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It doesn't have to be this way
Has forum 3.0 killed off Trump. Not the orange baffoon himself, more's the pity, but his very own thread. The best thread, I'd imagine. Or have we all suddenly lost interest in him - I guess he's not up to much these days.
As a semi related aside....whilst the inevitable lack of traffic on the forum while the hamsters get used their new wheel must be a bit of a concern to Mark (I mean, what's a man to do if you don't have a huge pile of newly minted gold to count daily) I've quite enjoyed filling my time with other more constructive stuff. If you could just keep it a bit borked and consequently the choice of 'lively debate' even more boring than usual I might actually kick the habit.
So that reply took about 10 seconds to appear , I didn't have any problems with the old site and whilst I don't like some aspects of the new one I do understand it's a work in progress and hopefully people will hang in there until it settles down
Secondly - and mildly more seriously.
Hugely appreciate the amount of work going into getting the forum up and running again.
But it got me thinking - the time and expense you are putting into hosting this forum.......how many weekly views/subscribers would you need on a monetized YouTube channel with a couple of "this video is sponsored bys" and a bit of product placement etc. I've literally no idea - but you see various YouTubers/influencers/van lifers who seemingly finance their life like that. And to be honest.......it looks a hell of a lot more fun than spending your life under the hood of forum to make your pennies.
Power to your elbow for keeping on keeping on.
Has forum 3.0 killed off Trump. Not the orange baffoon himself, more's the pity, but his very own thread. The best thread, I'd imagine. Or have we all suddenly lost interest in him - I guess he's not up to much these days.
It will reappear older posts are still merging across.
meh I'm giving up trying to view anything on here. Nothing seems to work 😟
First off. This forum is ours. It’s a platform for our editorial and for the forum. Entirely under our control. Not without its issues, obviously. But YouTube is not our platform. We don’t control it or the algo that decides who sees what. We learned a harsh lesson from Facebook on that when they decided publishers were not worth their time and so just cut us off from our followers unless we paid. 550k Facebook followers. Last post we published reached around 300 people.
Also, YouTube monetisation is a bit like Spotify is for bands. You make money when you can earn millions of downloads. For example. Our documentary on YouTube has been watched 1.3 million times. That’s earned us £3.2k.
Currently the business has turnover from subs and ads around £440k.
socials like YouTube give a great way for creators to earn some cash on the side or for a very small group of massive influencers a reasonably good living for one person.
But niche specialist media can use it as an extra minor income stream at best.
Hope that explains things a bit more.
Also, my post has disappeared, or is taking ages to appear. And everything is slower. FML I knew I would be right when I said it would be march until it was working properly
It’s Sunday.
We’ll get back to it tomorrow. That ok?
I know it was Sunday. I wasn't expecting the on call team to jump into action. I was posting when I was on.
maybe consider having a sticky at the top giving updates that is closed to new posts apart from yours Mark. Communication helps prevent customer frustration.
For some reason the New Forum thread is sticky in the Bike forum, but not ‘Latest’.
Agree though, it would be good to know if @mark or the IT crowd have posted an update.
still taking an age for new posts to show up, I think I'll take a bit of a break and check back later in the week
Not having the recent post date is quite annoying, I dont care when the post was initially created, just the last comment will do.
The date no longer showing posted mins or hours ago and just showing the full date is still very annoying.
You can see when the last comment was made too.
I posted on this thread earlier, it showed after about 20 mins, though as per above screenshot i knew it was there, just not visible to read. I also posted on scotroutes one about Ground Effect tops, it took an hour to show up on that thread
For some reason the New Forum thread is sticky in the Bike forum, but not ‘Latest
"Latest" is exactly that, a list of the most recent posts. Sticky messages just appear in time order.
I keep dipping in and checking, but I'm tempted to give the forum a break for a week or two, in the hope that Mark & team will get to the bottom of the posting delay. I can tolerate the various issues with appearance, navigation etc. I know they will get fixed eventually. It's the delay that absolutely kills the user experience for me. I really enjoy the to and fro of the lively, engaging discussions on here. Help requests that are quickly answered, topical discussions, amusing threads with snappy, witty responses etc. The delay kills all that stone dead and does make it all feel a little pointless. I do know it's your number one priority Mark and I wish you the best of luck. I'll be back when it's fixed! 🙂
testing
My last two posts have shown up immediately.
