Inliners International Forums Thread Like Summary - UBBthreads 7.7.5 Upgrade is complete

Greetings . . .

The upgrade to the latest version of UBBthreads is complete. I have done some basic configuration so that our Forums can run the new version and begin to take advantage of new features.

The single biggest change in functionality of is the replacement of the Image Manager and File Manager with a general purpose Attachment Manager:



This utility allows for photographs to uploaded in original format up to 5MB in size. The image is then resized and compressed on the fly before being save to disk on the server.

Once a file is uploaded the thumbnail image acts an embed button. It will create an image tagged link and embed it in your posts:





Over the coming weeks and months I will spend some time on configuring new features and addressing some cosmetic issues that remain - especially with smart phones.

regards,
stock49

Attached Images

Thank you, Keith, for all your hard work. I know what you have to go through to get these things done and the time it takes. Luke lucas

Look to the far right. There is a pull down under your login name.


The developers have changed the bread-crumbs bar completely. Not sure what has become of the "my posts" link or the "show users posts" link the profile. I am continuing to read the release notes and the documentation.

The new version of the Forums is going to take some time to get used to . . .

Keith,
Thanks for all the hard work!

I was a previous Inliners Club Officer. At that time, the club was trying to ramp up efforts for recruiting new members. Since I had a marketing background and also being a published author, I was asked to create a template for the Chapters to have for ideas to recruit new people. There were quite a few Chapters that had very little activity and some that had never had a single gathering since that Chapter was formed or even knew who its members were.

The outline was simple and basic, but full of great ideas to create opportunities to reach out to the public in their respective areas to recruit. I even spoke to several of those Chapter heads and was met with, "Well, were just a bunch of old guys and can't do much, that should be some else's job!"

Other Chapters that did have occasional meetings some how thought they were part of some secret society, and didn't feel they needed to engage with the public when they were out in public as a group. Each member is part of a much larger machine, just like the website and all those parts need to work together to make the machine effective.

The forum isn't going to bring people to the Club. The individual members are often someone's first line of communication in public. As tlowe said, many often sit on their hands expecting or assuming its somebody else duty or responsibility to seek out and find new members. Unfortunately, that template was never presented to all the Chapters to my knowledge as a way to be more productive in recruiting. Some Chapters make a great presence in their communities, but most don't.

The language categorizing these features and functions are that of the developers of the UBBthreads software - not mine. And this has nothing to do with configuration settings - but with the actual capabilities of the software - specifically coding changes between versions 7.5.8 and 7.7.5. The entire progression of features/functions can be found here:
https://www.ubbcentral.com/changelog.php

In past postings in the General Discussions forums I have documented/described the capabilities of the Image Manager and the File Manager under our then circa 7.5.8 implementation. I cannot unsay those things. I can only put them in context with the new jargon and features of the latest release.


TTW all I can suggest is that you register as a user over at the UBBcentral forums:
https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/forum_summary
and submit specific enhancement requests to the developers of this software.

I don't know the details as I have never looked at it, but in the world I work I always try to keep things consistent. PHP is ascii files, I'd edit them if I needed to.

To date I have offered to help and you have refused it. The software was upgraded, now it needs to be configured and setup.

If members didn't read those in the past, they won't read them now. I don't know what I would do, but I'm not sure that model works for most people. We see the problem we are currently in, if people read each one of your stickies everyone would be able to post and wouldn't complain. That's not the case.

The forums had a better appearance with the previous software, so not sure what happened, but many of those changes seem to be lost as visually it looks different, different colors, different images, setup slightly different on the screen. It seems we've failed to include the changes previously done to the forums. This might be because you setup a separate VM rather than upgrading the existing one, that I don't know, I just know it looks pretty different to me.


I appreciate your suggestion, but I am not doing anything other than moderating my 2 forums I have. Not very hard as I'm pretty much the only one that posts in them over the past few years.

Still takes work to build a community, was talking with Beater about this recently. Without a community you don't have much. The latest software will not bring people here. The latest software will not get people to post. Nothing was discussed with the community, nothing was asked of what people do or don't like. I would be ok with that if the Inliners forums had a track record of implementing the correct function, but so far it hasn't.

If it was me I'd try to embrace the few folks that do hang around here. I would try to build a community. I am not so sure that fits the big picture agenda with the Inliners. I would delegate forums to the participating members and offloading so much from people like you, so that things would get done quicker.

I still fill the same as I did when I posted the last message, the new software is a start. It was needed and you should keep it current, always. However, it needs to be configured properly so it's easier for people to use and that is something that consistently changes over time so you need to figure a way to apply your changes to the next upgrade if the forum software doesn't pull them.

I have spent more than 35 years of my life trying to make software easier for people to use. I think these forums could be setup so that they're easier for everyone to use. That's just my opinion.

Traditional Toolworks,
I have been following along on this. What exactly needs to be configured with the new software? Do you have direct knowledge or do you just want to look at what is available? The forum is easy to post on and now we have the ability to post pictures. What is missing? The only thing I see missing is more new content. So we all need to invite our Inline friends over to here. I posted on FB about this forum being the greatest data collection of inline stuff ever.

