Unless I'm completely missing the how to part of this, I would like to be able to search and have results grouped by post instead of having every reply within the post show up. Not sure if I'm properly explaining

mobile version.

upvote / downvote

a way to tag threads with topics (e.g. swim drills, run shoes, doper of the day, popcorn thread, etc...)

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I'd be keen to have a feature in which I could more easily ignore posts from the nut jobs and see the posts from the brighter members of the forum. One method would be to have a feature permitting users to annotate user names, visible only to the user who made the annotation. It would be even better if threads didn't move up to the top for me just because one of the nuts posted. One could imagine several methods of implementing such a feature. Even just setting up the forum such that you get updates when chosen members post would be grand.

Also I'm rather opposed to like/up vote/down vote systems.

I actually like it quite a lot already. Other forums I visit (not triathlon) could improve by emulating this forum, particularly navigation through the different categories, the option to see 25 posts or all of them, the way unread messages are flagged, etc. It's a very thoughtfully laid out site.

If fixed size means that large photos don't make the paragraphs ridiculously wide, I'm all for that.

Mobile might be nice but I hope I wouldn't use it too much.

No idea why we'd need a like button -- what function does it serve?

Thanks for asking, and thanks for an already-great site.

Steve B.

enhanced search functionality. eg, the BarryP run training posts would presumably have a lot of likes, so if you wanted to find good run training posts, but didn't know to search for "BarryP run training", you'd be able to come up with what other people find the most useful.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

"If fixed size means that large photos don't make the paragraphs ridiculously wide, I'm all for that."

we fight the overwide photos. and the people who type characters in that over-widen the table. we've written some code to try to fix that. keeping the images to a fixed width, which means they deploy, widen the forum table, and then redeploy smaller.

but, basically, yes, we'll try to make the fixed width override everything that might widen the forum table. that bugs the spit out of me as well.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

An "Ignore" feature so people can block out trolls or other members that they just find annoying.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

"Unless I'm completely missing the how to part of this, I would like to be able to search and have results grouped by post instead of having every reply within the post show up. Not sure if I'm properly explaining"

This from above. Maybe two ways to search. One that returns the threads something was mentioned in and one that returns the posts something was mentioned in.

Or maybe a way to exclude the subject line from the search if you want. If someone mentions the search term in the subject line, every post in that thread will be returned even when only 2 out of 500 actually talk about it.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

You mean a Bull_Winkle / TheForge button??

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

What? Did someone say something?

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

I'd like to see some notifications like when someone quotes you, replys to your post, etc. +1 on the improved search. Searching right now is a huge pain and largely ineffective.

there already is notification when someone replies to your post. search: yeah, we'll see what we can do about that.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

- Mobile version. It doesn't have to be an app, just a website that scales well on smaller displays. There are frameworks that can help you do that (bootstrap for example)

- Fixed width would be terrible. We live in a world where web site can be accessed from all kind of devices, of all sizes. Let the user decide what size is best for him, and scale correctly to that size.

- Do not allow "replies." Replying to a specific post makes the thread hard to follow if the forum is in "flat" mode, which I would guess is what most use. Even worse is that you can't just post a new message in a thread; you have to reply to someone, even when your message is not a response to a specific post.

Also, rather than developing your own forum, you might consider moving to an existing solution like phpBB. It probably does all you want (search, mobile version, compatibility with third party sites and apps...) and more. Migrating your data could be a challenge however.

tapatalk compatiblity...

https://tapatalk.com

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ishi no ue ni san nen | Perseverance will win in the end. | Blog | @nebmot | Strava | Instagram |

I would like the buttons for the different forums at the bottom of the page instead of the top because...I don't like scrolling all.the.way.up.to the top of the page once I'm at the end of a thread.

This truly counts as a first world problem, but I really would like it.

twomarks

I'll echo improving the search function to just get threads, not every post within the thread. Other than that though, I have to say that ST is extremely interesting and very addictive. I really appreciate ST being around:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Plus whatever on a mobile version/app. ST on a smart phone is somewhat painful

You're going to have two broad categories here I think (with obvious cross over) being 1. features, 2. UX.

The decisions on features (ad banners, better search, like button, etc.) are going to inform whether you stick with the existing forum software or look for an alternative. Yeah migrating data usually sucks, but it's almost always possible. There is also no reason you can't bolt any of those features on to the existing forum software assuming you are hosting it yourself. They likely have some sort of plugin architecture?

The UX is something you could do regardless of the above. I am reasonably sure this forum has a template engine so you could likely reskin the existing forum in a more contemporary way that would address UX issues, like a responsive design (looks/works good on any device), rogue image sizes, etc.

In terms of what I'd like to see personally I think an update on the front end would be great but frankly it works as is for the most part. There is almost something "old school cool" about it ;) Surfing on the phone is the only major inconvenience and even that has improved with larger format screens recently. People with worse eyesight may disagree on that front.

I understand the irony in this post, but this ^^

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ZONE3 - We Last Longer

The ability to embed Youtube clips. Have links be active on the first paste without having to take two steps to make them active (ie paste the link and then click on the little chain icon and repaste).

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My business-eBodyboarding.com

Quote:

An "Ignore" feature so people can block out trolls or other members that they just find annoying.

I will second this and also add that an "Ignore Thread" or "Ignore post" button that basically takes a thread or post out of the reverse chronological main display would be helpful. Lot's of times, once I've read through the gyst of a topic I'm not following, it would help me see the posts I may be interested in sooner or easier if I could basically tell the forum "don't show me that one again."

In terms of upvote/downvote I rarely find that function useful in other forums or comment functions I use. Maybe ST would make better use of it given the quality of the members, but it usually doesn't assist in illuminating the most pertinent/useful posts.

I also second the ability to post to a discussion without necessarily having to reply to a post in the discussion.

I personally prefer to read chronologically. I loathe the way Disqus replies within a thread wind up taking things in a very different direction. So I would maintain a lot of the current functionality myself. I don't mind Liking; but upvote/downvote within a thread tends to ruin the way I consume message boards. Yes, this means Reddit pisses me off, despite its inherent value in delivering user content.

Mobile would be a big plus. If you need some developers to put that all in place for you, my agency could use some work.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

+1

Meaning I wouldn't have to see the posts, quoted text, or any new threads started by select users. There is a wealth of information available here, but sometimes sifting through intentionally obtuse postings is almost unbearable.

On the flip-side, a "Favorites" feature for others that post useful material.

.

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You mean an email notification? If there's a notification center inside the forum I don't know about it. I'm talking about like for PM's that show up at the top - somewhere I can go to see everything relevant to me. Does that exist?

This is social media. These forums happen to pre-date myspace, friendster, facebook, and twitter, but it is a social media site. So, look to what today's successful social media sites are doing and cherry-pick popular commonalities.

Off the top of my head, I think you are being hurt by lack of:

1. mobile. Personally, I don't care, but trust me, fewer and fewer people are sitting at a computer with a big monitor and a keyboard, and that trend is not going to reverse
2. the ability to @user tag a user.
3. Like or up/down buttons. Sure, getting rid of extraneous "+1" posts is nice, but the real benefit comes from being able to filter on this data once you start accumulating it. Want to look at the most popular posts? Filter out troll posts. See users who have the best up:total post ratio or down:total post ratio. Etc. You can learn a lot from this data if only you had it.
4. facebook/twitter integration. Give the ability for someone to one-button click a thread or post onto his wall or feed, and all of a sudden you've got a potential of thousands of non-st users who are coming to your site to view the thread, register, and then respond.
5. threaded responses. so many threads get derailed, because you can't respond to a post and have that response be a separate thread under that post. Facebook allows just a single level of response threading, but just that one level depth would go a long way for you.
6. embedded youtube videos (should be easy)
7. auto hyperlinking of urls (should be easy)

"You mean an email notification?"

yes

"If there's a notification center inside the forum I don't know about it."

that we don't do. as of now. i'll look around for examples of that.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Should have been more clear. A notification center inside the forum would be awesome. I don't like getting my inbox filled up with notification-like email especially for a site that I visit regularly anyway. Something like we have for PM's would be perfect if it had a range of different things that you could be notified about depending on your preferences!

As long as their is an option to ignore any post in which any derivation of the phrase "I am putting you on ignore." is used!

I see that type of playground bullshit on forums that have ignore buttons.

+1. Imagine all the extra views the site will get while people are sat on the crapper

Yeah, agreed. Put someone on ignore if you want but just do it and don't say anything about it.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

I'm putting you on ignore!

Auto watched threads, love this on other forums. If you reply it automatically goes into your watched list. For work stuff this makes my mornings quite simply. Click on the forums and watched threads it goes right to all the ones I was involved in the day before to make sure if i need to follow up I get those first.

Also maybe a way to quote or multi quote. The auto multi quote can get really annoying and seems to cause lots of people to screw up the quoting. If you can just reply with a quote to the most recently one or quote the chain if needed makes it easier and I know other forums have this.

vbulletin does both of these, I'm sure you have contacts that use it but if you want to speak to someone at a massive forum that uses it let me know I can get you some contact info. No clue how porting over to something like that would be handled.

Search would be cleaner if it gave you the single thread not the individual posts. I was trying to find something regarding a model of paddles the other day, pages and pages and pages of the "month swim" threads had to be scrolled through to find anything. I Was looking for something in the classifieds and same thing where several pages of results were the same year old classified ad showing you every single post.


