's I have people in mind, and ones that have been recommended, however until I get the rights to be able to promote a user my hands are tied.

David

 

[Atomic Shrimp]

...Let me know what you think.

1. Sounds interesting, as far as I am able to understand what you're saying.

2. No objection - I have sidebar ads on my own site (although they always come below content, and are kept separate), and I recognise the importance of ad revenue to webmasters. I hope the ads will be sensibly filtered so as to minimise:

• Flashing or distracting animated images
• Pop-over flash banners that obscure content until dismissed
• Ads containing misleading links purporting to relate to the thread topic

Worst case: anyone can just block the ads if they despise them.


I really hope the new version will permit you to implement some kind of rule-based or bayesian spam filtering - most of the spam we see here could quite easily be trapped by filtering, if the function was there.

 

[Banana]

I really hope the new version will permit you to implement some kind of rule-based or bayesian spam filtering - most of the spam we see here could quite easily be trapped by filtering, if the function was there.

FWIW, the other vBulletin forum I frequent already has effective spam filtering and they're still on older version. I *think* it's either something that needs to be configured or a separate add-on, rather than needing the newest & latest version.

 

[boblarson]

1. When banning a user as a spammer and they are still on line that the system automatically boots them out.

Doesn't matter really. If you ban them, they immediately cannot post and they are actually booted if they refresh their page or try to do any other activity which someone must be logged in to do. Once you ban them they become as if they have not logged in. It is just that they still show in the logged in list until they close their browser, which to me isn't really a big deal because they can't do anything anyway.

2. When looking at the banned user list to have the facility to sort by IP as there are certain IP addresses being used on a pool and by banning the IP it would cut down on the spammers.

I believe you would have this ability if you had the same security rights as SJ.

I agree that we need more SM's I have people in mind, and ones that have been recommended, however until I get the rights to be able to promote a user my hands are tied.

I know and that's why I did mention it here so that hopefully Jon would take note and do what is necessary to give you that ability.

 

[Jon]

I've tweaked a setting for DCrake and PM'ed him. Just waiting for a reply.

 

[boblarson]

I've tweaked a setting for DCrake and PM'ed him. Just waiting for a reply.

Thanks Jon! Great to see you respond so quickly. We've missed you, you know

 

[RuralGuy]

All good suggestions and points Jon. Just my $0.02.

 

[Jon]

Haha, thanks Bob!

 

[Rabbie]

Just curious, why isn't KenHigg a member of this hand picked AWF hand picked members club along with one or two other long term posters?

Ken is a member of AWF VIP if that's what you mean.

 

[boblarson]

Ken is a member of AWF VIP if that's what you mean.

Yep, he was one of the original list (if one were to go back to the thread that shows the list of VIP members)

 

[Fifty2One]

When I notice spam and no one else has reported it I will click on the report button and notify admins of the spam. Then I post a reply to the thread that I have reported it so you di not get inundated. A couple of times I have noticed that the spam post is removed but the 'whistle blower's post is not. If the spam is not the initial post it then loooks like the whistle blower is reporting a genuine post as spam.
So just thought as there is admin focus to this thread I would mention this so that perhaps both should be removed by an admin so then no one gets the wrong idea.