And thumbs-up for the new forum tech! 👍
I was just about to start a thread on Rotator Cuff Injury, then the new forum tech highlighted there was already a thread!
Going back to the classifieds page from an ad by clicking 'back to ads' gets me an 'Ooops, something's gone wrong' message.
(Oh, and by the way - thanks for doing all of this. It's a ton of work that's really appreciated)
Even odder thing with the posts not immediately showing up it that they do show in the topic overview dropdown;
It is far from ideal for longer threads as you have to click load more well loads but does show the responses straight away. Clicking each line retrieves the full post.
You can see when the last comment was made too.
How are you getting that view? Mine doesn't look like that at all.
testing
How are you getting that view? Mine doesn't look like that at all.
That's because you're actually in a forum. For some reason the Last Post is only shown viewing Latest, not whilst in individual forums. The layout's quite a muddle and hopefully will be sorted out at some point, but it's probably not a priority right now.
testing
just testing please ignore
Ok. We think we may have a fix for the post update/caching bug.
Hi, please let us know if you reply if it shows straight away
replying at 1248
i replied a few mins ago, it is not showing
and at 1250 i see both my above posts
I am still seeing around 2 mins or so lag from posting to it showing up, if that's any help
12:59
Testing at 13:12
So aside from the forum looking rubbish and not working, lets see if this reply actually posts within what should be an acceptable timeframe (the forum I created myself for my own short lived website 20 years ago posted replies inside a second) and/or is visible straight away...
Not working for me on other threads. Still a random/long time delay - pics or no pics.
Posting at 13:16
Can't see the "13:16" post I just sent
13:19 - still haven't seen my 12:59 post
I am still seeing around 2 mins or so lag from posting to it showing up, if that's any help
5 minutes since the "successfully posted" popup (which randomly appears at the top right of the screen so its easily missed!) and still no sign of my post.
It's 13:20 and I still can't see my 13:16 post
13:28. I can see all the posts referred to. Latest being verses 13:20 post.
i posted in the bassists thread at 13.10 and still not appeared at 13.30
13:30 and my 13:16 post still isn't showing for me.
13:32
Just checked back in at 13:35 and I can now see my 13:16 and subsequent posts.
Also I posted on another thread and that post seemed to appear straight away ( https://singletrackmag.com/forum/off-topic/a-little-long-term-project/paged/4/#post-13533679)
the forum I created myself for my own short lived website 20 years ago posted replies inside a second
Any just how much traffic/adverts does it get? I suspect your website doesn't also have years and years of history and 1000s of subscribers with history either.
Not fixed yet sorry. Last post is apparently by rocket dog but last showing as of now is timmys.
FAO @mark
Weirdly, I'm getting inconsistencies with the "posting delay" problem
I posted in BWD Moral dilemma thread about an hour ago and it hasnt shown up (yet)
But I just posted in the Car Tyres thread, and it showed up immediately
Just very recently the top thread in "recent" list has turned black with blue text (all the rest are white w the same blue text and prior to this they were all white w blue
So aside from the forum looking rubbish and not working, lets see if this reply actually posts within what should be an acceptable timeframe (the forum I created myself for my own short lived website 20 years ago posted replies inside a second) and/or is visible straight away...
Did all 5 visitors enjoy it?
FAO @mark
Weirdly, I'm getting inconsistencies with the "posting delay" problem
I posted in BWD Moral dilemma thread about an hour ago and it hasnt shown up (yet)
But I just posted in the Car Tyres thread, and it showed up immediately
Probably me hitting the delete cache button manually.
We are still banging our heads against this one. WPforo has it's own built in Cache that it really strongly recommends we use. But WP VIP also have their own cache rules and recomendations. The two are not playing nice with each other. There will be a magic combination of configurations that will work, but we are waiting for tech support from both sides to get us there.
Is the blue colour staying or is that getting changed? I struggle to read what it says at times
I'm struggling with the blue as well. The site has lost much of its previous minimalist clarity for me. The weak blue and random mix of black, grey and blue is part of that.
So aside from the forum looking rubbish and not working, lets see if this reply actually posts within what should be an acceptable timeframe (the forum I created myself for my own short lived website 20 years ago posted replies inside a second) and/or is visible straight away...
Did all 5 visitors enjoy it?
You're very condescending. Let's face it here, we all use other forums. I have over 100,000 posts in the last 20+ years on forums and without fail, every single forum shows posts instantly, you click through button and 1s later the post is there, every time, every forum.
