Members riff ie Posted November 15, 2014 Members Share Posted November 15, 2014 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members riff ie Posted November 15, 2014 Members Share Posted November 15, 2014 33, it's me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ATauO Posted November 15, 2014 Members Share Posted November 15, 2014 I once mailed poop, did it with a married woman, got in a ton of flame wars, almost won the fantasy league, won small board one year and Shay Maria. That was back when this forum was all about hurting butts and getting butt hurt. I hope NetStar is still alive. I miss that little cnut. Do I get a kuddo now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bieke Posted November 15, 2014 Members Share Posted November 15, 2014 I'd love to see more of the HCFX veterans return and actively post again. Believe me, I understand the site frustrations, and while the switch to vB5 hasn't gone as well as I would have liked, we're dedicated to fixing it up (the base software in version 5 of VB has major issues that we're paying someone outside of their company to fix) and getting the site to work as well as possible. We fixed and improved the User Reviews, went back to vB (which everyone prefers), got all the old emoticons back (and many new ones) etc. But remember - at the end of the day, that's all just infrastructure - as I've always said, the forums are what each and every one of us make them. It ultimately comes down to your participation and your posts. infrastructure is important, and tbh, after 10 months of vB5, if it still needs fixing up, imo, it was a bad decision to go to vB5. In fact, only 1,5% of forums running on vB are using vB5, vB5 has been out since Feb of 2013, over a year and a half later and it's still crap, at iB, there's only one dev guy left to work full time on fixing up vB5. vB is still the market leader, but have lost a share of the market this year. There was more traffic and participation when HC was running on Lithium. About 25% of visitors are spammers, nothing is being done about it. I really don't see the improvement of the infrastructure, I find it frustrating yes, I still check in every day, the articles and content are decent, news and forums are in poor condition, reviews, well, I don't see the improvement (review button does not work, navigation is impractical, so I rarely check reviews, I used to look around for things I did not know in Reviews, now, that is no longer as efficient), search still sucks, all in all, HC is no longer a leading internet resource for musicians, it has lost a lot of momentum over the past couple of years, wheras other gear related portals haven't.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members seifukusha Posted November 16, 2014 Members Share Posted November 16, 2014 Hiya boyos, I'z backd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted November 16, 2014 Members Share Posted November 16, 2014 There's a first time for everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted November 16, 2014 Members Share Posted November 16, 2014 Hmm you can't quote an attachment. There's a first time for everything. http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/...591&type=thumb there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members conky Posted November 16, 2014 Members Share Posted November 16, 2014 bieke nailed it. it's kinda hard to communicate to other people through this turd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bieke Posted November 17, 2014 Members Share Posted November 17, 2014 bieke nailed it. it's kinda hard to communicate to other people through this turd. oh well, looking at the positive side, all the basic functionalities are in place and working. For me (Win7, IE 9) it still is very impractical to use. But it isn't about me, I think it's a burden to HC if after almost 1 year, they still need to pay someone on the outside to fix the vB5 code. I just don't understand why HC decided to move to vB5. For forum professionals, vB5 is the laughing stock of forum software, it even has its own comic series. It is also said that vB5 is dead. It's slower, more buggy and lacking essential, basic features of vB4. Compared to other forum platforms like IPB or Xenforo, it simply does not work to the standard required to run a community. There is no reason to expect the situation to improve. And we experienced before how difficult it is to migrate to another platform. Now that we're on vB5, it even is more difficult, there is no converter to migrate to another platform (well, since vB5 is not really popular platform, there is no one offering this service), so it looks like we're stuck with vB5. A downgrade to vB4.2.3 is still possible. vB4 is supported still (44% of vB forums run on this version), but only for the bare essentials like security updates and the odd bug fixes for serious things like PHP compatibility (at IB they still have one guy working part-time on vB4). Should work fine for a couple of years and one could hope for a vB6 that's actually decent ... or vB Cloud. Whatever IB will be cooking up next. cos IB will have to do something, they lost more than 8% of the market this year. And it can be expected that this trend continues, as IPB4 and Xenforo2 are getting close to release. Currently over 73% of forum software migrations are from vB to Xenforo. And guess what, Xenforo is designed by the guys who originally developed vB ... anyway, so we're stuck