The new website - A failure or success.

Well I thnk we have a reasonable amount of feedback here and it seems pretty clear that email notification is missed by the majority of posters on this thread.

If it is at all possible the IFAS web team should try to rectify this. If it is not possible with this version of Fireboard then IFAS should put pressure on Fireboard to include it in future revisions, and also to make it selectable in users profiles as to what kind of feedback they want to set automatically.

In the meantime thanks to Michael O'Connell for the help with resolving a number of issues, though I feel the "hit subscribe button" is just another work around, it should be set and forget in the profile. I will of course use it though, and I would suggest that the use of this button should be highlighted to users so that it may help re-stimulate activity on the site. We can't change the weather but some things are under our control....

JohnMurphy wrote:

I feel the "hit subscribe button" is just another work around, it should be set and forget in the profile.

Yes, I agree. It is a very handy feature if someone wants to keep track of the occasional post, but it's not very practical for someone who wants to monitor all posts.

FWIW, here is a link to the RSS feed for the site, if this is of anyone use to anyone.
www.irishastronomy.org/forum?func=fb_rss&no_html=1

Seanie & Darragh,

Can you do the following please:

1. Find plug-in which will allow each user to turn on/off email notifications for all new threads.
2. Find plug in which will allow each user to adjust their "Subscribe" setting for all posts.
3. Write a post which explains the new features in the website. There are some good additions (e.g. calendar, write articles, etc) but they are not used very much. If people are a bit more aware of these features and how to use them, they may better understand the logic of upgrading the website.

In the meantime, I would encourage users to click on the various links on the left hand side and take a look at the new features in the site.

Thanks,

Michael.

Michael,
Thanks for all your help, I hope this post has been of use to others in learning how to get the most out of this site.
I believe that Fireboards has now been replaced/upgraded to Kunena. Being open source I can see the reasons why IFAS went for this product in the first place. Also it is relatively new and can only get better as time progresses. I'll keep an eye on new developments / modules and if anything comes up that might be useful I'll let you know - though I'm sure Darragh and Seanie are well capable of that also. I have not seen any answers to this issue yet from Joomla and it has been raised by other board organisers many times, yet maybe this is included in Kunena.

You're welcome John.

BTW, if anyone else has a space in their username, just send us a pm and we will amend it. This will ensure the format is compatible with the new website software and you can then edit your signature etc.

Thanks,

Michael.

Seanie et al,

I also suspect the weather is the culprit in the low bandwidth the past few months. Just to give you an idea, I have not been able to spend more than 3-4 hrs under the starry sky the past three months! No kidding!

There has also been the loss of images from the site. When you look at the forum stats the astrophotos is the highest count however over the last year or so there has been an underlying current to discourage showing images. Bear with me on this one.

First of all there was constant complaints about images taking up too much bandwidth and saying that all images should be linked via flick r.

No problem. On other forums they have astrophoto sections with twice the posts but no complaints from mods about posting.

Then came the loss of the imaging comp........blamed on weather and lack of interest....

We can blame the weather for everthing and if there is no compition then you can insure no interest.

The flickr image banner used to be above the posts for those of us who decided to stick to the guidelines and then it was moved to the bottom of the page so that nobody actually gets to it.

I know that talking to other imagers they have also percieved this and no longer post here. Instead they post on UK sites.