JohnD Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 Last weekend. Club Triumph moved to a new server. It's now to be found at https://club.triumph.org.uk/menu/1/view. In my ignorance of things digital, I'm happy to hope that the site will improve, but in my frustration in being totally incapable of posting any encouragement there, I have to ask here. Has CT shot itself in the head? The new site as it stands is clumsy and difficult to use. At the bottom of the front page is a list of Latest Posts, never more than eight long, with no way of refreshing it to see more. The only other way of getting to the message board is via the buttons at the top, which were there on the old site and has had "Cars" added, to take you to forums on each model. Vastly over organised with, for example, separate ones for each Vitesse model - none of which have any content, not even the longest thread in Triumph Torque's history "Paula's Vitesse"! And while some can post - new ones appear on the Latest Posts box - I can't! If I go to one of those threads, and click on the posting box, I get a message window "Rich Text Area [!!] Press ALT-F9 for Menu .....Press ALT-F0 for Help" None of which work. I've found addresses for CT Officers under the People/Club Organsiation button and emailed them, but there's no Forum Officer or similar listed and no one's replied. So if anyone here is also on CT's forum, and knows what is happening, please tell. Meanwhile, like our New Members here from TRR, CT is dead to me. Very sad! JOhn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick B. Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 Hello John I am sad to say that it is also my experience. I have more or less given up on the forum. I used to open the forum in a seperate browser-window, and only show new unread threads. Now I cannot figure out how to open the forum without all the club-shop clutter in the right side of my monitor. Next I cannot figure out how to show only unread threads. It is truly sad - I hope they work it out along the way - change is usually tricky. Cheers Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jones Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 Have to agree that as it stands, although main website may be an improvement (certainly it has functions that the old one did not), the forum is currently a mess. I can post there, but I'm mostly choosing not to as most threads are out of date (compared to the old forum) by varying amounts and I'm not convinced anything I post will remain. I have no doubt Keith is doing his very best and will conquer it in the end, but he might have done better to take it down and keep it down until sorted....... Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GT6MK3 Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 I feel for them - the move from eblah is a beast. Equally, it could have been handled better by getting by communicating with and getting by in from the members of the forum. Change is scary and hard, but if we know its coming and we know when and how, we fear less. Could have been done much better, hopefully it will improve. Craig P.S. - John, my initials are CT... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedRooster Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 Agree, had a few mails between other CT posters & we all agree the new site isn't for us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattius Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 Oh dear, i never go there these days but just had a look, that is not intuitive at all, i didn't think i was on the forum until i went to the cars pages. Maybe once they get posts back it will be better, As a Software engineer, it looks like a coder designed it, we don't genuinely design good interfaces, but the functionality will be there! Tis why most companies now employ lots of Human Performance people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jones Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 You did a good job on this one........ Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtuckunder Posted February 21, 2018 Share Posted February 21, 2018 Of course what most techies and their masters forget when they do this, is that the internet is now full of broken links to CT threads, postings etc. And even if they bring back the archive it too will be full of broken links to other posts, i.e it will be a complete dogs dinner. I have spent the last two decades beating up the people that work for me and maintain our own web sites, "Never Delete or Move anything that anyone may have linked to" by all means hide it or remove paths to it from other pages, but if it could be accessed directly before from a URL then leave it. Google and other search engines will now be serving up dead links for the next decade to CT posting that no longer exist, Google et al are very good and finding new stuff and indexing it, they are appalling at removing stuff that has gone away. In the next decade or so the Internet will be like the British Library if it allowed every visitor to take away a few books or just tear some up and destroy them for fun, i.e it looks like a library but so much valuable information has just been removed without trace, or worse still a vague hint that it once existed! Alan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jones Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Ahhh..... so very true that...... (where's the crying smiley when you need him?) Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted February 22, 2018 Author Share Posted February 22, 2018 12 hours ago, Nick Jones said: You did a good job on this one........ Nick Hear, hear! This site is exemplary, easy to use, clear and accessable. John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GT6MK3 Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 They're falling like flies. CT, TRR, TSSC, and now Triumph Experience Not a good time to be a Triumph webmaster (I promise I just paid our annual hosting bill for Sideways - many thanks to our generous supporters. I like the info at TriumphExp, but jeeze I hate the way it's bloated with ads. OldTuckUnder, I agree in principal about the mess left when websites change, but they had to bite the bullet and do it at some time. They were running on a bit of Software called eBlah, which was written by an American College student years ago, and has been a legacy unsupported millstone around their neck for years. Change was inevitable, and google was never going to let them do it elegantly. I don't know what they went to, but I know when I took over here (and we used to run eBlah), one of the reasons I chose to switch to Invision was because I could mostly roll the old data with it. It broke all the google links, but it was a not easy or painless, but certainly do-able process to get them restored, which we did (with only the loss of some old images) What CT are sorely missing is a bulk re-direction on all their old theads which takes visitors via google to a "Oops, sorry, here's a search page for the new site page". Took me all of 10 minutes to implement one of those when we did our change, and saved lots of angst. Clubs have 2 problems. They're run by Committees (where good ideas go to die), so they suffer from cronyism and well intentioned ideas that often suffer from the laws of unintended consequenses. Then those committees too often farm out work to volenteers or well meaning office staff, rather than hiring professionals with the time and experience to do it right. (I should know, I've been GM of our skydiving club for the last 5 years...) Long may Sideways stay online... Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jones Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 We are indeed most fortunate to have a volunteer professional (HotRod Nerd!) as our webmaster ............. I won't embarrass with the "worshipping" smiley - unless you'd like me to? TSSC website is ok now, I think? Probably benefiting from the CT situation. It was a mess for ages after an "upgrade", which nearly killed it off. Really hope the CT one won't suffer the same way..... Needs to be a status report on it advising the state of play and what happens next. In some ways it might have been better to have stayed down until finished, which would have made Keith's job a bit easier I expect. Triumph Experience should survive........ Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtuckunder Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 1 hour ago, GT6MK3 said: Clubs have 2 problems. They're run by Committees (where good ideas go to die), so they suffer from cronyism and well intentioned ideas that often suffer from the laws of unintended consequences. Then those committees too often farm out work to volunteers or well meaning office staff, rather than hiring professionals with the time and experience to do it right. You didn't write the script for Brexit did you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattius Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 The not moving things ever is a real pain in the ass, one day it just has to happen, i have hundreds of photos on my website linked on various forums etc, it means any time i change it i have to either make sure the images stay the same or do some clever coding on the re-directs. Problem with what they have done over there is that the content is what makes a forum, they have buried the content behind their other club stuff which i guess is there priority but not good for the content that was built up. Its probably a massive generalisation but i always felt they needed some young blood across there, and i think the website shows that, it looks like something you would see years ago, crammed with information and hard to get around. Less is more as they say... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtuckunder Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 22 minutes ago, mattius said: The not moving things ever is a real pain in the ass, one day it just has to happen, i have hundreds of photos on my website linked on various forums etc, it means any time i change it i have to either make sure the images stay the same or do some clever coding on the re-directs. Yes its one of the reasons I have always been an advocate of uploading images to a post not adding a link. On our customer and developers support web sites we specifically prevent any one including a link to anything, they can upload any kind of document of any size they like but not include a link. When someone is looking to resolve a software problem later on and a search throws up a likely earlier candidate for the similar or the same problem, finding half the detail missing because of a dead link is a complete and utter pain and can be costly. I have always thought of links as being like footsteps in the snow, when first laid they are clear and easy to follow, but over time they have a habit of melting away Alan (unfortunately anal, and well known for producing emails, text messages, and even IM's from a decade or more before to prove what it was was actually decided/agreed rather than what folk memory or common sense would have one believe) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted February 22, 2018 Author Share Posted February 22, 2018 (edited) On 21/02/2018 at 1:31 PM, GT6MK3 said: Craig P.S. - John, my initials are CT... OoooooooooooooPs! And Club Triumph (not CT) prides itself on having no paid club staff. But then TSSC ran, and runs AFAIK, it's website on volunteers. John Edited February 22, 2018 by JohnD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zetecspit Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 I am saying nothing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jones Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 57 minutes ago, zetecspit said: I am saying nothing... Probably wise....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yorkshire_spam Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 I installed something called "Stylish" - an add in for chrome/firefox which allows you to over-ride the site's styles with your own, then wrote some new styles that hide the side bar and make the forum 100% width of screen - it's more readable. But then I've been a closet web nerd since the first .com bubble! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Jones Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 I understand most of the words...... but the sentences are a problem..... Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yorkshire_spam Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 Translation: I found a nerd way to make it easier for me to use their forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterC Posted February 22, 2018 Share Posted February 22, 2018 I'm in awe of the expertise on display in this thread. But somewhat bemused we still have qwertyuiop. Like tiller steering on a Ferrari. Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldtuckunder Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 (edited) We almost lost it, but a bit like rust it just didn't give up. When texting became the rage on early mobile phones (the ones with buttons, remember them? oh, hang on I think Peter still has one?) there was a generation growing that found an A-Z layout intuitive and didn't like qwerty layouts, then came the smart phones and tablets with graphical keyboards (which of course replicated the conventional qwerty layout) and the battle was lost. I have a vague suspicion that if the Kligon's rise to technical heights mirrored our own, and at some point between pen and computer they had mechanical writing instruments that their computer keyboards if translated would read QWERTY Edited February 23, 2018 by oldtuckunder Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted February 23, 2018 Author Share Posted February 23, 2018 Really? My Kindle Fire, and my Android phone have 'qwerty' keyboards. But then if I knew how, I could probably have the other sort. John Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yorkshire_spam Posted February 23, 2018 Share Posted February 23, 2018 If you want a change buy a dvorak keyboard! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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