with this "infrastructure". it's dead Jim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ancient Mariner Posted November 17, 2014 Members Share Posted November 17, 2014 Being part of a forum that uses Xenforo, I have to say it's really quite impressive for a user. No idea what the back end is like to deal with, but the user experience is fantastic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members t_e_l_e Posted November 17, 2014 Members Share Posted November 17, 2014 sorry bieke, but IE9 is ancient software and there is nothing easier to hit the update button for this so the forum might work better. yep it is slower than others, yep sometimes i wish it were more userfriendly, but other than that it works, compared what happened with the forum before the switch i saw online communites go down more than once, and altough there might been an upgrade or software change involved, people stopped contributing, in the end the less people contributed the more people lost interest.no software change/upgrade/bugfix/improvement etc could help against this, you could spent millions in IT to have the best forum software in the world, but it will not make the people start using it its the people and what people contribute what makes a forum and a community interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted November 17, 2014 Share Posted November 17, 2014 Hmm you can't quote an attachment. Nope, and you can't quote "comments", so I suggest only using them for brief comments on a post; it's usually better to use the quote button and reply with a post so others can comment and quote it if they want to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bieke Posted November 18, 2014 Members Share Posted November 18, 2014 sorry bieke, but IE9 is ancient software and there is nothing easier to hit the update button for this so the forum might work better. IE9 is vintage yeah I know, but I cannot update this laptop, I have no admin rights otoh, I have IE11 on my other laptop, it's slighly better forum experience, but not much apparantly vB5 only supports IE11 anyway, the basics work even on IE9, it just looks silly with a full page of ads to begin with and half a page of ads on the bottom and always the same ads booooooooooring the thing that frustrates me most is that the euro crowd totally vanished there's nobody here during euro daytime it's just spammers so this is how the forum looks (this is 2 screens) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bieke Posted November 18, 2014 Members Share Posted November 18, 2014 i saw online communites go down more than once, and altough there might been an upgrade or software change involved, people stopped contributing, in the end the less people contributed the more people lost interest. no software change/upgrade/bugfix/improvement etc could help against this, you could spent millions in IT to have the best forum software in the world, but it will not make the people start using it true that, the money spent on trying to polish vB5 code is just a waste. Money could be better used for other stuff. The software is indeed not the best, and I don't understand why they went with vB5, but it is what it is, indeed, it does not bring back members. I noticed lately that the videos on the front page are just old videos that are being posted again. Why not make new videos of new things ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bieke Posted November 18, 2014 Members Share Posted November 18, 2014 its the people and what people contribute what makes a forum and a community interesting. yup, that's true I took a break from the forum when they made it PG-13, I thought it was censorship, a lot of members left at that point,but it didn't matter that members left because now schools and libraries would start using HC and youngsters would sign up and start posting, didn't happen. Same thing end of 2013 when a big change was announced that would revive the forums, this was the migration to vB5, well, participation is low. Now traffic is up again, but it's mostly visitors. I don't know where this comes from, If it's the Who's Online Counter in vB5, well that thing does not work (there's a fix in 5.1.3 or 5.1.4), anyway, vB finally fixed it (after 18 months). If I look at the free webstat sites it does not show traffic is up, it's fluctuating up and down, but it's more or less the same as last year, hovering around 115.000 uniqe visitors every month. I dunno, it probably needs anything from 2 to 5 years to rebuild the community. I hope it is going to happen, but for the moment, it does not seem to be picking up just yet. Contribution and participation seems to be at an all time low. Someone posted in another thread, it is like walking into an empty bar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bieke Posted November 18, 2014 Members Share Posted November 18, 2014 oops, I wanted to edit my last post because I am venting my frustration again, but it still won't let me edit my posts edit : in IE11I can edit my posts, in IE9 I can't, I knew that, and realize it cannot be fixed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members t_e_l_e Posted November 18, 2014 Members Share Posted November 18, 2014 ad's are the reason why i use firefox and ad-block+ most of the time, i think there is also a possibility to setup firefox on a windwos machine as local installation without admin rights... and yes you are right, at euro day time there is nothing going