This is not a foible, quirk, glitch or anomaly on this place, this is 100% how a forum should not be considered 'working'
Whether 'we' as customers are considered to be paying for a forum, or a magazine doesn't really concern me, the forum is a part of it.
Since the new forum this place has gone from quirky to absolutely unusable. I can see it, many other a can see it. I can't see how you can defend it.
The argument about losing advertising or sponsorship etc is all well and good, but currently this place is losing its core clients.
At risk of a pile on, the new format appears incredibly cluttered. Using an iPad, when I click forum, all I can see on the landing page is the first two threads, equivalent to about an inch of horizontal screen. Is it not possible to refine the spacing or something, as it looks dreadful on the eye.
So aside from the forum looking rubbish and not working, lets see if this reply actually posts within what should be an acceptable timeframe (the forum I created myself for my own short lived website 20 years ago posted replies inside a second) and/or is visible straight away...
Did all 5 visitors enjoy it?
You're very condescending. Let's face it here, we all use other forums. I have over 100,000 posts in the last 20+ years on forums and without fail, every single forum shows posts instantly, you click through button and 1s later the post is there, every time, every forum.
This is not a foible, quirk, glitch or anomaly on this place, this is 100% how a forum should not be considered 'working'
Whether 'we' as customers are considered to be paying for a forum, or a magazine doesn't really concern me, the forum is a part of it.
Since the new forum this place has gone from quirky to absolutely unusable. I can see it, many other a can see it. I can't see how you can defend it.
The argument about losing advertising or sponsorship etc is all well and good, but currently this place is losing its core clients.
For information, that took 40 minutes. It takes less time to send a message from Mars.
Agree about the clutter. Loads of extra info that in no way helps with reading or navigation. Doubly annoying as useful information is not shown and navigation links missing. Do we really need the word 'forum' written twice between every post? Funnily enough I know it's a forum 🙂
Is anyone at stw towers actually using the forum regularly on a mobile device?
There seemed to be some good developments in the first week and the forum was heading in the right direction after the initial launch. Not so much recently. Still happy to see how things settle, I just hope there are more design tweaks coming and this isn't it.
All this has been explained many time weeksy and they are working on it the best they can, the other option as mentioned was to close the forum altogether for unknown time period at great expense. Comparing a knocked up website for a little hobby is very condescending to a business that employs staff and provides 1000s of customers. There is no comparison.
How many clients have they lost?
FYI that instantly.
I'm willing to put up with a lot in the name of progress, but now I can't get rid of the Issue 159 ad at the bottom of the Latest Posts view and that's just a step too bloody far! ☹️
The other option was to plan the upgrade so it had as little disruption as possible and/or had a relatively easy roll back strategy.
I understand you might be constrained on resources (to plan/test a good strategy, then to execute it)
But at the moment from the outside looking in it looks like this is just slapped straight into production with crossed fingers, little analysis of risk, planning, testing or rollback option, and hope it works.
Now, STW absolutely does not owe me anything. I've got a huge amount out of the mag and the forum over the past 20+ years I've been on here.
I don't want to be part of a pile on. Personally, I am happy to wait however long for it to be fixed, no biggie. but I am also really, really concerned that others won't be so patient and it'll ruin the community on here for good.
This needs to be learned from for the future. I just hope you get it fixed soon.
I hope you understand I'm saying this constructively and out of love for this place, rather than malice.
You're very condescending.
That's as may be. But he's correct. You're comparing a student newsletter with the New York Times.
There are 17 pages and counting on this thread, a significant proportion of which is posts from Mark going "we know it's slow and we're working on it." This wasn't news before the migration even started. There's an update on this page.
Define 'faster' 😉
But yeah pages load quicker, that's certainly true.
Edit to add @Cougar sorry I agree with weeksy here. It could be more delicately put, but factually, a foundational bit of forum functionality (returning posts quickly) has been borked for several days.
Feedback needs to be listened to, not dismissed because it's difficult to hear. IMO.
I'm getting delays of hours not minutes.
Weirdly if I subscribe to a topic I will get an email immediately if someone replies... but if I come to the forum there's nothing showing. If I reply to that pending post it still appears in the correct order.
