advantages(?) of redesigned site

[William F.]

At least some of us have not as yet, at least, seen the need or advantages of the web redesign. But to be fair, would those responsible please enumerate the advantages, as they see it, in this new design. Then the membership can make a more informed opinion, pro or con, whowever they see it.This will be appreciated.
William Ford
'67 C60 L79 coupe
'67 roadster

[Patrick H.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

Bill,

In our office we've been using electronic medical records for over 9 years. We were some of the first to use them in the country and are still with the same vendor. During those 9 years we've had software and system upgrades, some big and some small. The system looks nothing like it did in November of 2002 when we started and works completely differently. Based on firsthand experience some of those upgrades and changes have been incredibly painful. When patients expect you to be on time and you can't document your work in a job when documentation is everything.... ouch. And there was more, too.

Did we want any of those upgrades? Yes. All of them? No. However, each one eventually gained us new functionality. We often cursed out the software designers who rearranged things (and obviously don't see patients) but with time have learned to find the old functions, learn the new functions and move on. Many of the upgrades are mandatory, though, as the parent software company no longer supports (or will fix errors and issues in) older versions of the software. For the same reasons that none of us still use Microsoft 95, 98 and probably not 2000 on our home computers we also have to move on with the software of this site. At least we had the ability in our office to test "trial versions" of the software and watch tuturial videos before each upgrade. I have no idea if vBulletin has similar videos.

So, though I'm not on the tech team here I'll let you know that there will not be a vote. We can voice opinions, ask questions and give suggestions. In the end we'll have to learn to live the one we're with.

Regards,

Patrick

[Dick W.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

I think Rob summed it up in a nut shell in another post. The software version that we were using was not being supported by the vendor. It is very common, once software is updated by a vendor that they drop support of older versions. It becomes difficult to maintain unsupported software, you have a problem, you might as well call Ghost Busters

[William F.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

Thanks for the explanation,Dick.If the reason for the change is that the older software could not be supported by the vendor, so be it. We'll have to adjust. Let's be sure we're using the vendor who is most responsive to our needs,though. NCRS members are car guys, not computer geeks. I could vomit everytime I see an add about "speed, some even using an image of an engine, and it turns out they'r talking about a computer. If we were into that, we'd be driving "Bimmers" with the (in)famous I-Drive to play with.

[John W.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

Software no longer supported by vendor was one of the factors. Security of the software was another important part. Bad people are always looking for ways to exploit software and the older it is the more time they have had to learn how. The other factor was that the new software has features that the old one didn't. We haven't yet started to explore many of them but we will in the future. Right now we are finding and implementing fixes as we can for things that you the users miss.

As you can see one of the big issues was the Last Visited and Unread Posts that were no longer included. They are now at the top of your screen. You can click on Unread Posts and it will give you all of the posts that you have missed since you were last here. It obviously is not (I hope!) going to give you the 300,000 + posts that date back to 1998.

The Search issue in the beginning was just because we were in a hurry to get back up and running before the database was completely re indexed for the new system. The Search facility now supports Boolean searches using AND, NOT, and OR. Read the FAQ about how to use this new improved function.

It has been about 5 years since we did a major upgrade to the Technical Discussion Board for the same reason. Vendor no longer supported the old one. Many features available on new board that were not available on the new one. We heard about the same amount of complaining then as now. Everyone evidently got over the last upgrade since they didn't want anything to change now.

We did not upgrade from version 3.6.8 through all of the version of 3.7.x and 3.8.x and 3.9.x. We didn't even jump on 4.0.x. We waited till most of the bugs were worked out and jumped to 4.1.9.

I hope to upgrade more often now so that we only see gradual changes and not major ones.

Keep letting us know what you miss or what you would like to see and we will continue to try to provide it.

[Tom H.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

It's just like getting a new cell phone. At first you hate it, then you learn to like it. It's not that big of a change if you ask me. It will be OK.

[Ridge K.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

John and Dick, thanks for the explantions.

Is it my imagination, increasing age, .........or is the type smaller now after the upgrade?

Ridge

[Norris W.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

.................Security of the software was another important part. Bad people are always looking for ways to exploit software and the older it is the more time they have had to learn how.

John, with all due respect, I think NCRS showed a TOTAL lack of concern for MEMBER SECURITY when they force fed us the requirement to show our full name on an open website for the world to see. I've howled my concerns over it in multiple previous posts and even had the opinion listed in my signature for several months until I got tired of reading it myself. Putting members' full names on a public forum when they discuss the ownership of assets with considerable value (old Corvettes) is about as UN-secure as anything that could have been done. Why not list our personal bank balances also? I never have heard a reasonable explanation of why the powers that be thought it a good idea or necessary. Bad people are always looking for ways to exploit almost any opportunity, not limited to software and we've given them a pretty open door here.

[John W.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

Norris,

This topic has been explained many times previously. When this forum was first established many years ago a big problem that plagued many forums was nasty posts and people posting links to porn and other nastiness. One way to limit this was to require that members use their real names on all their posts. Since some members share the same names we had to append member numbers to allow more than one person to share the same name.

