If you're having trouble posting...

Re: If you're having trouble posting...

Warren in Lancaster, PA

It looks as if at least some problems have been solved.

Re: If you're having trouble posting...

David Weaver

I guess nobody had something they wanted to say badly enough to log in under another browser.

This is a thankless job for Ellis, though we all say thanks, I don't know that any of the rest of us would put in the effort.

I'm glad that Ellis is dedicated, though - I've been browsing other forums a little bit more than usual and they just don't cut it compared to this one.

Gratitude, and a plebiscite

Ellis Walentine

...swings both ways. I'm grateful for your comments. I don't do much around here anymore, except when things break, and sometimes not even then. But, it's good to hear that WC is well regarded, at least among the hardcore regulars. I don't venture out to other forums so I can't form an informed opinion of how we compare. I don't really care to know, but I can't imagine a more knowledgeable bunch of folks anywhere, at least not in the woodworking world.

As you are probably aware, it's been a hectic week for us, with scripts heading south, posting disrupted, etc., as a result of an upgrade to our server environment. We're good for now, but the recent pitfalls have gotten me thinking of moving things to a different forum structure. I have actually found one called MyBB that offers message threading, similar to the way this forum displays. But, I'm always wary of silver bullets, or silver linings for that matter, because they are never without their own quirks and "issues". Few software packages have proven as robust as this legacy software, written back in the 90s in an arcane language called Perl, which requires an interpreter on the server side to tell it what to do. It's bulletproof, except when time marches on and conventions change.

I haven't made any commitments at this point, but another potential upside to a change would be that we might actually be able to extract and preserve literally all of the messages ever posted here, and make them searchable. It would be a big expense and probably take months of hard work by myself and whoever we hire to do the basic migration. Just thinking out loud here, but I thought you'd like a glimpse behind the curtain. Anything is possible.

Please carry on. I'll do what I can to keep us going. Feel free to share your thinking on a strange new forum.

Ellis

Re: Gratitude, and a plebiscite

Howard Pollack

Good morning Ellis. First thanks for all of your work and thanks for this forum. The forum is fine the way it is, but if it is to change here are a couple of things I'd like to see:

1) searchability

2) a button that would extract all the threads in each sub-forum with new posts so that one does not have to go looking for the red dots.

3) A hover over feature that allows one to get a preview of a message by the cursor hovering over the name of a thread or post. Sawmill Creek has such a feature and it makes it much easier to see what is in a nondescriptively named thread without opening it.

Again, thank you. -Howard