In regards to ignore, I have never used it and never plan to, so I won't say don't give other people a feature that they want. But I think with the limited moderation here (good) it can be worse then sites who actually moderate a lot. Seems counter intuitive but it isn't. On sites that moderate a lot the trolls don't last long, if you ignore someone they are usually gone in short order. Since moderation here is limited you might get someone who is around for a while, you ignore them then 6 months later they are still here and actually contributing but you are missing it.

You have chosen to ignore the user "Kevin in MD".

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

Agreed. It makes searching very difficult. Also would it be possible for searching to NOT search people's signatures?

+1

In no particular order:
- mobile version
- improved search
- auto hyperlinking

Thanks for taking the time.

+1 to #3 up above. Sometimes (many times) I just want to "Like" a comment without having to create a reply. #4 would also be awesome. I think also having a mobile-specific forum site would be great.

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http://dontletitdefeatyou.blogspot.com

I don't know if wholesale change is included under "upgrade," but the SoylentNews/slashcode - most famous for use on slashdot.org - is second-to-none. And free.

Ads - no problem.
Mobile - no problem.

It also might help your staff in moderation. It allows for members of "good standing" to flag abusive or inappropriate posts through the use of "moderator points."

Just a thought. As a slashdot contributor, I find it a phenomenal forum interface.

Isn't it easier to migrate to something fully featured like XenForo? You get basically everything people are asking for plus easy integration with the major social media platforms.

Dont change the colors. I like this format.

I also would like to have seaech function turn up a single thread, not every response.

hide threads you want to ignore...

More articles from you Dan!

Without blowing smoke up your ass, you are one of the gems of the tri world. Not only are you the genesis point for what we almost all swim in and ride on, you have a long and varied participation in the sport/industry. You've already forgotten more about tri that virtually all of us will ever know. You are a fountain of knowledge and getting more of that written down so we can voraciously devour it, is a must.

None of us are getting any younger. I believe it's your moral responsibility to spread your wealth of knowledge as much as possible before any of us fall off our perches. It doesn't hurt that I pearticularly like your writing style.

so dude, hurry up and get writing.

(and a like button and a mobile version so I can read ST while I cycle commute to and from work. I'd much rather read ST than listen to Britney Spears on my daily commute).

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TriDork

"Happiness is a myth. All you can hope for is to get laid once in a while, drunk once in a while and to eat chocolate every day"

+ X.

This was my top pick and it was the second post. I suppose I should count the number of times people have endorsed this idea, but I am too lazy to scroll through the rest of the responses.

My 2 cents. Please don't change the graphics much. I like the current crisp presentation. Contrast - every new version of a Microsoft product that comes out looking fuzzier and cuter with every edition (that also hides features I used to be able to use easily under some obscure new menu structure). Avoid gimmicky graphics like gradient fills behind text, unnecessary white space around menu headings that only serve to make menu headings larger and reduce the usable - *readable* - portion of the screen. There are some new program iterations out there that take my entire computer screen and convert the window I can actually type into to a slim 1-2 inches at the bottom --> please don't do that. Oh, and scroll-over pop-ups - I friggin' hate those. (I can read the menu just fine, I don't need flashing text to appear that reiterates what the darn menu heading says or worse, covers up something else I may have been trying to look at.)

Love what you do here, keep it up!

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To breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive.

^This. Ability to search and only have the thread show up instead of all the posts within that thread.

Also would like the ability to search within a thread. There are some threads (eg the speedconcept thread) that have tons of information in it but have 50+ pages in it. Instead of having to go page by page to find the information, you could search the whole thread and it takes you right to the post.

I frequent other forums that have both of these abilities.

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blog

how would you like search organized? at the bottom of every thread are:

previous thread, watch thread, print thread, view threaded, back to forum. no reason why we couldn't put search thread on that list, on the bar at the end of every thread. and we could, i imagine, put that bar at the top of every thread as well. right now we have watch thread and print thread at the top of every thread. who prints the thread? maybe search thread is a better option up there.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

great suggestions. thanks. we're going to look into them all. one thing, on threaded responses:


we do have the ability to either view as "flat" or as threaded. is there a specific way you'd like the heirarchy of responses displayed?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Definitely youtube embed

and the ability to post a photo directly into the post instead of having to use tinypic, etc.

More and more people are using their mobile devices. ST has to adapt also.
A mobile friendly site/app will make it a lot more user friendly. It will be better for your advertiser since their adds can be seen.
(I have no problem with ads, something have to pay the bill).

A Mobile version that scales properly on smaller displays. There are various frameworks out there that do this today. Don't reinvent the wheel. Take advantage of what's currently available.

  
I like it as it is.

Thanks for asking.

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Once, I was fast. But I got over it.

1. Ability to post pics without the whole TinyPic adventure. Just copy, paste and go.

2. Improved search function (as previously mentioned, results condensed by thread).

Rock on,

Scott

The other forum I spend time on is Ravelry.com, which has a lot of smart interactive features. It's a bunch of knitters who want to show their work, so it's very visual in a way I think Slowtwitch could also be.

It's easy to post photos, earburn someone to let them know they're being mentioned, it's got more than a like button -- the feedback choices are interesting, educational, agree, disagree (!) and love.

Take a look, it's free, you can even find me by the same username there, SharonMcN.

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Sharon McN
@IronCharo
#TeamZoot
Clif Bar Pace Team 2003-2018

I'd like a new color.. I'm over blue.. that's the color of the skies here all the bloody time.. how about a nice mustard tone?

Hope this will prove invaluable in your upgrades ;)

+1

This will also make posting much easier on mobile.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

I think the most useful features aside from mobile is what Kyle pointed out. Integrating an ST tread or post into a person's facebook wall and thereby push to all his friends through their feeds. This would be the biggest opportunity to engage a larger community. You do it from front page, but you can't off the forum, but the forum has more active/dynamic content than the front page. It can, however, work both ways in the sense that negative threads that might stay seen mainly in the bowels of the forum get pushed over the facebook-web so it can be two edged. It's like opening up the good and the bad inside the family house to the entire world. Overall though, it will be more good than bad in my view.

I hit those mostly on my Android and it works mostly fine.
Some forums I have been on reduce too much functionality with their mobile versions. Sorfy, don't know what software those are.

I would like to see easier ways to add photos and links from mobile, and reply to threads instead of posts.

Mostly, I would like more categories/or subforums. Lumping all of trip into one category is a bit much. Maybe categories such as Training, Race Reports, Beginner/Newbie, Rules, Equipment.
Even on classified could use some categories.

That being said, I'm just one small vote and you need to do what is best for you, your budget (including potential ad revenue) and your desires for the forum.

Direct picture upload

I like the standard site on my blackberry passport and at the moment don't see the need for a mobile version...I do however wish that every thread that I open does not open midway down the page. While not a massive flaw it does get old real quick.

Search function is pretty shit too.

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http://RoadID.com/...te/4HC4V-TAFQ9XPJDTX

+1

I'd like individual subforums for swim, bike and run.

I have now switched to threaded display mode, and this is largely what I had in mind.

Now, a threaded mode where all posts were loaded into the page and just made visible/invisible by clicking on the expand triangle would be nice, rather than a full page refresh required to view each post and a limit of viewing just a single post at a time. That would combine the best of both flat and threaded worlds.

But, I apologize for requesting a feature that is more or less already present.

To this point, Dan, I am sure you do not want to get into the image hosting game and I don't blame you. However, that does not mean you cannot easily have an upload button that uploads an image elsewhere (unbeknownst to the user), gets a reference to it, and then you use that reference in the forum post. Voila, you have taken away the step of your end user having to manually host their image elsewhere and reference to it.

http://tinypic.com/developer.php

Two requests:

• The ability to embed html5 video (example) They're much, much smaller than .gif files.
• Pictures/avatars next to users names. I have a hard time associating screen names with what people write--but can easily associate a profile picture with what they write. The value of posts is often related to the credibility of the writer. But a lot of times I can't remember what a certain user name has written before. A profile pic would help.

If you're considering a like button, I caution about unintended consequences, especially if threads can be sorted that way. While seemingly innocuous and useful, such a button will fundamentally change the forum. Currently, valued information "rises to the top" (so to speak) by the credibility of the writer, as supported by long-time forum users.

The "like" button will change that so opinions valued by the otherwise-silent majority are favored. This will likely be an entirely different subset of slowtwitchers. This may or may not be a welcome change--your call--just be aware that it will be a huge change. Spend a few days on reddit to see how group think tends to win out in such scenarios.

Mobile version and a simplified means to post pics.

Glad you asked. I have a comprehensive list of changes that need to me made around here, I will send you the complete list via email. Here are some of the hi-lites:

1) Pros provide no benefit to me on this forum. Get rid of them.

2) There are a couple of people I want to get rid of. I propose you get rid of Dave C, Dev Paul, EricMulk and JCTri. As tribute for these 4, you could bring back Paulo. Or alternatively you could sacrifice Thomas Gerlach with the 4. Hmmm, I'll leave that up to you. (I realize that by including Dave on the list the other 3 might not know I am joking. I am joking.).

3) Can we make Thursdays Aussie free. Give me something to look forward to once per week.

4) Every time I get in a disagreement with someone I look them up on Athlinks to find out if I am faster than them. This takes too much time. Can you just require race results as part of your profile.

5) If you start a disagreement with "I just don't understand," you should be banned. No shit you don't understand, that is why you are wrong.

