Member wishlist for Ben to implement :-P
Post your "this site would be cooler if..." list here.
1. ads at the bottom of the page instead of inline around other page elements. the ads detract from the flow of the page.
2. Bigger sizes for avatars! :-P
3. Search? used to be there, now it isn't.
4. Email notification option for private messages.
KTHNXBAI.
>^.^<
Add email notification on
Add email notification on thread responses. (With option to turn on or off.) Can clog the old mail box some, but it also helps to keep up with responses as they float in over time. It drives site activity I believe by making it a more "conversational" environment.
Signatures back on with pictures? (-; Then rather than huge avatars . . you can put better pics of your ride in the signature line if ya want.
Subject search is a good option, no question as the site grows it is a valuable tool.
In any case . .still my favorite site. (-;
2006 Harley Davidson Dyna Wide Glide
Sales, Peterson's North Miami Store
Notifications
The email thing is handled by a module called "notifications." I've got it on a site I run, where posting will be sporadic by design and you need to be told that someone has made an update. You might get annoyed by it here, but typically you're allowed to choose whether you want to be notified or not in the account settings page.
I wouldn't make the avatars bigger, but I'd love it if we could link it to a bigger picture. That's definitely not something that Drupal does by default though. Possibly add user profiles (there's a Profiles module Ben), with a field for homepage or picks of your ride.
Signatures, they're okay, but inlined pictures in the signature is a bad idea. There's a bike-specific forum where I go sometimes and there's way too much visual clutter from oversized signatures with pictures of bikes. A 640x480 picture in the signature is overkill, but unfortunately common. Moderately annoying too, since we all obviously ride the same model of bike.
Top 3
Here's my short list of suggestions for an already great site:
1. Search
2. Ability for moderators to make some threads evergreen and at top, or perhaps an FAQ folder with copies of threads that answers those questions that seem to come up again and again and again...
3. The ability to link to all a poster's comments so you can see if they are for real.
A couple of ideas
This is a great site with lots of information and friendly (even you, Elwood) people. I appreciate that everyone is open with their experiences and knowledge.
Two things might make it easier to use for the newbie.
1) Split the "General" forum into three parts: about the bikes, riding advice and gear
2) Add a glossary of bike slang. (I've found some on other sites, but they are more technical than slang; two that it took me awhile to figure out were ATGATT and squid).
Thanks for everything, Ben and all!
1)
I like the first idea alot.
don't even know
I don't even know what ATGATT means..........sounds like something my two year old would say to my 1 year old....haha. Sometimes I feel like my mom, you know totally clueless to the new "hip" slang, and whatever else. totally off topic though.
I would like to see a bread crumb trail so that you don't have to try and figure out what discussion you were in after you post, without having to always hit back. Just click a link to which part you want to go to and ta-da! You're there! The search for sure. I think I remember it being there when I was a lurker. I don't care too much about pictures and all that jazz, but that's just me. I know lots of people love to show their bike. Half the people on here have my bike, so what's the point? lol. I like the idea of breaking up the general forum into 3 sections.
ATGATT = All The Gear, All
ATGATT = All The Gear, All The Time
BTW, there is a nice article on outfitting inexpensively elsewhere on the site: Inexpensive Gear Guide
email notification on thread
email notification on thread responses
email notification on messages
chat
option for non-admins to submit properly formatted product reviews
A little thing
When reading a post, a link back to the board the post was on, not back to the beginning of the board list.
That one is already there.
That one is already there. Top of the page . . . the first post. It says "posted in" and that is highlighted in blue. Just click on it and it takes you back to the same forum, not all forums. (-;
2006 Harley Davidson Dyna Wide Glide
Sales, Peterson's North Miami Store
Oh, see it. Never saw it
Oh, see it. Never saw it before.
I dint see it at first
I dint see it at first either. (-;
2006 Harley Davidson Dyna Wide Glide
Sales, Peterson's North Miami Store
For Ben
I didn't even know the sporty board did this, but heck, might be a good idea.
Between gear and membership . .might help with cost, and it might be good if it was on a "sticky" thread of some kid so people know it is an option to help you out. Also thought it might be good for folks to see that running one of these things is not easy or free. (-;
Anyway, to hard to explain, so I cut and pasted his explanation of that board.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is more info on The XL Forum Team (Premier) Membership Program.
Question 1. Why did you start the Premier Membership program?
