• Folks, if you've recently upgraded or renewed your annual club membership but it's still not active, please reach out to the BOD or a moderator. The PayPal system has a slight bug which it doesn't allow it to activate the account on it's own.

Site upgrade Announcement Xenforo here we come.

Edwardw771

NJRC Member
Terms are not only different they are confusing. Also post a thread on R2R tonight and try and find it 2 days later. Yeah, it is watched threads but where the F is it? I can get to my threads here in one click. First of all it is a PIA to find the thread on R2R and even if you do, you have to click 4 places.

I agree, what risk are we talking about? I find it hard to believe that vBulletin is not addressing it. Heck RC stlll uses vBulletin and they have much more at stake then we do, not to mention 3000+ posts a day.

Risk of Malware and Spyware being installed on the site that could then infect your pc. No one wants to deal with that.

We have smart people here I'm sure everyone will be fine.
 

Sunny

NJRC Member
Article Contributor
Risk of Malware and Spyware being installed on the site that could then infect your pc. No one wants to deal with that.
We have smart people here I'm sure everyone will be fine.

Oh well, so be it. I am not so sure about it.

We need more innovative posts not a site upgrade. An example is the thread you started on Sunday about what everyone was doing. That thread got more responses than we got all week.

I guess I am done. I have always supported the cause (read club) and will keep doing that. If we really have the smart people here, where have they been so far?
 

Edwardw771

NJRC Member
I agree the site has been dropping posts lately. Unrelated to the upgrade.

There have always been good people in this club we need to get back to the good old days when the site was busy. I believe it will happen.
 

Sunny

NJRC Member
Article Contributor
I agree the site has been dropping posts lately. Unrelated to the upgrade.
There have always been good people in this club we need to get back to the good old days when the site was busy. I believe it will happen.

I am saying that upgrade is not unrelated. Making things complicated for non technical users can result in further posts drops.
Is there any point even discussing it? I guess the decision has already been made and at this time we should just brace for the impact.
 

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
My two cents:


I'm not computer literate and therefore have not participated in the "beta" testing of this new software (available to a select few of the membership).


I'm an old fart....don't like change....still have rotary service on my home phone.....but I've accepted R2R changes to their new forum software....and expect I'll not have a problem with our site changing as well.


I'm all for it.....and also agree that our traffic has been down considerable and something needs to be done to increase this traffic.
 

Sunny

NJRC Member
Article Contributor
My two cents:
I'm not computer literate and therefore have not participated in the "beta" testing of this new software (available to a select few of the membership)
I'm an old fart....don't like change....still have rotary service on my home phone.....but I've accepted R2R changes to their new forum software....and expect I'll not have a problem with our site changing as well.

I'm all for it.....and also agree that our traffic has been down considerable and something needs to be done to increase this traffic.

What choice did you or as a matter of fact anyone had to not accept R2R change?? I think NJRC is local to us and that is all I am trying to say.
Guess I am not very clear on what I am saying.

I will shut up now.
 

Edwardw771

NJRC Member
My two cents:


I'm not computer literate and therefore have not participated in the "beta" testing of this new software (available to a select few of the membership).


I'm an old fart....don't like change....still have rotary service on my home phone.....but I've accepted R2R changes to their new forum software....and expect I'll not have a problem with our site changing as well.


I'm all for it.....and also agree that our traffic has been down considerable and something needs to be done to increase this traffic.

Thanks Paul.
 

Edwardw771

NJRC Member
I am saying that upgrade is not unrelated. Making things complicated for non technical users can result in further posts drops.
Is there any point even discussing it? I guess the decision has already been made and at this time we should just brace for the impact.

The officers voted to do the upgrade. We put in a lot of hours of work to make this change.

We believe this upgrade will improve the club as a whole.
 

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
What choice did you or as a matter of fact anyone had to not accept R2R change?? ......

There were those at R2R that totally objected to the change and stated it was terrible. I didn't have this problem and accepted the change as something new....with benefits. The change surprised me......positively.
 

Sunny

NJRC Member
Article Contributor
There were those at R2R that totally objected to the change and stated it was terrible. I didn't have this problem and accepted the change as something new....with benefits. The change surprised me......positively.

Paul, I am so done. Still what you say does not clarify what choice anyone had. It was imposed on them on R2R. I hope we are not about to compare NJRC to R2R. We do not compare in any standards and that means members, posts, communication, control, education, vendors and participation.