The number of posts among the more than 560,000 posts that have had to be deleted or edited has been very low.

I don't know of anyone who has ever had a bad experience related to their name being on this forum.

[Ridge K.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

Norris,

This topic has been explained many times previously. When this forum was first established many years ago a big problem that plagued many forums was nasty posts and people posting links to porn and other nastiness. One way to limit this was to require that members use their real names on all their posts. Since some members share the same names we had to append member numbers to allow more than one person to share the same name.

The number of posts among the more than 560,000 posts that have had to be deleted or edited has been very low.

I don't know of anyone who has ever had a bad experience related to their name being on this forum.

John, I might be the first you've heard of, but I have been tracked down via google searches by universities trying to hire me for teaching courses about vintage Corvettes.

Not because of my knowledge, which admittedly is very limited. but because they find out via this site that I'm friends with Terry McManmon.

What about that font size? Thanks......

[Norris W.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

Norris,

This topic has been explained many times previously. When this forum was first established many years ago a big problem that plagued many forums was nasty posts and people posting links to porn and other nastiness. One way to limit this was to require that members use their real names on all their posts. Since some members share the same names we had to append member numbers to allow more than one person to share the same name.

The number of posts among the more than 560,000 posts that have had to be deleted or edited has been very low.

I don't know of anyone who has ever had a bad experience related to their name being on this forum.

John, I've never seen it explained and even sent several letters to NCRS honchos voicing my concerns, without a single response. After the change to published names I didn't post here for almost a year, but missed the website to the point of reluctantly surrendering. I've posted this before, but I'm one of the Admins on a high perf boat website WWW.ScreamandFly.com which has over 50K members. We have all the issues with nasty hateful posts, porn links, spammers and everything else. There are times when I may ban as many as a half dozen members in a single day, counting the spammers from UK and Nigeria. A little moderation of the forums is a small price to pay for the security of the members.

I have also previously posted my own bad experience where I was called in the middle of the night by a very foreign speaking person inquiring about one of my cars that I had put some comments about here. This was about 4 AM local time and it became instantly apparent that he had seen my post here and done a simple internet search and found my location and then phone number. I played him long enough to figure what was going on, and he got all the way to "his buyer being in my section of the country and he would like to come by and give me a deposit and .............." (right to the scam pitch). I have NEVER discussed ownership of this particular car on any internet forum and my name is not published anywhere else. I know of at least one other NCRS member who got a somewhat similar call on a '67 Corvette after he had entered into a discussion here on some specifics of the car. (middle of the night call from a person who could barely speak English). If my name was Jack Smith or John Jones I wouldn't have any problem, but members with unique names are especially vulnerable to being found with available internet searches when they make themselves visible. As examples, doing a simple search turns up only 50 matches with similar names to mine and it is very simple to eliminate about two thirds of them due to duplications and similar spellings being included, even without location. Ridge's who posted above only has 3 matches. On the other hand, a search of John Waggoner's yields this result: "Too many results found. Please narrow your search!" Some of us are kinda' hung out there naked, while all the guys with more common names are still in the shadows. That in itself makes the requirement seem unfair.

If this was a closed website it would be one thing, but in reality, anybody on the planet can log on here and see who we are and what we play with, and with a simple search determine where we are too. It just doesn't make any sense, and I am not aware of any other public website of decent size that requires it. Maybe when somebody has a car stolen, is scammed somehow or worse it'll be recognized as an poorly thought out requirement. Regardless, the risk outweighs the reward.

[Patrick H.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

John, I might be the first you've heard of, but I have been tracked down via google searches by universities trying to hire me for teaching courses about vintage Corvettes.

Not because of my knowledge, which admittedly is very limited. but because they find out via this site that I'm friends with Terry McManmon.

What about that font size? Thanks......

Ridge,

Click on your name, upper right hand corner of the page.
Click on Customize my Profile ( not too far below your name et al, right hand side).

Left hand side will say Font Family / Default / xx-small. Change the xx-small to your size of choice.

I think you'll need to close your browser and reopen to see it change. That might work for you, I'm not sure...

Patrick

[Terry M.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

John, I might be the first you've heard of, but I have been tracked down via google searches by universities trying to hire me for teaching courses about vintage Corvettes.

Not because of my knowledge, which admittedly is very limited. but because they find out via this site that I'm friends with Terry McManmon.

What about that font size? Thanks......

I told them to have a native speaker call you. Good help IS hard to find.

[Ridge K.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

Ridge,

Click on your name, upper right hand corner of the page.
Click on Customize my Profile ( not too far below your name et al, right hand side).

Left hand side will say Font Family / Default / xx-small. Change the xx-small to your size of choice.

I think you'll need to close your browser and reopen to see it change. That might work for you, I'm not sure...

Patrick

Thanks much! I appreciate it.
Saves me getting stronger reading glasses!

[William F.]

Re: advantages(?) of redesigned site

John and Dick,
I also wish to thank you for the explanation for the need to make changes in the format. I think your explanation will help all members understand and decrease the complaining.
Thnks again,
William Ford