6) Kind of in concert with #2 -> I think we should have weekly banning trials. Keep people on their toes. Someone will have to be the judge. It is with great reluctance that I will wear that crown.

7) Force people to use capitalization.

Okay, look for the email...

i'd like more Lance threads. so more Lance. that would be good.

thank you.

on my list

awesome. killed me. it LITERALLY killed me.

Hit "Home" if you are using a windows keyboard.

No clue if iPhone or Android or Mac has something like this

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Well, sure, if you want to do it the easy way;)

twomarks

nice job at the jingle bells half marathon.

Not saying it can't(shouldn't) be added but this actually drives away outside site traffic because on every forum I know with this type of photo format it requires logging in. That means when someone google image searches and sees a photo and tries to go to the site they cannot see beyond the thumbnail unless they are a member. There are dozens of sites that I just won't go to when looking for stuff since I know they are local images I can't see unless I register. So it may over time slowly increase your membership but it can reduce page hits. It also puts the hosting demand on the site itself which adds cost.

never used tinypic but imgur is no more steps to host then direct forum image hosting in my experience.

My only suggestion:

Bring back the hotties thread

Fixed width and mobile version are actually opposing options :) If it is built right and uses a responsive layout as opposed to a fixed width it becomes viewable across all devices/screen sizes.

Search is in need of improvement. Rather than grouped by posts when you search it should be grouped by thread and then have the ability to search within a thread as an advanced option.

Like/dislike, up/down vote are interesting but of less value I think.

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Rodney
TrainingPeaks | Altra Running | RAD Roller
http://www.goinglong.ca

"Fixed width and mobile version are actually opposing options :) If it is built right and uses a responsive layout as opposed to a fixed width it becomes viewable across all devices/screen sizes."

i might be wrong, but what i envision is the identification of your platform - mobile or desktop - and then the presentation of a set of templates that displays the data. so, i don't see why a fixed width - or maybe better a max width, which i've seen a number of times in reader forums - can't be deployed when our server senses a desktop operating system. then a set of mobile templates deploys when we see iOS or android, with a link that allows the standard display.

what i really want to deploy - i try not to keep secrets or harbor ulterior motives from you all - is wallpaper ads on our reader forum. when we can't do, because it's not a fixed width. even if we could have such deployment occur when the forum is at "standard" width, but that width can be reduced, and the wallpaper ad disappears, then that works for me. and of course wallpaper doesn't deploy on mobile devices.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I get it, that will work but it tends to be a lot more work to develop and maintain multiple templates based on device/screen size. Responsive layouts usually accommodate a desktop and tablet/mobile view. Sensing a desktop OS will get harder and harder as OSes merge from separate mobile, tablet and desktop versions and going by screen size will further complicate things when you almost literally have everything from 4.5" to 27" screens and everything in between.


Mobile apps are even a bigger headache when you look at the sheer number of devices and OS versions. iOS/iPhone/iPad is pretty standard but even there you have a few screen sizes. Android is much worse with over a dozen OS versions and Windows/Blackberry leads to either not supporting a subset of users or paying a lot for apps that will see little use.


Look at this example, its a Wordpress theme but I think you'll see what I mean. Load it full screen and then slowly narrow your browser width. You'll see it snap to a tablet view and then to a mobile view as it gets narrower.

http://demos.cyberchimps.com/responsivepro/

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Rodney
TrainingPeaks | Altra Running | RAD Roller
http://www.goinglong.ca

ah, man, that i like. one set of templates, platform independent, and the determiner is just the width of the browser window. i dig that. plus it actually works with my primary want, which is not a fixed width but a max width, and wallpaper ads deploy when the forum page is at its max width (970px), and just disappears when the browser is skinnied up. i shot off a question earlier this morning to our ad server software support guy asking if we could do that very thing. we'll see what he says. that would solve a lot of problems.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Easier photo upload and mobile version-thanks

One thing I would love to see that I see on other websites is the ability to hover your cursor over a post title and see the first couple of sentences of the post, so you know if it's something you want to read or not. (rather than having to click some vague title and see what the post is about)

Thanks, Dan!

A "reply to OP" button at the end of a thread.

Dan, is this forum based on any underlying, proprietary forums code base, or is it all custom code?

I'm sure you don't want to unravel the onion too far, but this thing has been around roughly as-is since 2002 and the html is coded like late 90s. If you're going to make major changes, I'd go all-in and get rid of html tables for formatting, get some javascript and ajax going on so that there is some level of functionality without everything being a full page refresh with a server-and-back. Honestly, I would start from the database and see if there weren't a way to use your existing database and the entire UI from an open-sourced modern forums UI. It may not be possible or it may be too much work and too much risk, but if you're looking at this upgrade being your big one to cover you for the next decade, that's what I'd look into.

1) Mobile

2) Improved Search function. Maybe included an option that only shows the thread that has your search criteria instead multiple posts from a single thread. Sometimes I'm searching for a thread and its buried on page 75 because there are some many post hits from he same thread.

"is this forum based on any underlying, proprietary forums code base, or is it all custom code?"

it started as an off-the-shelf forum, built in perl, built many years ago. but, LOTS of customization since then. i am sure the dbase is able to migrate to a new platform, but there are a lot of things the reader doesn't see built into this forum that i'm unwilling to part with. not until a moderator wrangles a large forum does he see what kinds of things he must deal with on a day to day basis. moderating tools that if known and available to moderators of other forums they would leap for joy. but we had to build them custom. so, it's not all just about the user experience.

that established, i suspect there may well be an integrating of new applets and plug-ins into the existing platform. i don't think we'll want to write everything new ourselves. also, there is functionality in this forum software you're using that are here, sitting, idle, that we have just turned off years ago and we can turn back on again. when i look at reader forums that various slowtwitchers admire, they're not very different than this one, they just have "accessory" features, many of which this forum has. if what people mostly want are improved search, that's going to be a lot easier for us to build than for us to buy.

to me, the big thing is mobile. how best to do that? also, i really don't see the FB and twitter post or thread share options on reader forums. to me that sound great. i'm all for that, as you can imagine. and i'll absolutely integrate that. i just haven't seen it yet.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I manage another forum, one that's larger than ST, and it's been my experience that locally hosting attachments has an upside of (significantly) reducing the number of dead links/images in threads.

People purge the pictures on image hosting sites, but don't necessarily cleanup their attachments in a forum profile. That keeps content/attachments usable for a much longer period of time.

in addition to the LR, could you create a room for the atheists to post their opinions on why they're right and everyone else is wrong?

- Tapatalk (but that would require changing the whole board system, correct?). Otherwise - mobile friendly.

- The ability to reply to a thread without replying to a specific post, or by replying to OP by default. People now just click on the previous post to reply, and that generates a "someone replied to you" email which is often unrelated to what you just posted.

I'm not surprised. There aren't many software projects that are standing after 13 years, so I sympathize with you there. You've got a lot of custom in there, but you've also got 13 year old code and technology to deal with. I think about some of the crap I worked on in the late 90s and early 00s, and cringe at the thought of still having to maintain that today. if netscape then....elseif ie4 then.... ugh.

I'm no forums guru, so am not going to do your comp intel on social media integration in forums. But, regardless of what others do, if quick and easy ability for a user to share a post to his facebook wall or twitter feed is helpful, it should be a piece of cake. Just add little f and t buttons in the left part of each post (where #3 of 20 sits) that link to: https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=[post link] or https://twitter.com/share?url=[post link]

One member mentioned their preference for ignoring the nut jobs and their desire to see posts by members whom they respect.

To build on that idea and your idea to include 'likes':

• Providing a running tally of all-time 'likes' next to each users name/handle


• one tally for the main message board
• a separate tally for the Classified section, which would provide buyers/sellers with a bit more confidence when dealing with members
• Allow members to filter the message boards by these tallied 'likes', by day (default)/week/month/year/all time/custom date range

---

wovebike.com | Wove on instagram

This! !! The rest is fine

How about the ability to hover over the thread title and see the first few lines of the post instead of opening the whole thread?

Agreed. Making the site tapatalk compatible takes care of your mobile support without having to dumb down the main site to allow it to function on phones/tablets.

I'd also like to be the lone voice in the wilderness that doesn't want to see the site artificially restricted to an arbitrary width. I have an ultrawidescreen monitor and it is irritating to navigate to various sites and have them rendered as a narrow strip in the middle of my monitor with tonnes of wasted, empty space on either side. The site width should scale responsively.

---

===
"I eased off a bit. It never feels like you are easing off. More like you just stake out your place in the pain cave and sit there rather than venturing deeper inside..." -- Rappstar

I'd like to see a quick reply space at the bottom of each page, something like this:



I'm not sure, but does that require a change to a PHP format?

I also support a more robust search function as others have mentioned, as well as "+1", "Upvote" or "like" buttons that promote helpful threads and posts.

---

the world's still turning? >>>>>>> the world's still turning

I'd second this proposal, especially when it comes to classifieds

Another vote for a mobile version.

My Top Five

* Ignore

* YouTube/Vimeo

* Avatars

* Hottie Thread

* Mobile

Thanks

---

"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

a better search function & online tutorials on how to use it.

easily embed pics. Maybe you host them or maybe you have them hosted elsewhere. But as I think about this, having to go through the trouble to host it elsewhere probably drives down the BS pics that would get posted.