All I was trying to say was that we do something that helps our club. If the officers think the site upgrade helps lets go for it. I am wasting my energies on a moot point.

I am myself surprised why I spend so much time tonight trying to reason with the whole thing.

Go for the site upgrade I am NOT against it. Let's just leave it at that.

Sunny
 

dnov99

FRAG SWAP VENDOR
It's a fish forum, I think everything will be fine.

I never noticed any difference but I use my phone all the time for everything. People still use desktops computers??!! Lol
 

TanksNStuff

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Hi guys! I've been helping out in the background with testing the XF site for NJRC. The main reasons we made the change was the security/malware reasons that Ed mentioned. But XF is a much more robust architecture and is more compatible with mobile devices... which was also a big reason why the switch was made.

Let me try to convince you that this was a good idea...

I've used Xenforo on other forums and found it to be a lot easier and a lot more intuitive than vBulletin. I use both mobile devices and the good ole PC so I can say I've tried both of them just about anyway you can. I also have tapatalk, but honestly, I prefer to use the web version because my smartphone is smart and can handle it! :D Some people prefer the minimalistic approach of Tapatalk though and XF handles it quite well. In fact, better than vB does.

Here are a few other advantages that I've noticed XF has over VB:

1. XF will auto-save a "draft" reply for you. So, if you are like me and type long posts while at work, getting distracted often... you can come back later and finish your post without having it time out on you and losing all your work.
2. This auto-save is server based, not client based so you can start a post on your mobile phone, and then login from another device (PC, laptop, another phone) and the saved draft will be there waiting for you to complete it when you return to that thread.
3. XF has "trophies" that can be earned through posting milestones. There is a default list of trophies for things like # of posts made, # of likes received, etc. But the Site Admin can add custom titles/trophies to the list too. These are insignificant to people like jgraz who says he prefers simple things... but some people like to earn these and wear them as a badge of honor so to speak. This will help promote participation on the forums.
4. XF has a couple reply options that I think make it better:
---4A.) You can select/hi-light a few words or a single sentence from someones post, wait a second, and a "quote" button will appear. This allows you to quote a small portion of another post that you would like to address instead of quoting the entire post.
---4B.) There is an "Insert" icon next to the "Media" icon (to the right of the movie clip) that gives you cool options like Spoiler (basically it lets you add text to your post that isn't seen unless the reader clicks the Spoiler button). This is great for adding a bunch of images to your post and it will hide them so it doesn't take up the whole screen until the viewer wants to see them. There is also a Strikethrough option that will cross out the text you type. This is great for when you want to show changes to a previous post you made (like if you change directions on a build thread or you want to cross out stuff you sold on a Deals and Steals thread, etc.) You can also select text from a post you quoted, and use the "strikethrough" button to cross out existing text.
5. Conversations are MUCH better than PMs! It keeps individual discussions as separate threads... sort of a private thread. vB has PM's that just list them in order you received them, so replies between multiple people get intertwined in the list and you have to go sifting through them all to find a previous PM. How many times have you gone back looking through all your PM's to find a phone number or address another member gave you? With XF... the whole back and forth conversation gets shown as a thread and you can scan through all the posts at once.
---5A.) You can invite other members to a current conversation. When you open a conversation thread, there is a panel on the right that shows you conversation info and participants. In the Participants box, you can invite other members to join in that thread. The only people that can view that thread is the participants and I believe any of those can invite others (not sure, we should test that). But anyone that gets invited will be listed on the Participants panel so all can see who has access to the thread. This feature is a good tool for people to setup private group buys and orders... or for officers to discuss an issue with a specific user/sponsor privately, etc.

I could probably go on and on, but these are just a few of my personal experiences with both software brands. I would like to know what specific things you guys didn't like about XF that you experienced on R2R? Maybe we can help you figure something out and make it more likable to you?

I know a few mentioned it's hard to search for something on R2R. Did you know that if you click in the search box, there is a button on the bottom right that says "More" and that brings up advanced search features? This gives you options to narrow a search to posts by certain users, posts in certain forums, and even lets you search for a certain persons profile. I think it's just as easy to find stuff there as it is here..

Anyway, please post any specific problems or concerns here and we can try to help you fix or figure them out.
 
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