Forum Upgrade - Any Issues?

[MarkV]

Maybe wee should all have a protest week. Sign up at other forums and none of the regulars check in for a week. Lets see what that does to the traffic flow and the advertisers will put a squeeze on them once they figure out this whole thing was done INTENTIONALLY!!

You feel so strongly about it you should stand up! Here is what I think you should do. DON'T PAY YOUR SUBSCRIPTION FEE NEXT MONTH. That will show them and should get their attention. Heck I bet a bunch of us will not send our payment either.

MarkV

 

[Muhammad]

Yea there is reply stuff messed up all over the place, like right now im typing in the quick reply box and there is nothing up on top, like in the area where you select font color,size and smilies. All i see is italicized words "font, size" there is no smiley, a place for them just no face. Everything is greyed out like its not availible. I think this is IE 7. It seems to be this way about half the time.

This is an older IE but its not arcaic? THERE IS A PROBLEM with this new software. I had ZERO issues before, well if there was one it was not big enough to stick out at me. This new system is screwed up all over the place, hence 56 pages of it, and still VERY FEW things HAVE BEEN CORRECTED!!


Maybe wee should all have a protest week. Sign up at other forums and none of the regulars check in for a week. Lets see what that does to the traffic flow and the advertisers will put a squeeze on them once they figure out this whole thing was done INTENTIONALLY!!

I mean i dont want to leave but this is getting a little rediculous. Were in how many weeks into this thing, the format seems like it does what it wants to. The boxes dont take up the whole moniter, the add populate over the freaking thread list, if you wait long enough for it to load. Apparently the search feature dosent work. The join date and "Posts" word still appear over top of each other under users avators on certain forums. I mean what the **** was wrong with the way it was before?????????????????

As others have mentioned, all of the issues you report are because your browser is out of date. The developer of the software we use to power the forums has abandoned support for browsers beyond a certain age. Most popular websites have done the same, or they are committed to running software without updates. IE7 was released in 2006... in terms of software, that is archaic and obsolete.

While looking at the forum from the outside it may have seemed like nothing was broken, but there were a variety of issues that were adding up to potential disaster for the forum had we not moved forward with an upgrade.

Having said that, we do recognize that there are still some issues that need to be fixed, and there are some users who are running older browsers and can't update. We're going to look at a couple of options for those users so they can get to the forum content easier. :thumbsup: Please bear with us as we work through the issues and make the forum as user friendly as possible.

 

[clemsonfor]

OK point is taken on many of the issues with the visual appearance of it and IE7. BUT i still get slow running, weired things with the way it looks at my home and i run IE9? The search feature still dosent work (i would not really know cause i seldom use it, but others insist is doesn't) there is no icon to let you know you posted in a forum, etc.

 

[clemsonfor]

As far as "subscription fees" i realize its a joke, but it dosent make any sense really when you get down to it. Im not sure if Muhhamad owns tbn or is an employee of the owner(dosent matter to my point here) but the owner is not coming out of pocket each month so that we can talk about tractors for free each day!! WE MAKE THEM MONEY. they provide us a service and they make money. The BETTER this site is and the more members they have the more they can charge for ad space as there is a wider audience they reach. The guys at the top of a page, like Hoye tractor in the Yanmar forum i guess pays a monthly fee to be up there. It brings him lots of biz as this is one of the main tractor places folks with problems needing parts come. But all those stupid revolving add and such are google/double click adds that are targeted at you based on your browsing history and gear adds toward things you have looked at or searched recently. TBN gets money each time you click one of those adds, and i know i have clicked several myself to either look at a product on a merchants page or to get coupon codes i see there.

So my point is, yes this is free to us, but its the owners job and goal to make the site better so that more and current users continue to come hear so that their add revenue continues to go up!!

 

[Carl_NH]

IE 9 and instead of a nice page view on the home screen there is just small clickable text on the top left.

Pictures are there but no ribbon and before that when the ribbon was there on the home paage you could click forum and get the drop down box - that disappeared a week ago.

Has been that way for several days. and I didnt read all the posts in this thread just the last 4-5 days so if this has been reported - great - sorry for the redundancy.

This is the text in like # 6 font instead of the banner ribbon on the home page

Home
Forums
Reviews
Classifieds
Articles
Dealers
Store

 

[MarkV]

As far as "subscription fees" i realize its a joke, but it dosent make any sense really when you get down to it. Im not sure if Muhhamad owns tbn or is an employee of the owner(dosent matter to my point here) but the owner is not coming out of pocket each month so that we can talk about tractors for free each day!! WE MAKE THEM MONEY. they provide us a service and they make money. The BETTER this site is and the more members they have the more they can charge for ad space as there is a wider audience they reach. The guys at the top of a page, like Hoye tractor in the Yanmar forum i guess pays a monthly fee to be up there. It brings him lots of biz as this is one of the main tractor places folks with problems needing parts come. But all those stupid revolving add and such are google/double click adds that are targeted at you based on your browsing history and gear adds toward things you have looked at or searched recently. TBN gets money each time you click one of those adds, and i know i have clicked several myself to either look at a product on a merchants page or to get coupon codes i see there.