AJthomas mentioned some great features, especially #6. I also volunteer to help select those who get voted off the island. I disagree with no Aussie Thursday. I like Dev even though I disagree with Dev 42.7% of the time (And yes I used the search function to figure that out Motherfuckers!), plus he was voted 2x ST poster of the year so that should give him some immunity.

mobile version.

figure out a 1 click way to post a FB/twitter
Benefit: draw in 100's to 1000's to 10,000's new users.
Drawback: many new dumbasses asking if I should use a disc wheel or which wet suit is best

SOLUTION: Automatically ban any user who posts a a should I use a disc wheel or which wet suit is best type question. Write some code so certain things get the user automatically banned....for life.

make me a moderator. Give me unfettered power to ban as I see fit. I promise you I'll probably not abuse this power too much nor too often after the first 30 days (you MFers better learn to use the search function though)

---

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Ability to add youtube clips

Add quick reply at the bottom of a thread

Make it easier ti post pics

Other than that I think the site works well

No! I am vehemently opposed to mobile sights. Frustrate me and just ruin websites for me. Unless it was *superb* you would probably lose half my visits. I'm at school a lot.

1) Search returns threads, not posts
2) Better spam - avoidance (captcha when creating new thread)
3) Easier image & video embedding
4) Prevent people from writting inside a Quote-Tag

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if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

 
I like that 'Triathlon Babes' Facebook page. Can we get a forum devoted entirely to hot chics?

And the 'like' button too in the forum.

Ohhh and if I come on here pissed of a night & make some dumb-arse comment I wanna be able to delete it whether on or not some twit in Texas has quoted it.

;)

I am pretty certain that we have received admission by silence on #6 so we should go ahead and plan on starting this up soon.

And okay, Dev can stay.

just being able to reply to the thread instead of having to reply to a post/reply would be nice
along with navigation buttons on the bottom of the list of replies

---

-

http://www.thetrinerd.com

Please don't add a like button. If someone cares enough to comment on a post, continue to make them write something. I know that sometimes people respond simply with "x2" or "agree" or "like" but it takes more effort to do that than to press a like button. Thanks for asking.

You can count me among those who, despite what else gets implemented, would at least like an option to keep posts in chronological order. I know that likes, etc can make certain things rise to the top, but when replies are out of order it makes it difficult to follow a train of thought (especially when those trains are so often easily derailed)

Mobile reading platform would be great.

I agree that the search function stands to be improved.

"2) Better spam - avoidance (captcha when creating new thread)"

to better explain about this: a captcha would not help. the ONLY thing that would help is if moderators read every post prior to its publication. there are, probably, 8 or 10 spammers every day who register to post on slowtwitch. they take the time to register, fill out a user profile, and then launch their spam. they go thru the same process you do, receiving a validation email, validating their account, and posting. you think a captcha is going to stop them?

i large percentage of my work as a moderator is deleting the accounts of spammers, and then carving out IP ban workarounds for legitimate members (we actually do have readers in india, china, indonesia, etc., where these spammers are located).

this is just the job of a moderator. and this is why i'm not eager to adopt a new off-the-shelf platform, because as much spam as you see, it's a lot less spam than you would see were there not certain custom functions built into this current platform just to help quickly identify spammers.

the spam you see is the spam that occurs in the middle of my night. it is now 8am as i am typing this. 8am pacific time, which is where i am. in the last half-hour the overnight spam got ejected off the site. readers on the west coast of the U.S. don't see much spam, but europeans, and east coasters, got to their computers in the morning before i got to mine, so they see it before i can get to it.

it's just a fact of life that the workday of a pakistani or chinese spammer is the opposite of my workday, so their spam is often visible for several hours until i get to it. yes, i could have a moderator in, say, australia, or the middle east, who might close the overnight gap. it just depends on how much that overnight spam bothers you guys.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I'd like to win stuff just for reading/ posting.


Also, perhaps a user quality control feature to make it easier to find individuals with a higher 'trust' rating (or something like that).

---

---

---

Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

Yes, please!

---

____________________________________________
Don Larkin
Reach For More
http://www.reachformore.fit/
USAT Lvl1 Coach, NSCA-CPT, NASM-CPT, BS Exercise Science

• like/dislike or +1 button/option
• integrated social media buttons
• Some kind of user ranking based on like/dislike or similar. With an emphasis or reward for completing one's profile and listing one's real name on said profile. Many will argue a key "want" on forums is to remain anonymous. I would argue this anonymity is the root source of most forum issues and trolls. So, you don't have to list your real name but in some way you get benefit or credibility for doing so.
• Some way to warn that a new thread might be a redundant topic before being created. Try to cut down on numerous threads dealing with a single topic.

---

Jimmy Archer

I think something you really need is a sarcasm-meter. I can help Jordan write a little algorithm that calculates the likelihood of the post being sarcastic, based on specific words, who posted, etc.
This would help many discussions ;-)

Oh, sure, like you know what you're doing. ;)

-Jot

eliminating anonymity is a great idea. You can have a user name but you need a real name linked to your profile.

I'll agree with Jimmy that if you can call out user12345 for being a dick by calling him by his real name, say Tommy vs user 12345, that might reduce some of the trolling/flaming that occurs from time to time.

---

Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

"Like"

Can we (meaning you) put all the "official" bike threads into their own category, like the tri forum, women's, notices, lavender room, bikes....

I'm building a P5 and it helps to keep going through the Official P5 thread for clues and tips, but sometimes it gets buried for a few pages.

Also a "Jump To..." page would be awesome. 75 pages of the P5 thread is a pain to get back to a specific page you are trying to get to. Especially when I'm on page 35.

jump to, maybe we can do that. we are not going to split the main forum into more sub forums. we've polled that and we repeatedly get "no subforums."

now, if there were a way to actually give everybody what he/she wants, then yes. so, if there were a way to give people the "everything" classifieds forum but to also FORCE the person initiating the thread to select certain boxes (bike, run, new, used, consumer, commercial) then we could display based on a sort that the reader initiates.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Being linked to a real name on a profile you use for work like you is a great thing. But being public on a forum you use for work and then having hobbies that you use forums for as well can actually create problems in my experience. I'm public on many forums for work, people on unrelated hobby forums that semi cross over have figured out it is me and just because they like a competitors product (fkn industry where customers start rivalries that don't exist between the actual companies) will go out of their way to start crap. Seen it happen to others as well.

I don't like the idea of being anonymous, but after 15+ years of being in forums with a very public profile it is nice to have places you can "hide" without your work stuff being dragged over. Being anonymous does cause some drama sometimes but it can create it too.

It would be nice to have an expanded "reply" option, so that people who wanted to reply could have a choice of "reply to original post" or "reply to latest post viewed" (or something like that). I can't count the number of times I've been "replied to," when the person meant to reply to the original poster, and not to me. I've also seen a lot of confusion within threads from people who thought posts were directed toward them, later to realize they weren't the focus of the post -- the confusion stemmed from the person to whom the "reply" was sent.

A functional and enhanced search engine.

Also, the ability to save posts to a personal list for future reference.

A notification/watch list for users of your choice. I always want to see what AndyF and Damon have to say on any non-lavender related subjects.

• Like button
• User's accrued likes
• Hover over thread title for first few lines of text
• Multi-quote
• Crazy idea for mobile version (as an aside, non-zoomable/non-pannable fixed width makes me homicidal): tabbed browsing on desktop browsers changed my life. Tabbed browsing on mobile browsers still ain't great (can't ctrl-click quickly to spawn a bunch of tabs to read later). Perhaps this exists already, and perhaps it's a dumb idea, but being able to tag a whole bunch of threads, then have a "Read All" button that either spawns them all in tabs or even serves them all in a custom page would be sweet. I don't 'twitch from any mobile devices because the old model of "follow link -> read -> go back -> repeat" just doesn't work for me anymore.

---

Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

The jump to would be fabulous! I also agree that this forum could use more divisions.

"Also, the ability to save posts to a personal list for future reference."

i have a question about this, and this i guess leads me to veer into a different area, the user profile. that seems to me the logical place to archive saved posts or threads. but we don't get a lot of use of the features now in the user profile.

for example, one feature almost every one of you needs, and would be very well served to use, is the "bike fit manager." it's a place for you to archive your fit coordinates. the reasons for doing this are legion, including my ability, when you ask a question about fit here on the forum, to go and see at a glance the context in which you're asking that question.

so, i just wonder whether you would actually use this function you're asking for if we built it.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Do you use gmail, Dan?

I would like a better training log. I used the Athlete's Diary for years, but when I switched to an ipad, it crashed about once a year and I'd lose everything. I tried using the ST log but it's too basic. I now use the Beginner Triathlete log and it is also limited but it's better than the ST log. We need a better training log.

---

---------------------------
''Sweeney - you can both crush your AG *and* cruise in dead last!! 😂 '' Murphy's Law

right after forum upgrades we're completely redoing our training log.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Bike fit manager - I personally wouldn't use it but that is because I have my fit data recorded in an excel sheet for my road and TT bike. I could see it as helpfull for users asking about their fit... the first action asked of them would be to measure and record their fit data into the bike fit manager.

The user profile would be a logical place to have the "saved threads/posts" feature, I guess bookmarks would be the more accurate term for this. I might also be neat to be able to share your bookmarks or be able to sort/group them. There is so so so much knowledge on the forum and no real way to access it easily or logically.