Answer 1. Because the cost of running this website is very expensive and in order to continue bringing you the ability to share information and receive help for your Sportster or Buell it needs to be on a powerful server that can handle the traffic that it is receiving.
When I started this website it was being hosted by a very inexpensive webhosting company. After about 5 months the membership and traffic of the website had become so high that the webhosting company had to take the website down to insure that their server did not crash.
Then the website was moved to a business package a differtent webhosting company. This worked for about a month but again the traffic began to crash their server and they had to take it down.
The way webhosting companys work is that they put 300-400 websites on one server. If this website used too many of the servers resources and crashed it, the crash affected 300-400 of their customers and this, as you can understand, is unacceptable.
The website was then moved to a server which is normally used by large corporations. On the Enterprise Server there are only 4 - 5 websites so there is less of a chance for one website to crash the server.
Finally the website was moved to a dedicated server that has only this website on it.
So, due to the rising costs of running the website I decided to start The XL Forum Team (Premium) Membership Program.
The XL Forum (Premium) Membership program creates the opportunity for the members of The XL Forums help support the website and ensure that it and the information available on it remains available whenever it is needed. It sure is depressing when you come to the forum and see that it is down because it was disabled by the webhosting company. By putting the website on a powerful server it will not go down and will be here for you always.
So if you believe that The XL Forums are providing you with a service that is valuable to you, I ask that you help to support it if you can. If you can't or do not want to that is okay also.
Question 2. What the heck is this gonna cost me?
Answer 2. The Premier Membership will be available for $25.00 a year or $10.00 a month.
Question 3. What do I get in return?
Answer 3
1. Access to special sections of the website only available to the Premium Members.
2. Be able to participate in The XL Forum Contests which will only be open to Premier Members.
3. A lot more space for photos in the gallery and the ability to create personal albums. (only for yearly subscription)
4. XL Forum Team member designation under your user name in the forum.
5. All ads will disappear. (Except for the mini banners on the Forum Main page and the mini banners on the left side of all pages).
6. Less restrictive signature configuraton.
Question 4. What the heck do you mean by "Access to special sections of the website only available to the Premium Members.
Answer 4. There are Video How To's and Tech Tips that are only available to Premium Members in the Premier Downloads Sections. More will be added as I create them.
Queston 5. How do I become a Premier Member.
Answer 5. This is done through PayPal via the links below.
If you do not have a PayPal account and do not want to get one please contact me via EMAIL or PM to pay by check or money order.
So there you have it in a nutshell. Any questions??
If you are interested you can use the following links to sign up:
http://www.xlforum.net/vbportal/forums/payments.php
Once you sign up you should immediatly have access to the entire website. If not please contact bplinson.
(If you use an ECheck via PayPal let me know so that I can activate your Premier Membership since my program does not automatically activate XL Forum Team membership for EChecks)
No refunds on cancelled subscriptions and XL Forum Team Membership does not mean that you can not be banned.
2006 Harley Davidson Dyna Wide Glide
Sales, Peterson's North Miami Store
All Good
All valid ideas except for chat I think. Forums allow concise responses because of the open ended time for them. Chat is nice and can be fun but often times becomes a mess of conversations overlapping eachother. If you think junk posting is crap wait till someone decides to spam a whole chat room.
"Only a Biker truly knows why a dog hangs his head out a window"
A chat room.
A chat room.
Thank you, Ben! We now have
Thank you, Ben! We now have email notifications!
So let me add another suggestion for your consideration...
Every now and then someone drops off the face of the planet for vacation or life just catches up to them. Could you maybe add a feature where when someone who hasn't been active in a while gets a "we miss you and are a little worried that we might have read about you somewhere, could you check in but you don't really ever have to come back if you don't wanna" email? Maybe just have them reply and have a canned system note on their profile saying that they have checked in, and might be back someday... Just a thought...
This came up on the Sporty
This came up on the Sporty site when one of the main stays disappeared for a while. Poor guy had stalkers scouring his home town trying to track him down, and I was having visions of him answering a knock at his door, bong in hand just to find LEO trying to see if he was dead! LoL
That site has over 100,000 members. We had a little discussion about contact info . . and the extent should be mods, at the most. In truth, as the site expands . . a few folks begin to meet, exchange numbers and emails . . I know at least two people on this site that have my number now, and that was what we concluded on the Sporty board. Let nature take its coarse . . sometimes folks for a million different reasons just want to take off. A forum cant really over reach on that one, even when the intention is well meant.
