Time to move the Retro bar up a bit ... maybe to 2000+?

[brocklanders023]

So we are wanting major changes to this website? The front page hasn’t been changed in two years so I really wouldn’t be holding my breath...

The sad thing is people who find this site will look at the front page and instantly see stories from 2015 (including one regards Dylan Archer which I think is quite distasteful still being up as ‘news’) and will assume that this is a dead site.

More and more parts of the site are falling to bits, be it auction watch no longer working, PM notifications no longer coming through, the search function always returning errors or ‘you can’t search so quickly’ and so on.
I’m still passionate about retrobikes but find myself coming here less and less often which is a shame after 12 years as some of the knowledge on here is superb. I’d hate it if the site just slowly dies but it’s not looking good to be honest.

This.

I'd be happy to chuck a few quid in to something as this site has certainly provided me with a way of funding my hobby without actually spending much. I could get more involved but it has to be for a progressing site rather than life support.

I also remember LGF's offer. A missed opportunity for this community IMO.

 

[retrobikeguy]

Re:

Have things got so bad that mutiny is afoot!

Seriously though, been here for a long long while now and I still like it, Yes I dont have as much time for input but I still log in most nights and will 'pipe up' every now and then but I like the way it is here.

I do believe that the bar set is correct, personally I dont really like anything after 1994 so I'm being polite but I can see the whole category thing being thought over a bit-ish, but 2000 will never be retro enough to be called retro in my opinion.....But then maybe its because I'm old eh!

Would really like to be more a part of it myself, both on the forum and in the field as I loved the whole iconoclassic get together and thought it should be more integrated, but like anyone here this is a hobby / dirty habit and I imagine its a real full time job to police & upkeep the forum making it more of a chore than a satisfaction for John.

Just my thoughts.

Bit drunk and off to bed now.... work int morning

 

[doctor-bond]

Re:

Yeah, it just happened again:

Sorry but you cannot use search at this time. Please try again in a few minutes.

 

[pete_mcc]

I'd be happy to chuck a few quid in to something

Yup!

Yeah, it just happened again:

Sorry but you cannot use search at this time. Please try again in a few minutes.

I just searched for 17” frame and got the following response:
The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: frame 17.
You must specify at least one word to search for. Each word must consist of at least 3 characters and must not contain more than 14 characters excluding wildcards.
Sort of limiting really!

 

[T'boo Ted]

Re: Re:

Yeah, it just happened again:

Sorry but you cannot use search at this time. Please try again in a few minutes.

Yeah thats not "its broken", thats not allowing you to do more than 1 search per time period so you don't suck up resources like a goose. Many, many forums do the same thing, but usually give you a time period eg "you can't make a search for another 30 sec".. There's a lot of threads and a lot of content, every time you do a search it takes resources and retrobike server isn't exactly the exabytes that google has with terrabytes of indexing

 

[pete_mcc]

Re: Re:

Yeah thats not "its broken", thats not allowing you to do more than 1 search per time period so you don't suck up resources like a goose.

It’s not just new searches though, the problem is that when you want to move from page one of the search results to page two this forum treats it as a new search and stops you. You’re expected to wait minutes to move from page to page.

 

[T'boo Ted]

^OK, I've never had that happen, but I can see that would be an issue...

 

[mk one]

Technically requesting page 2 is a new search, and at the moment there are over 500 users on the site all probably using search as well.

 

[FluffyChicken]

Re:

The quality of the search is a phpbb forum problem. It shite no doubt a out it. Best to use the Google alternative (not here on mobile skin iirc though).

It's just the same with the newest PHP updates (we use it on the Raspberry Pi official forum and it has just been updated and just as shite).

Only a move of software will solve that and many of the site problems, that or a lot off add-ins but they bring their own problems when it comes to updating.

 

[mattr]

quote="pete_mcc"]More and more parts of the site are falling to bits, be it auction watch no longer working, PM notifications no longer coming through, the search function always returning errors or ‘you can’t search so quickly’ and so on.
I’m still passionate about retrobikes but find myself coming here less and less often which is a shame after 12 years as some of the knowledge on here is superb. I’d hate it if the site just slowly dies but it’s not looking good to be honest.[/quote]It's not just this site, i used to be active on 10 or 12 sites, now down to three. Plus facebook.

One or two were just killed off by trolls with nothing else to do (veloriders anyone?), two or three become unusable due to a lack of maintenance/updates (one owner died, another one got divorced, lost everything).

One was actually killed by the owners. They decided to optimise for tapatalk and start advertising in a couple of the magazines, then basically left anything that wasn't directly required for the tapatalk interface to rot, this put off a huge number of existing users (the old guard, some of them not even 25!). The response to this was basically "f**k you, we've got dozens of new users signing up a week."
Unfortunately, once the new users realised that to get to the level they see on youtube videos takes thousands of hours of practice and hundreds of pounds of investment they all left the hobby altogether, or just did it for fun (the forum was essentially racers). The few who stayed then had no one left to answer questions, help with advice or second hand kit. So those few remaining new members left as well.

They now have something like 25000+ signed up users, up from something like 10000. But only about 40 people still posting regularly, down from several hundred, possibly more. And now they can't afford the magazine advertising.

A couple have started facebook pages, which end up more popular than the forum, which then dies on it's arse. But facebook doesn't actually make for a very good forum experience. I still dip in, but very very rarely contribute.