Don't particularly care about like buttons, but I LOVE your idea for the mobile browsing. I too have become addicted to tabbed browsing and it's the biggest reason that I almost never visit ST on my phone or tablet. I also can't stand the tap, read for a bit, back up, repeat dance.

But, in order from what I've seen so far:

1. Improved search
2. Better mobile experience like described (and PLEASE don't make the page non-zoom/non-pannable above all else)
3. Better limiting of super sized image widths
4. The first few lines of text of a thread from the main index (by hovering, I guess)
5. Better way to see on the thread listing which threads have new/unread posts in them, I still can't figure out what the little icons are supposed to mean.

But overall, I mostly like the forums they way they are.

I third this proposal. A trip reports category would definitely be interesting and usfeul as well.

How much can we collectively pay you to not change a thing?

Im not sure what you advertising strategy is but if I was the owner of this site I know what I'd be doing. To yield the best profit from your inventory (which is premium inventory for Tri market) I would be preparing for the mobile switch. The next 5 years mobile spends will make up the majority of all digital spends. Find a solution that's scales to various screen sizes. HTML5 is a good starting point but a web developer would be best to comment there.

I am assuming you're using a common webforum platform bbphp, vBulletin, etc and custom development and not an entire custom coded platform of your own. One should have a feature set for these needs. That means what you can do is limited to the framework. I think a wish list of ideas is great but likely too costly to implement and maintain with release updates of the platform.

Analytics should be the driving force to your decisions. Knowing the community and its behaviour will help drive smarter business decisions and help you make meaningful enhancements. Rich media ads, video pre-roll, and continuing with the banner ads. Mobile app is nice but you'd only be able to take advantage of 1 of the 3 methods of monetization. Google AdMob, Adwords, AdExchange will offer the best integration, analytics and flexibility.

If you want more comprehensive insight feel free to get in touch and I would be happy to help you with the "your side of things". I do analytics and trending insights for digital media so I won't be selling you on anything just sharing best practices.

---

------
"Train so you have no regrets @ the finish line"

"The next 5 years mobile spends will make up the majority of all digital spends."

hence my question. hence the thread. but i think if you ask anyone who actually attempts to make money in this space, they'll tell you that the areas you think are going to be big - specifically video preroll, mobile ads - have been duds. as money makers, i'm talking about.

i also think that mobile will have its rise, its fall, and then find its stasis, as a medium for content. shopping? yes. reading the NY Times? no.

in 1993, when i first saw the world wide web, i stopped what i was doing, took a self-imposed leave of absence from my company - which was at the time the leading manufacturer and seller worldwide of tri bikes and tri wetsuits - to teach myself html code. at that time, the only web browser in existence was mosaic. which we had to telnet onto our desktops through telephone modems. even then it was clear to me what the future was, and Quintana Roo debuted the first-ever commercial website ever by a bike company (and wetsuit company, for that matter). were you writing html in 1993? ;-)

running a manufacturing company was not compatible with also trying to be a propellerhead. when i started slowtwitch in 1999 it was to take up where i left off, but when i came back to the internet world i was already behind (so i am not our tech guy and i don't pretend to be). still, i think i have a pretty good idea what i want because i like all slowtwitchers am a reader. i don't think the great "want" in the market is trying to jam a lot of content through a tiny viewport, nor to type on a mobile phone. i think there's a huge benefit to handhelds, but it's a finite benefit. 4 or 5 years ago everybody thought the future was the tablet, but it rose, it fell, it found its place. we know what tablets can do and what they just aren't good at. you can't stick them in your pocket. it's not a handheld. nor is it a desktop. i gave my tablet to my wife. she loves it. but she has a purse.

the two best platforms for large scale content delivery - sending from your fingers and receiving through your eyes - is the laptop and the desktop. far, far and a way. by a mile. handhelds and tablets don't even come close. but old tech is boring. it's like giro's new, very popular cycling shoes. they've found a way to individually tighten or loosen the shoe upper at a number of various points along the top of the shoe. new invention. very high tech. it's called the shoelace. desktops and tablets are the shoelaces of the internet world. we have to wait until people tire of employing new technologies for uses not optimized for those technologies. then we'll return to platforms that are appropriate for the need.

still, any good business owner manages the tension between leading his customers (seeing around the corner, before your customers get to that corner) and letting his business tell him what it wants to be. this thread is my customers telling me what they want, and if they want a mobile platform that makes slowtwitch (the front page content, and the forum) readable on both a tablet and a handheld, dad blame it that's what i'm going to offer. but i do still wager that, no, in 5 years the exchange of large chunks of content - not data, not music, but read/write content - is not going to be the handheld.

my 5 years from now looks very different from your 5 years from now.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

understood. It's not spambot spam, but actual human spam.

So a solution that doesn't include you having to be the spam filter every day would be a user driven spam-reporting.
Best combined with some sort of user ranking system (number of posts or better likes a user has).
So if a couple of "high profile users" click "this is spam" on a given post, it goes into the spam-folder.
You then go through that spam folder (much less frequently than every day) and see if anything got in there by mistake.

Anyway, until then: thanks for manually clearing out the spam for us ;-)

---

if you can read this
YOU'RE DRAFTING!

I cannot get accustomed to the alternating colours (white/grey) of the list of posts when I go through the list. I find that very tiring, and rather would like a list in one colour.

One user in this thread mentioned he liked the categories: as a matter of fact, I see basically only one category (at least which I use): the triathlon forum. Can't this be categorised? With categories like e.g. Bikematerial, biketraining, blogs etc. There can always remain one page which shows everything in chronological order like now.

Multiquote.

But beware: maybe the three features which I mention above are already there but I'm just to stupid to find them.

I'd personally like there to be some sort of official tag or annotation added by Forum Admin to some of our most knowledgable members that reads to the effect of "industry expert", "trusted user", or "professional runner/triathlete/swimmer/whatever".

I know that there is already the facility for users to edit their own signatures with things to this effect, but I feel that an externally added validation would be helpful to a lot of users when weighing up advice.

A good example that I read earlier today was an old post where Ryan Cooper from Best Bike Split provided data on average yaw angles experienced by PROs and AGers on different courses, this was somewhat lost in a sea of "Well I heard that it was..." and "my mate insists that..."

Some sort of "Listen to this guy when it comes to this topic" sign would be useful.

It would be more positive than just pointing out the loud but uninformed users

I never use any of those buttons. I don't see the point of print thread (who really prints a thread?). I'd prefer search thread at the top but that's just me. Just so you don't have to scroll to the bottom of the thread just to search and its not hidden. At the top makes it apparent to everyone.

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blog

If you think that mobile is going to fall, your formerly acute business instinct is waning. The NYT (and all other newspapers, periodicals) will adapt to a mobile audience rather than a mobile audience revert to reading on a computer or paper. This is already well under way. Every newspaper and magazine has a mobile app dedicated to making the mobile reading experience acceptable The NYT android app is excellent; millions use it and I doubt many intend to go back to a paper subscription unless they need a dog poop bag delivered every day (that's why I held onto my Washington Post subscription so long - great poop bag). Content is changing as well to adapt to the mobile audience. Fewer articles are pure text, but use an increasing amount of dynamic content. Articles tend to be shorter than a decade ago. The content providers are changing to meet the mobile wave, because if they don't they are gone. How's Newsweek doing?

You were on the leading edge of the curve when it came to wetsuits, triathlon bikes, and the internet or at least the creation of this forum which stole away all of rec.sport.triathlon's usage. I think you're losing your instinct if you think mobile is anything but an unstoppable wave. Monetizing mobile is hard for sure and may require a paradigm shift when it comes to revenue generation, but I'd also be willing to wager that the eyes of 99.9% of your readership gloss right over your banner ads now or use ad blocking software. It's a difficult situation. Without your content your forums are useless, and your content comes from your users. So, you don't want to risk running them off by charging them or excessively inconveniencing them. Banner ads and advertising on mobile in general is a tough revenue source to depend on. It's tough. There's no panacea. But, mobile is not a fad.

I think Slowman was making the point that desktops and laptops will bounce back.
It's not that people will go back to paper to read the news, but rather that they will read it on a more traditionally sized screen.

The sarcasm-meter should display the text in various shades of pink, depending on how sarcastic the user / post combination is.

You'd be hot pink, for example, regardless of your actual content.

Not sure if Paulo's posts would have even been renderable though. They might have extended to the infra-red spectrum...

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

"If you think that mobile is going to fall, your formerly acute business instinct is waning... The NYT android app is excellent; millions use it and I doubt many intend to go back to a paper subscription"

i don't think mobile is going to fail. i think mobile is going to thrive. and grow. and keep growing. i just don't think it's going to be the preferred platform for reading and writing content. i also don't think the binary choice is either mobile or paper.

i highly suspect we need a mobile reading solution here at slowtwitch. i just don't agree with the views of the person to whom i was responding about mobile becoming the dominant reading platform, and money-making platform, for content deliverers. i am a paying online subscriber to the NYT, and to the LA times and, yes, i have used their mobile platforms, but only when i had not, not by choice.

incidentally, you write in your post that i don't want to inconvenience our users, or charge them. you're right. yet, i am charged weekly by LAT and NYT. and the LAT is horrible at presenting takeovers i must click to get rid of, sometimes multiple ads on a page that i pay for. accordingly, i'm sensitive about that for our readers.

i agree with a lot of what you write. articles are using, increasingly, dynamic content. the NYT pioneered this with their outside-the-CMS articles. can you imagine these features on a handheld?

we'll see who's right. but for you to understand what i'm writing you can't see this as as an attack on a platform, rather on the eventual sorting out process by which the right platforms prevail for the right purposes.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

"Can't this be categorised? With categories like e.g. Bikematerial, biketraining, blogs etc."

this was answered earlier in the thread. we have polled this time and time again. always it has been the preference of readers to keep the main triathlon forum as it is, no subforums. but there might be some modification of that, which i'm thinking about.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Amen.