I guess you and I see things different on this. Muhammad is the owner and started this before it was called TractorByNet. I know myself and a few others are still here from that time. He wasn't getting any money from advertiser. He was creating a place where, at the time, Kubota owners could get together and share knowledge. It was a Kubota site at first. To his credit he bore the cost of developing, administering and paying for server time. As the popularity of the site developed, and became too big for the software being used and the server space he upgraded several times. I really don't think he was making money during that time. There still weren't any advertisers of size I remember. Sounds a bit like the business I owned. Spent years breaking even or taking a lose to get it to a point it paid. And you are correct, the value of the ad space increases with the amount of participation. TBN has a pretty good rating these days. It takes time, investment, skill and luck to get to that point. Look how many web sites are out there.

As far as your personal issues it sounded like Muhammad just explained them. The system that your government agency uses is out of date and does not supported much of the modern software out there. So it is hard for you to read TBN at work. I hope they fix that but I don't want to pay anymore taxes so they can. Hope you stick around. I enjoy your posts and opinions.

MarkV

 

[Muhammad]

OK point is taken on many of the issues with the visual appearance of it and IE7. BUT i still get slow running, weired things with the way it looks at my home and i run IE9? The search feature still dosent work (i would not really know cause i seldom use it, but others insist is doesn't) there is no icon to let you know you posted in a forum, etc.

Any IE9 issues should not be happening and we can definitely take care of them if you can provide more information. I just checked the forum on IE8 and 9 and things looked good. Of course, different operating systems and screen resolutions come into play as well.

The search feature works differently now, and we're going to be implementing a site-wide google search soon to give the best possible results.

The icon issue is one on our to-do list as well.

 

[Muhammad]

IE 9 and instead of a nice page view on the home screen there is just small clickable text on the top left.

Pictures are there but no ribbon and before that when the ribbon was there on the home paage you could click forum and get the drop down box - that disappeared a week ago.

Has been that way for several days. and I didnt read all the posts in this thread just the last 4-5 days so if this has been reported - great - sorry for the redundancy.

This is the text in like # 6 font instead of the banner ribbon on the home page

Home
Forums
Reviews
Classifieds
Articles
Dealers
Store

The drop-downs will return, but we have to re-work them for efficiency. We had issues with them conflicting with the video on the home page and some of the ads in the forums.

 

[Muhammad]

I guess you and I see things different on this. Muhammad is the owner and started this before it was called TractorByNet. I know myself and a few others are still here from that time. He wasn't getting any money from advertiser. He was creating a place where, at the time, Kubota owners could get together and share knowledge. It was a Kubota site at first. To his credit he bore the cost of developing, administering and paying for server time. As the popularity of the site developed, and became too big for the software being used and the server space he upgraded several times. I really don't think he was making money during that time. There still weren't any advertisers of size I remember. Sounds a bit like the business I owned. Spent years breaking even or taking a lose to get it to a point it paid. And you are correct, the value of the ad space increases with the amount of participation. TBN has a pretty good rating these days. It takes time, investment, skill and luck to get to that point. Look how many web sites are out there.

As far as your personal issues it sounded like Muhammad just explained them. The system that your government agency uses is out of date and does not supported much of the modern software out there. So it is hard for you to read TBN at work. I hope they fix that but I don't want to pay anymore taxes so they can. Hope you stick around. I enjoy your posts and opinions.

MarkV

Thanks for the kind words, Mark! For those who have been here since the beginning, you know it's been an interesting ride and TBN was originally a labor of love, turned into a business, and now we have 145,000 members. :laughing: The site exists for the members, and without them we would have no traffic or advertising. We've done our best to organize the site, keep it online, and to offer a design and feature set that will make the forum work for as many people as possible. We don't always explain every single decision that is made but we do put a lot of thought and care into the decisions. It's a challenge to keep up with every single support issue when there are so many variables that we do not control. Even if only 1% of the viewers are experiencing a problem, that's 10,000 people. So it does matter to us, but just as we're not a huge corporation, we're also not a one-man show anymore.

 

[clemsonfor]

I understand your point Mark. I am younger than both yall and know less, but i make it that way, i dont care to know all the ins and outs of computers, to me there way to complicated. But every website page from early days was a labor of love, there were few commercial sites 10-15 years ago. But every labor of love is either developed for a pure common interst place like the old bbs systems, or they are developed like that then turned into something commercial. Think Facebook. They developed something so that they could connect with friends and talk and show stuff off, now those guys are billionairs! they do it now for the money!

But thank you for the site as a whole i love this place, and i know im not the only one who feels this way i just have a problem of speaking my mind and saying what i feel, unfiltered, as my brother inlaw and wife say. That said im not the only person haveing these problems which is why im saying that. But to bring in subscription fees is just false at this point in TBNs life. Muhhamed has mad every penny back plus intrest that he ever put into this site.

Oh and i promise im say this in a serious and informative way (remember the filter issue) not trying to belittle you Mohammad. But 1% of 145,000 is 1500 (rounded of course), so it may be less folks than you think with problems. But i assure you those of us with them they are real etc.

As far as works version browser, i hated when my home PC auto updated to IE 9, i hate it. Its harder to find features and it bogs up my computer more than IE7 did, i much prefer IE7.

Oh and for the record i got off 20 mins ago, of course im writing this but also finishing up stuff for work.