Ben . ..
I like the email notifications. Keeps the topic "conversational". I think you'll find it drives a little extra traffic.
As for house cleaning . . in outlook, you can just sort by sender and clean up fast and easy. I get over 100 emails a day between work and all . . still takes me less than 5 minuets a day to bring my home computer back to a clean in box. It is nice to follow a interesting topic and the e mail is worth the small amount of additional effort to me.
2006 Harley Davidson Dyna Wide Glide
Sales, Peterson's North Miami Store
Ah well, I was thinking of a
Ah well, I was thinking of a way to avoid stalkers... Basically an automated process that checks in with the member and adds a note on the profile that appears when someone hasn't posted in a month or so that says that they are still out there but just haven't been by...
But I respect what you are saying.
Ughhhhhhhh!!!!! If you give a
Ughhhhhhhh!!!!! If you give a mouse a cookie... :-P
Haha, in all seriousness great suggestions guys, and I'm glad it seems like you are all agreeing on a lot of key features. Thanks for the tips Clay, I think I have the profile module installed but I haven't bothered setting it up at all. I will check into that notifications module.
As for the premier membership although that is a good idea, I don't think I will be doing it. I like the idea of BBM being free, although I might start posting the 'donation' paypal link in the sidebar again.
Megaspaz haha, although the ads ARE annoying, they wouldn't get too many clicks if they were posted at the page footer :-P One thing I might do though is set up a special type of user roll so you can opt out of seeing the ads. Maybe this is what the 'membership' would be, although I would probably just ask for a 1 time donation. Honestly though it isn't you guys that click on the ads, its the anonymous users that are searching for one specific thing. If the ads are pretty annoying for you guys I might try turning them off for anyone who is logged into BBM. I'll explore with that and see how much it effects things.
I'm going to be going on vacation to idaho next week, but after I get back I will start to impliment some changes. I already have a better WYSIWYG editor on the way, as well as an easier way for users to upload photos. A review on some saddlebags is in the pipe and I will definitely add a way for members to submit their own gear reviews (although I will probably check them to make sure they are BBM worthy... and that they have been spell checked! lol)
Thanks again for all your interest guys :-) Expect an update in 2 weeks!
Ben
- Best Beginner Motorcycles Admin
WTF Ben, I'll be in Boise and
WTF Ben, I'll be in Boise and then McCall on the weekend of Aug 21...
Maybe I'm shaykai...
Ben, I would think hard about
Ben,
I would think hard about the add part. I don't know about pop ups and opt outs . . but if the site grows over time, it will require hardware, and that costs money. Over time, I would partner with good vendors, you get income, they get exposer, and members get great customer service.
Think about long term relationship potential . . what are some staple items and issues . . .Ride Like a Pro, Cpt Crash, Training Schools, Track Day Opportunity's, Books, Gear . .
Get them to chime in some, all of these products that get mentioned consistently are mentioned because they are GOOD. If they pitch in with the occasional input, everyone on the site wins. Maybe some "Sponsored By" strings that of direct interest to new riders and that are directly related to your sponsors . .
Anyway . . keep those income opportunity's open. Never know when you'll need to add the latest, greatest piece of new hardware. (-; Oh, and back up . .sooner or later . . . a crash happens. ((-;
2006 Harley Davidson Dyna Wide Glide
Sales, Peterson's North Miami Store
There are two types of web
There are two types of web server. Those that have gone down and those that will go down.
An iphone browser mode would
An iphone browser mode would be nice. Another site I visit has it and it works really well. This is just me wanting my cake and eating it though.
Well, my ADD brain was just
Well, my ADD brain was just thinking . . you need sticky threads. In the end some of the basic advice that this site is anchored in should be stickied at the top keeping the best threads in easy reach of all the new folks that browse the site every day.
It will keep those conversations about friction zones and head turns fresh and active with new riders sharing the new experience they are having every day . . . this was pretty much the only place I was seeing support for the stone cold noob when I started out.
Lets face it, as the site grows and gets to be a "community" of used to be new veterans, you'll get more hooligan banter drowning out the foundation of the site, which is to get the stone cold noob into the right machine and off on the right foot. When I was in the research stage . .this place had a lot of influence in how I was looking at things. In hind sight, it was a very positive influence, no regrets.
Keeping those posts active also will be good for the old google search I should think.
2006 Harley Davidson Dyna Wide Glide
Sales, Peterson's North Miami Store