Sounds like you know what your vision is and we can agree to disagree on that, and I'm not here to argue at all. Execute that vision if it's what you think is best.

For the record however, I am the guy who is asked about this space and how to monetize it and yield the highest possible profits. Perhaps a key difference is I use data to drive all of these decisions. This year we've leveraged video pre-roll, mobile ads and our business has increased 157% yielding over $2,000,000 more profit as a result over the previous year and over 230% over the 2012 calendar year. I'm in the industry (Digital Media Advertising) and my role is very specifically, predicting trends based on historical data and creating forecast models based upon that. I also have Realtime Bidding and Remant transactions as a primary focus to drive automation efforts up leaving no inventory unsold on a monthly basis.

While I see merit in your position you have to realize is you and me, and perhaps most ST users, are the edge case. If you know that about your users then you already have insights /data I don't driving that decision. That being said, that doesn't fall in line with the rest of the industry and it's direction. The IAB (whom I work closely with) has been pretty spot on with spend trends over the past 3-4 years when the emergence of digital media eclipsed traditional print media. I will say that I however, am in Canada and we are much more adept overall with deploying technology solutions. We just have less people to educate and inform so it's a smaller scale and often a test bed because of that. A good example is I've been able to pay for things using my phone for 3 years now instead of my debit card which I used from 1994 til then. If you look at the US and it's adaption rates of this it's still nowhere close to this as a cash based country. We don't even have a penny in Canada anymore because nobody used them.


Touching on your tablet comments the tablet has not fallen at all when it comes to digital advertising, perhaps in regards to "computing" but not in content consumption. It's actually the platform that is the most conducive to "reading content" and has a large penetration in the market. This is also what the millennials have grown up using in class and at home and they are your customer in 5 years time. These are the new markets and keeping a close eye on them and their needs is important. They have higher demands for service and expect to access the content they want on whichever medium they choose. To be relevant you have to have a multiscreen strategy in place. Since Slowtwitch doesn't do broadcast we can rule out the television for this case. But that still leaves PC, Mobile, Tablet as offerings. Currently unless I'm on a laptop I don't bother with slowtwitch and a suspect that may be the case for many others. It's not just bad it's terrible on a mobile phone and even worse on a tablet. These are opportunities to drive traffic up and yield more via your advertising opportunities. You're in a rare position as the premium triathlon market online and to stay there you must be mindful of future expectations.


Last but not least I'll give you background since you think I'm just some young whippersnapper haha. In 1993 I was on BBS, usernet etc on mosaic over my 14.40 baud modem as well. I was writing code in HTML, Visual Basic and C (not all of which was web based). I've been a computer nerd my whole life until I found analytics and statistics to be more flexible professionally as well as fascinating. My suggestions were all to help you with the continued success you've had on ST since 1999 but obviously I'm on the outside looking in. As stereotypical as it is, I'd need more data on your userbase and inventory to give a better evaluation. Good luck with whatever path you take though. I know I for one will always be routing for Slowtwitch!

---

------
"Train so you have no regrets @ the finish line"

You could add subcategories to the existing forum that have to be chosen when a thread is started. Replies to a thread would be locked to that category. Add a column for sub category on the main forum and allow users to sort and/or filter by this column. Then allow users to save a configuration as a view. So I could have my training tips view, my bike view, running view, lance view, etc. Then I can switch between views, do nothing and view everything, or have multiple tabs open in my browser with each view I want to watch. Adding forums I think would be a bad idea.

MC

I wouldn't want subcategories to be required, but being able to optionally tag posts or threads from a predefined list would be nice. either have as many tags as you want, or limit the number of tags on a thread to some reasonable number (5 or so??)

So a thread on how to apply FTP to a training program may be tagged #bike #ftp #powermeter #training, all posts in that thread would also be considered to be #bike #ftp #powermeter #training. But, as threads often do, they go on tangents, so it would be nice for a poster to change the tags on their own post, or maybe just add tags. So maybe at some point in the thread #lactate is added to it.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

first of all, thanks for engaging on this. it's a fast-changing marketplace and i'm eager to keep up, especially when i have at my disposal the expertise of people like yourself. let's dive in.

"I also have Realtime Bidding and Remant transactions as a primary focus to drive automation efforts up leaving no inventory unsold on a monthly basis."

this is one of those interesting topics, where finance clashes with reader experience. i kicked remnant networks off slowtwitch about 6 or 7 years ago, and when i did i took an immediate 25 percent hit in my revenue. it's a hit i'll never get back, because nobody can sell all his inventory without a remnant network. but it's just impossible to control the quality of the ad. i remember when cyclingnews published an interview, years ago, of gerard vroomen talking his anti-doping strategy as a pro cycling team owner, and next to the interview was a cenegenics ad. the final straw, for me, was when i started seeing political ads during election season.

this is 1 of 2 reasons why i don't have adsense code on slowtwitch. yes, you can opt out of ads that are distasteful, but you don't know what you don't know. you can opt out of an offensive ad after you've seen it, but i know of no rem network that allows you to preview all media prior to it showing on the network.

the second reason adsense is nonsense for publishers is because it kills your own endemic ad sales. why would i ever advertise directly with cyclingnews if i can get it cheaper via auction? i know you have a differing view, because i'm speaking against how it is you (at least in part) earn your living, but there is 1 and 1 only network in which i'm an affiliate publisher, and it's a network that ONLY features ads from endemic running companies. these decentralized, highly-specfiic, very siloed, networks are the only networks that i would consider, both for my own best interest as well as for the reader experience.

video pre-roll: this is your industry, and i don't mean to lecture you on a subject you know much more about than i do. it's just that when i talk to other publishers it seems very hard to convince an endemic advertiser to pay the sort of money that would make pre-roll pay. now, there are folks - flocasts most obviously - that make their living with video content. and they're an endemic content provider. so it can be done. but i can tell you as a consumer that pre-roll bugs the living shit out of me. i'd much rather see a company's watermark on the video, and then that watermark bursts into POST roll when the video ends. yes, maybe harder to sell. but it doesn't come with the built-in animus i hold both for publisher and advertiser when they conspire to waste my time.

"I've been able to pay for things using my phone for 3 years now instead of my debit card which I used from 1994 til then."

ah, but this is where you and i have to agree not to pick and champion a platform. i'm having this same discussion with kny. the binary choice isn't mobile pass/fail. i use the living jesus out of my handheld. payments. boarding passes. theater tickets. yes, it's the platform for the present and the future. but, is it the platform for reading and writing? let me ask you this: don't you see it as a disconnect that TV sets keep getting bigger, while computer viewports keep getting smaller? don't you think the galaxy, and then the iphone 6, were revolts against that? yes, we can make the worst of a bad viewing/writing experience through mobile platforms (and this we will do at slowtwitch), but i just question whether this will become the dominant platform for an experience that is much better suited for a larger screen and a keyboard.

"Touching on your tablet comments the tablet has not fallen at all when it comes to digital advertising, perhaps in regards to "computing" but not in content consumption. It's actually the platform that is the most conducive to "reading content" and has a large penetration in the market."

well, we have tablets. we'll see what happens with tablets. i spend a TON of time on a tablet: my kindle. but i don't read the NYT on my kindle, and i sure as shit don't try to type forum posts on my kindle. this platform is perfect for reading books, as long as those books don't contain much in the way of graphics.

let me ask you another question: you're typing long, thoughtful posts. you say you're not on slowtwitch except on a laptop because the experience on a mobile is bad. are you telling me you're going to type these posts on your handheld, if i offer you a great mobile reading experience?

"To be relevant you have to have a multiscreen strategy in place."

you and i agree entirely.