Testing from NZ. 0609 UK time I think. My posts have not been showing until Mark hits the magic button
Showing g I replied but no post visible
My post on the electric shifting thread appeared instantly. The ones on here still not after 12 mins
All this has been explained many time weeksy and they are working on it the best they can, the other option as mentioned was to close the forum altogether for unknown time period at great expense. Comparing a knocked up website for a little hobby is very condescending to a business that employs staff and provides 1000s of customers. There is no comparison.
How many clients have they lost?
I'm not denying they're working on it. But that doesn't make it less broken and doesn't mean people can just start being condescending to someone who points out they're unhappy with it. Somewhere like my own forum may be small-fry compared to here yes with only 400,000 posts, but mtbr.com has 16m posts and as i say, like all other forums, posts are instant.
As to how many customers have been lost... Only Mark and STW will know the answer in the future, you/I can see that the post counts have dropped massively in the last few weeks since the migration/issues. So have the Articles etc. I don't know how many will return, but as this place is seemingly on a knife-edge, it won't take that many to not return for it to be a problem.
I'm not sitting here saying Mark or Anthony are doing a bad job, they're trying to fix a problem, we get that. However, having people come in with an attitude of "shut up and put up with it" is simply wrong, which is more what i was pointing out. As forum members and people who put our hands in our pockets every year, we've got every right to say "nah, this isn't working well at all". IMO.
I’ve just been taken to some weird ‘Humix’ (or Humex?) version of the STW front page wtf? AND it wouldn’t log me in! I tried again and here I am, back in the room. Odd.
Probably me hitting the delete cache button manually.
Could you add a Delete Cache button to the website temporarily so we can trigger it ourselves (although I'm not sure we're to be trusted) or perhaps temporarily code it so that Delete Cache is called after each post submission?
@weeksy, sure, you have a right to moan. But what really puzzles me is what you think your moaning will achieve? It doesn't help solve the problem, it doesn't tell anyone anything they don't already know, and it contributes to the already negative atmosphere. I would respectfully suggest that you give it a rest.
@weeksy, sure, you have a right to moan. But what really puzzles me is what you think your moaning will achieve? It doesn't help solve the problem, it doesn't tell anyone anything they don't already know, and it contributes to the already negative atmosphere. I would respectfully suggest that you give it a rest.
Give it a rest ? WTF, i've posted twice. That's it... There's people posting 10x that and i'm the one who's being negative here lol. I'm not moaning, i'm stating a fact that's it... ]
If we can only post things that they know then why the heck are any of us posting anything.
However, having people come in with an attitude of "shut up and put up with it" is simply wrong, which is more what i was pointing out. As forum members and people who put our hands in our pockets every year, we've got every right to say "nah, this isn't working well at all". IMO.
No one has done that, no one has claimed it’s fully working. Comparing this site to one someone setup as fun 20 years ago isn’t comparative, that was my point.
So aside from the forum looking rubbish and not working, lets see if this reply actually posts within what should be an acceptable timeframe (the forum I created myself for my own short lived website 20 years ago posted replies inside a second) and/or is visible straight away...
Did all 5 visitors enjoy it?
I think so. Because you typed something, hit send and it immediately published the content to the DB and refreshed the page to include it. It was instant. That was 20 years ago and yes, it obviously wasn't at this scale but the mechanics are the same - all this talk of years worth of updates in the background etc shouldn't slow down the ability to type a few lines of text, press send and for it to appear instantly - see Pistonheads which I think is probably scales of magnitude way over STW and they manage it. We can joke about hamsters etc but this is an absolute shambles. I can't quite believe it managed to get out into the wild in this state.
Lets see how long this message takes to post (my post yesterday was +6 minutes).
However, having people come in with an attitude of "shut up and put up with it" is simply wrong, which is more what i was pointing out. As forum members and people who put our hands in our pockets every year, we've got every right to say "nah, this isn't working well at all". IMO.
No one has done that, no one has claimed it’s fully working. Comparing this site to one someone setup as fun 20 years ago isn’t comparative, that was my point.
At no point has anyone mentioned the scale of the website I setup 20 years ago. Assumptions are well, you know.
What I was more getting at is that regardless of the scale, 20 years of progression has led us here - a forum with loads of traffic thats seemingly underpinned by actual hamsters, wishful thinking and from the outside looking in, a platform that you've either outgrown or don't know how to manage. I'm all for forward fixing after an implementation but there has to be a point at which you give in and fall back and given that 20 years ago, regardless of scale of a site whether it was something I created myself, STW of the time, Pistonheads or the MBUK forum, a user was able to type something and it'd appear instantly.