on and on us day time there is just a bit more, so i'm through the forum in 10 minutes at my breakfast coffee and i "read"/browse much more sub-forums than i used to, i was a hcfx only user for a long time, and needed at least an hour to get an overview what was new from yesterday Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bieke Posted November 18, 2014 Members Share Posted November 18, 2014 hmmm, according to Alexa visitors spend about 2'36" minutes on the site on average and site gets 1.92 pageviews, global rank has sunk like a brick it's at 51.992 where it used to be around 16.000 a couple of months ago,monthly visitors :August was good with 130000 visitors (highest number of visitors all year)September 104000 visitors, compared to September 2013, there were 97000 visitors thenand yup, me too, it takes a couple of minutes to check if there's anything interesting or new and I check once or twice a day, also check other forums but I used to check HCFX only, now I check 6 or 7 subforumsthe EG forum has picked up a little as of lateHCFX not so much, 3 years ago there would be 2-3 pages/day, now it's 1 page/week Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GuitarSlim101 Posted November 19, 2014 Members Share Posted November 19, 2014 I still pop in once or twice a week to see if there's anything going on, but this is the first time I've logged in in a while. I've been spending a good bit of time on ILF, not posting much, but hanging around. Been building a few guitars and business has been good at my shop, so I mostly just lurk on forums to stay in the loop on whatever new gear is coming out. I'm satisfied with my current assortment of pedlols, so I haven't been buying much. Also I'm saving up for our wedding, so my extra cash goes to buying tools and wood instead of gear. Also, "ah, the old shampoo-in-the-{censored} ruse" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members t_e_l_e Posted November 19, 2014 Members Share Posted November 19, 2014 bieke heres a link to the firefox which you could just run from any usb stick without any installationhttp://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable the HCEG used to have also 3 to 5 pages a day, which was too much for me so i stayed in hcfx only, also did the maps forum...EG now has a half page a day, which is more then hcfxthe maps forum has less than 5 posts a weeksome people are in AG... i love the FreemanKeller guitar building threads and i miss your bieke threads and seifs videos and zvex talk... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bieke Posted November 19, 2014 Members Share Posted November 19, 2014 cool, thanks for the link, will give it a try Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted November 19, 2014 Members Share Posted November 19, 2014 Nope, and you can't quote "comments", so I suggest only using them for brief comments on a post; it's usually better to use the quote button and reply with a post so others can comment and quote it if they want to. Things have been disappearing and reappearing too. Some youtubes come and go, Guitar Jam itself was gone for a little bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted November 19, 2014 Share Posted November 19, 2014 true that, the money spent on trying to polish vB5 code is just a waste. Money could be better used for other stuff. The software is indeed not the best, and I don't understand why they went with vB5, but it is what it is, indeed, it does not bring back members. I noticed lately that the videos on the front page are just old videos that are being posted again. Why not make new videos of new things ? I think the decision to go with vB5 was two-fold. Number one, we wanted to be back on vB because that's what everyone said they wanted. They went vB5 since it was the latest version, but that was probably before they realized what a mess it really is. Another part of the reason for going with the latest version is security... which is always a concern for us, as it is for any large site. We've actually been talking about the videos, as well as the front page recently. Did you know that other than the moderators, there are only four of us who work on HC? Well, four plus the Nucleus software folks... but all the articles, all the reviews and things of that nature are mainly done by four guys. I typically do two articles / reviews per week. I test the #$%^ out of whatever I review - probably too much. But anyway, it takes time to test stuff and write a fair, comprehensive review. Videos also take a lot of time - and frankly, none of us are particularly experts at it. It would be nice to have a video production facility and dedicated video production / editing staff. Maybe we'll get that someday. In the past, we've primarily done videos at trade shows, but running them throughout the year gets old, as you noted. We're definitely considering our options on that matter... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted November 19, 2014 Share Posted November 19, 2014 Things have been disappearing and reappearing too. Some youtubes come and go, Guitar Jam itself was gone for a little bit. Noted, and I'll have the Nucleus guys check this thread out so they can see your comments too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members goodhonk Posted November 20, 2014 Members Share Posted November 20, 2014 Jam on it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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