"In 1993 I was on BBS on mosaic over my 14.40 baud modem. I was writing code in HTML, Visual Basic and C."

in this case, i suspect you taught yourself html. i know i did. thank god andreeson had the foresight to include a "page source" utility. i was in san diego, i could not find anyone at UC san marcos, UC san diego, the junior colleges, anyone who knew, let alone could teach, html. those were the frontier days.

i am mostly interested in your views on remnant networks, because it's what you do, and because of what i wrote above, which is the other side of the story if you care about the reader experience. thanks for engaging on this.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

this is for you and mchammers also:

what you're talking about is what i'm envisioning. the major problem with slowtwitch right now - and i mean everywhere, everything, every part of slowtwitch, not just the forum - is navigation. drilling down to what you want. and i'm engaged in that right now and have been for some time. you should be able to find EXACTLY what you're looking for, across the various channels we offer (forum posts, how-to articles by experts, links to outside resources).

my opinion is that we ought to take the extra step in offering every slowtwitcher the experience he/she wants, without forcing everybody into one unified experience. so if we can offer 1 triathlon forum, but also the ability to segment threads into categories, why not? for that matter, i read a number of posts that talk just about the color of the site. background color. is there a way that via your user preferences we can offer a choice of background colors? i don't know. i'm investigating how hard that would be.

so, yeah, you and i are thinking along the same lines. the question is who does the tagging. do we ask the person who's incepting the thread to click boxes? do i as moderator go in once i identify a worthy thread and tag that thread via clicking boxes via my admin options?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

My thought is that it should be the poster who does it, but I'm not convinced of my own thoughts. It may be a subgroup of users with "tagging rights", or, and I don't know if this is possible or not, there could be a "smart auto-tag" function and provides tagging options to the user based on the content. That may not be possible though, I don't know.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

how would you want this presented? let me give you an example, and i don't know whether this is the best example. i'm just spitballing, on the fly. let's say we had sub-forums. but they were not obvious. maybe there's a drop down menu with a lot of topics. everything that gets posted gets posted on the sub-forum also gets posted in the main forum (except for classifieds, jobs, lavender room, etc.). but it also gets posted in the sub-forum, where either the moderator or the OP tags his post. at the beginning of every initial thread incepting post the OP is asked:

click the appropriate box for your post to appear in a topical sub-forum: training with power [ ] bike fit [ ] and so forth [ ]

is that what you're thinking? the one thing that comes to mind, for me, is that every spammer will click every box. but that's an admin problem. i just need a 1-click solution to delete all the spam posts.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

That I don't really have a good answer for. My first thought is that it has to be easy. If it isn't easy, and I mean really easy, then people won't use it. If it involves switching to another screen, it won't be used. That's why I was thinking that a smart auto-tag might be the answer, which reads the post and then gives you a list of 4 or 5 likely matches when you click the "post" button.

Or you just leave tagging to subgroups of users. The initial poster has to tag the post as one of 5 options, which are all the options they get. Option 1 can be tagged by subgroup 1. option 2 by subgroup 2, and so forth. You, of course, would be God.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

subgroup is a topic, right? bike fit. nutrition. swim. that kind of thing?

seems to me these would just be voluntary, not mandatory. and they sit right above or right below the screen you read when you author an initial post. in the gray border area. if the thread turns into something useful, and the box is not clicked by the OP, the moderator can go in and click it. something like that?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

if the user picks #bikefit, then Slowman and a few trusted gurus could add additional tags, if they saw fit. If #aero, then the resident aero gurus could add tags.

Or maybe posts only get tagged if they reach a certain view and/or upvote / like / +1 count. In that case, I think it makes sense to leave tagging in the hands of the admins. That way is probably easier. Maybe.

Maybe. I dunno, really. I obviously haven't thought it through completely, so I'm just writing what comes into my head as it comes up.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

- Some sort of obvious warning when replying to a post that is over a year old. Would be nice to also have some blatant indicator that a post you are reading is over a year old, red highlight over the date maybe.

- Better handling of embedded images and lines of text that should be wrapped but are not. Large images should not mess up the post width when loading.

- Button to reply to the original post even if you are at the bottom or on another page.

- Have same menu options in the header and footer of threads.

- Search results that can return threads instead of posts. Then allow you to further search (refine your search) in a thread for the content you are searching.

- Like button (also shows users that liked a post). (Note, not up or down votes and not used to sort threads/posts to the top)

- Link on the thread list that lets you go to the last page instead of first. For example, if you are not logged in and want to see the latest week in pictures posts it would be nice if you didn't have to load the first page before jumping to the last. Generally, would make reading when not logged in better.

- Better mobile support.

..

Great move - I feel ST is kind of stuck in the 90s a bit in terms of design. Take a look at some examples out there that may give you some ideas on design and give you what most people are asking for

Vanilla Forums example
Jive example

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____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

"Link on the thread list that lets you go to the last page instead of first"

you do kind of have this now. at the far right of the thread row is an arrow pointing right. clicking on that arrow takes you to the most recent post.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

vanilla forums is nice. we serve between 6 and 10 million pages a month, depending on the month, on slowtwitch, and a very large chunk of that is the reader forum. there is no way i'm going to do business with any reader forum, CMS, or any software that we pay for by the month, pricing based on impressions. but i take your point, it's a nice platform and one with admirable features.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

A lot of this.

Don't make it suck Slowman. There's a lot of people who are perfectly happy with ST as is.

---

How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

looking at their features page, it seems that you may only need their "starter" or "advanced" package (but with more impressions.). I don't see any info about the price for more impressions if you go over, but I'm guessing they would make you a deal. In your shoes, the one thing I would consider a benefit of the "monthly service" model is that I don't need to worry about hardware, software, backups etc. for the forum (which as you say is the bulk of the traffic) and the monthly cost is at least predictable if you strike the right deal. And if you structure your ad sales based on forum activity then your sales scale with your costs too. I think you could also sell more targeted advertising by having sub groups (which today would be difficult to navigate but with a nice interface would be slick). For example, you could have an Aerodynamics group where Pearl Izumi finally hands over some cash for all the sales we've generated for them (no joke!), or even race-based groups where you can sell to advertisers who are local to that race. Or a nutrition group where Ben Greenfield can pay you to advertise magic bracelets and tri-ripped-spartan-fat-adapted-super-human-keto supplements.


But my point is, that with a more flexible, better designed forum, you potentially create more opportunity for ad revenues. You would probably also drive higher user engagement through the better design. Lastly, paying monthly might make sense if the numbers work out (it also may not, but it's worth exploring).

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____________________________________

Are you ready to do an Ultraman? | How I calculate Ironman race fueling | Strength Training for Athletes |

Funny. It never really occurred to me in the last 14 years that the arrow image was a link let alone separate from the last post user link. :)

It is nice to be able to jump to someone's profile, but is this really something you are going to do from the thread list? For the last posted user? Only time I've ever thought to look at someone's profile is after I read something crazy they wrote. (i.e. inside a thread) From the thread list clicking on a user profile link, at least for me, is always a mistake as I meant to open the thread instead.

..

Please don't add a lot of sub-categories. It is annoying and kills a forum faster than anything else.

My suggestion is random drug testing for forum users.

"I don't see any info about the price for more impressions if you go over, but I'm guessing they would make you a deal."

based on their pricing, i'm going to be at their highest tier, and that's several thousand dollars a month. i'd rather put that into development. i don't want a deal. if they want my business they ought to price it that way in the beginning.

"I think you could also sell more targeted advertising by having sub groups"

that's all stuff i can do now. we have pretty sophisticated ad software, and i can stick zones and code anywhere i want, i can target in any way i want, keyword, geo, time of day, day of week, and the forum software i use has nothing really to do with the ads i serve. the most sophisticated forum software isn't going to supersede my ad software. as for back-ups, etc., i don't need that either, because i've got back-ups and redundancy through my current web host.

as to your point about the sales we generate for specific advertisers who aren't slowtwitch partners, i am keenly aware of these companies (not specifically the one you mentioned, who is not really near the top of my list of freeloaders). this is another topic. i know who the freeloaders are. believe me, it chaps my hide to see companies participate in the triathlon economy, reap the benefit of that economy, and give absolutely nothing back. and i don't mean companies whose primary marketing strategy is freeloading off this forum community, rather companies that don't give back in any meaningful sense. i keep a mental list of who the freeloaders are. no, i don't make it public, which i think would be unseemly. but i occasionally have private chats with them.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Hello Slowman and All,

I don't think your efforts to tailor the ST forum to mobile devices will be wasted if you go that route.

I see so many people hugging, loving, and watching their mobile devices.

Glasses or goggles that expand a field of view larger than most any TV screen are desired by those smart phone users and industry will provide that device .... before too long.

Envision a future were the glasses or goggles are the primary device and can receive data from various transmitting devices located in your pocket, at store fronts, automobiles, airplanes, desktops, and so on.

http://recode.net/...orky-to-be-believed/



.

---

Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

This. My internet connection at home is the shits. Fancy websites with lots of graphics or complex code annoy the crap out of me because they are so slow. Slowtwitch works great on my crap connection.

^Ditto

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<We all know that light travels faster than sound. That's why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak>

A mobile version would be nice, but otherwise leave it alone. If you put any more ads on the site, I'll probably start using AdBlocker.

Oh yeah, auto-hyperlinking has been available since like 1996... it's about time the forum did it.

How about a way to list "sick" or "vacation" under training log?

I would like to see why (when I look back at training) I didn't work out for a week or 5 days in March or Feb based on such things.

"If you put any more ads on the site, I'll probably start using AdBlocker."

we try to be pretty good about ad overreach. no takeovers that you must get rid of in order to read content. no floating boxes or any of that crap. and no third party networks. no links at the bottom of the page taking you to the 10 worst plastic surgery disasters. no adsense code enabling the creepy ads that follow you around the internet like a stalker.

on the flip side, i did build an "adblock identifier" which allows me to block adblocker, that is, its blocks access to slowtwitch for those deploying adblocker. well, not automatically. i have to one-by-one ban these users. but i don't actually ban anybody for using adblocker, because those who have adblocker deployed on slowtwitch are so few. which is gratifying to me.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I have adblock on most of my machines but try to "whitelist" slowtwitch because the ads don't bother me like other sites. Ghostery as well.

bless your heart ;-)

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Just want to echo that from the user side, one of the things you've done well is delivering ads. I like how they sit off to the side and don't get in the way of content. On other sites, I never click on ads because they piss me off. Here, I actually click on them, from time to time.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Has this been mentioned? An iPhone and iPad app

You realize a mobile site is optional, right? Desktop browser defaults to full site, mobile browser defaults to mobile site, but you can change that either way and have the forum remember your preferences (cookies on client side, or your login on server side).

We need newer VBB/UBB/whatever forum software, and yes definitely a mobile site.

Try this on a desktop web browser:

http://arstechnica.com

Then go there on a mobile device. That's how it's done!

Please no. Stop thinking in terms of downloading apps for consuming internet content. You already have that app. It is called a "web browser". The browser you use was coded by hundreds of smart people over a long period of time and has a good track record. It is stable and as secure as they can make it. An app published by some web site would be coded by one person over few weeks and would be riddled with problems. Not to mention when you run their code they could do whatever they wanted to your device and you'd never know. That's not an issue for ST because we know them and trust them, but for all those other web site apps? Have you ever asked a question: why is it that so many web sites are so insistent on installing their app? What's it to them?

What we need for ST is mobile CSS.

Having spent a bit of time actually thinking about my side of things on ST here is a list of things I'd want that aren't currently on the site:

1. Editorial content as a thread by default
By this I mean rather than going to the homepage and hitting refresh and looking for a new article I want the "Publish" function on your side to simultaneously post the article to the Homepage and then create and post it to a forum thread. This way I can stay in my centralized place on ST and not have to keep 2 tabs open.

2. Enhanced Mobile/Tablet experience
This has already been discussed but I'm going to add +1 to the vote.

3. Embed Video and Photo into the thread.
When I put in a URL that is YouTube, Vimeo, etc just show it inline. Same for URLs that end with popular image formats (jpg, jpeg, gif, png)

4. User Avatars / Thumbnails
I'm here often enough to know who the posters driving the content are however I remember back to when they were just letters and numbers from "strangers". I like that we get to know one another on here and it actually is great how it's like the Tri community but it would be nice to put a visual cue in there.

5. Advanced Search features and options.
I find myself using Google to search the forums (using a +Slowtwitch) because the results here are so bad. Again this has been discussed so you're already aware of what needs to be done here.

6. Post comments to the Editorial work with ST credentials
This is an edge case but I hate not being able to post to the editorial content because I don't have Facebook. I know I'm likely the minority on that but still some kind of option to join those discussions would be nice. #1 on this list should fix it.

7. Where to workout section
I think it's safe to say a lot of us travel and venture to places to run swim and bike. As a frequent traveler I'd love to know where the top ranks places to do my training are. As of now I use other apps/sites but it would be an interesting sub-forum or section.

8. User Contributed Garmin "course" files
I'd love to have the ability to load my Garmin headunit with the "course" I'm about to race. This way it give me some guidance if I've never done that course before. I'll also get details like elevation gain and decent loss. This is again just a bonus I'd like.

9. Tables in the post
I often want to copy and paste some details from an excel file or Google sheets and the forum does not support the use of tables. This would make life a lot better for the organization of information. Example is when giving out a workout with column Distance, Effort Level, Duration.

I think that covers all my pains and the gains I'd like to see here on Slowtwitch as a user. Thanks again Dan for engaging with the community on these changes before you go ahead and roll them out!

---

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"Train so you have no regrets @ the finish line"

Something that integrates with Tapatalk app ----- a lot of the forums I read are in that platform.

---

Want: 58cm Cervelo Soloist. PM me if you have one to sell

Vintage Cervelo: A Resource

Which you can reproduce easily by using the new frameworks like bootstrap, angular.js, etc.

I'm not sure if this has been requested or not, but a link to the forum from the training log. You can go to the training log from the forum, but to get back to the forum, you have to go through the home page.

My 2 cents.

A Pink button.

The mobile version is absolutely the #1 feature Im looking for.
Slowtwitch is probably the last forum I'm following on a regular basis on a computer.

See the iphone app "quora". They did something amazing for mobiles.
I hope ST can do something similiar :)

What is with all the mobile version requests?!?! I despise mobile versions of websites, one of the most frustrating things in the world is constantly getting defaulted to mobile versions of websites. I literally can't think of a single mobile site I have ever liked at all. It is especially frustrating when a site won't even allow you to view a desktop version on a mobile device, that is a site killer for me. There are multiple sites I refuse to visit for that reason alone. If you absolutely must make a mobile site for some unknowable reason (there is nothing wrong with the real internet), please make it something you have to choose, dont force it down our throats. Or at the very minimum allow us to choose a desktop site with ease and permenantly.

One upgrade that would actually be useful is a color coding system for the age of a post. It is amusing when someone comments on a post which they dont even realize is a year old, but it gets annoying pretty quickly. Maybe have posts that are a week old have a light green background, light blue for posts more than a month old, and light red for posts older than a year.

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Powertap / Cycleops / Saris

Because the current version of the site is unreadable on a phone without constant zooming in and excessive scrolling. Especially if there is a photo somewhere in the thread.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

A photo can screw it up occasionally, but I read the forum almost exclusively on a phone just fine. You pinch to zoom when you get to a page, then you read until you go to the next page. It's not hard at all. I am on a phone right now. No problem.

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Powertap / Cycleops / Saris

Maybe your phone is better than mine.

the point is that a well designed mobile version would eliminate the pinching and excessive side to side scrolling.

Dan seems to be pretty big on getting the user experience right, so I'm sure you'll still be able to use a desktop version of the site if you prefer. Just because you don't think it is a big deal doesn't mean that I wouldn't prefer a mobile version.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I use it on my iPhone 5 or my google Nexus 7" Android tablet, both are fine. I concede Safari is not a good browser for viewing the site, chrome is much better, but it is still usable. I am just trying to understand what is preferable about a mobile site. I literally can't think of a single one I've ever used that was preferable to the desktop version. Most are completely unusable. But if Dan makes it so I can permenantly choose the desktop version that is fine.

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Powertap / Cycleops / Saris

I have a shitty 3" screen on a cheap LG android. it is painful to view this site.

However, the phone is cheap, works reasonably well for everything else I do, and is damn near indestructible. I don't want to "upgrade" my phone just to be able to view one website.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

This would actually be really useful.
It's one of those "oddly specific, but it works for our needs" type of things.

Agreed and in that case I should have said a mobile APPLICATION, not a mobile VERSION. So that it gives the choice to the user whether he wanna keep browsing the non mobile version.

Don't drop it in the toilet

That reflects badly on all of us

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

How are the updates coming along?

Also is it too late to request that you keep the ICQ number as an option for our profiles? I find that feature super handy.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

the one thing i know that is coming along apace is the rate at which i'm paying the development bills for it. that part has kept pace.

i believe we will have an interim forum change very soon, maybe this week. one change that helps me, a lot of changes that help you. but even then it's just interim.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Ongoing dev costs? Are they rewriting existing forum software? Why not go with a new/modern open source forum platform (https://en.wikipedia.org/...ernet_forum_software ) and migrate the existing database to the new format (to preserve user accounts and posts)? It'd be faster to do, cheaper, and would probably result in fewer bugs/quirks in the end.

we have waaaaay too much data to risk the migration.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Main Index button should go to the Forum Main Index, or put a similar button. Currently we have to go back to main page to change from LR to main to classifieds.

A button to snap a photo from mobile devices and automatically post it on the specific forum topic .

It is not really a risk. Existing database can be left as-is, and the data migration builds new data structures for the new forum. It's a copy rather than a move. This can be done by restoring backups of the existing databases and then working on that copy. That way the live forum is untouched.

You can even test drive the new forum by installing new software, it has new empty(ish) databases right? Then do data migration. The new forum software probably has tools to do that. Insert the existing data into the new databases. You got a copy of Slowtwitch! Running on new software. See how it all works. Work out issues, bugs, etc. Then do it again to go live, but this time shut the forum off or at least make it read only, so no posts are lost in the migration.

Edit: path to back off the changes and go back to the old forum should be available any time in the upgrade process. The parallel forum with a test migration from backups, then a live migration, will do that. The only downside is you'll temporarily need double the storage (disk space) but disk space is cheap.

the huge bulk of what i'm spending is not forum upgrades, it's the rest of the site and that's where things get a bit tricky. the forum is going to get a big upgrade, but i've also got to keep everything associated with it that's already custom. there are two very nice forum packages, off the shelf, they're mobile friendly, but they lack a lot of the customization we've already done to the current forum software. i don't know that backfilling new software with everything that we need is that different than altering existing software to be responsive to viewport size.

honestly, there is a second element to this, which is what we do when there is a problem. we have a team that fixes and upgrades this platform, and i'm more interested in the team than in the tactical decision of whether we alter existing software or customize new software.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Hi Dan,

I don't know if it's a little late in the day for new ideas on what upgrades to include on the site, but one thing I've found recently that I think could be relatively easy to improve/solve would be to be able to "tag" your country when posting an ad in the classifieds and then make Ads filterable by this tag.

I realise that this is a North American dominated site so many users will not have found the current set up to be an issue, but for those of us who are from elsewhere - and I gather that we are a growing minority - it can be difficult or time consuming to quickly see which ads are applicable/workable for us.

Liam

Sorry if this was already suggested, but I'd like the ability to 'follow' a thread, get notifications, without having to have posted in it and have someone reply to my post.

Go to the top of the thread, click "watch thread". Done

Couldn't you have told me about that like 5 years ago?!!? lol....duh...

Be warned. It notifies you of every post. Not just the good ones ;)

When looking at a users post and navigating to a singular post in particular, there is now no way (that I know of) to automatically navigate to the post directly. I have to search through the thread.

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Strava

Thanks Slowman for taking up my suggestion. I find the appearence of the list a lot more pleasant now.