You had mentioned how nothing was asked or discussed with the community. That is not true. We have be asking for ability to post pictures for ages. We asked to not lose data. Now both have been met. What would be the "correct function" you are referring to?

Not trying to be mean, just trying to figure out what you so dislike about our forum. I find it very functional.

Yes, and no. I have configured forums software in the past, but not with UBB Threads, but I understand how the forums work and had PHPbbs running on one of my home servers for a while, and I know very well about communities. I have run user groups for Microsoft, IBM and Sun Microsystems. I have also been involved in open source since the early part of my career, 35+ years ago. Not bragging or patting myself on the back, just showing you that yes, I do have some direct knowledge on these types of issues. FWIW, I bailed out the USA Table Tennis site in the past and upgraded and configured their forums for them. Ok, the USA is not big in Table Tennis, but it is an Olympic sport.

That sounds pretty easy, I'll sit back and watch the community thrive with the new software. But as I have pointed out, there's a bit more to this community 'thang, it's just a bit more complicated than that, the new software is a start. Finally it will allow people to post pics and resize on the fly, a huge step.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about discussing changes that are being done and/or how they are done. Nobody was asked what they did or didn't like, changes were made. This is not the way to embrace the community. Yes, people have been clamoring to be able to post pics, let's see how many do it. I'm just a firm believer that software does not make a community in and of itself. If it was that easy, we'd see a lot more communities.

Sure, I've been kicking and screaming to get the software upgraded for at least 3 months. It is the first step of many. If you want this community to thrive, however it's not fixing things to get uploads resizing, there is much more work to do. The forum looks entirely different now, which is all fixable, but how long will it take?

I have offered my help, but there's a reluctance to accept it. I normally get paid pretty big $$$s to do this type of work for people, I had previously offered to help the Inliners for free. That has gone on deaf ears, so I'm just gonna sit back and watch how things evolve and just keep my comments to myself.

You may think everything will snowball with the new software upgrade, well, show me.

FWIW, I have posted replies to your thread and you haven't answered or even commented. That wouldn't happen in a strong community, my $0.02. In the best world you would have replied or at least made a comment. This shows the weakness of this community, IMO.

Tom,

Just to elaborate, we first need to understand that everything with the Inliners is on a volunteer basis, but just because people volunteer their time doesn't mean they are not required to do things. I get that, all of our time belongs to us, including you!

Now I wanted to describe a real world situation, where a person lost their job because they didn't let people know what they were doing. It became hard for the management and engineers working on the project so they got rid of the guy. Lucky for me, as they hired me to take his place.

The client is like the 900 pound Gorilla, actually in this case it's more like the 1800 lb. or 2700 lb. Gorilla, but that's besides the point. The point is that this client is so big they can be very demanding, so it helps everyone to plan out schedules when everyone knows what's going on. This is merely a communication with all the people involved.

Think of the Inliners community as such a project, people need to get more than one opinion in some cases, but not to the point that it starts holding back from progressing. But there is one piece that we must realize, is that without a strong community the forums will never thrive.

I pointed out above that if the Inliners forum had a track record of implementing the correct things, there would be a great community here and we would just expect them to do the correct things. There is some community, I will give it that, but not a very active community. And my understanding is that some of the folks that are here have even gone off and tried to create similar forums, only to fail to embrace a real gathering. I'd like to see the Inliners embrace some of those people, there's some smart dudes here, IMO, so it would nice to bring those members into the fold as they will help the community more in the end most likely.

The Inliners have the potential to be a great community. But to date they are not, period. This is just a fact, nothing more.

I think something needs to change. More than upgrading the forum software, but the software was a logical first step...I think I've been pushing for this change for quite a while if memory is still good. If the Inliners want to embrace the community they need to start going about things differently, the first of which should be an openness with the members and open dialog about their future plans. Maybe members could offer suggestions or contribute effort to help those plans to happen, or maybe a member will actually have a better idea on how to make something more efficient. And even more so, we should welcome everyone, member or not. I get very little out of the 12 Port.

I could also ask why the Advertising hasn't been able to reach out with a digital version, or in getting vendors to offer a member discount. I bet some of the Inline vendors would love that. You do need a stronger community to make that work better. However, I'm not trying to just point fingers here, I'm trying to convey that without a community you really don't have very much.

I hope this makes sense, just trying to have an open discussion without getting emotions involved.

Do you have any thoughts on building the community? Or do you or others have opinions on that being important or not? There's a lot of web out there to choose from...that goes for all of us.

Here is one thing I do to sponsor new Inliners. We send orders out everyday. To many people that have never heard of Inliners. I print 500 copies at a time of a double sided flyer. Out of our pocket. Each order gets a flyer stuck in it. It is nice to see a new member name that was one of my customers. Handed out 500 of the between June and December. Working on the next bunch now.

Inliners has always had a hardtime getting people to post on the forums. I have been a member here since early 2004. Have always accused people of sitting on their hands and not contributing. Pictures are going to help.

I also like the way the forum looks, the posts are wider, pictures present and bigger. Nothing to complain about by me.
Advertising is hard to do. I try and get new advertisers, but with only about 1K members in a niche market , it is tough. The website see's many more than the 1K, wish I knew what that # was.

Not replying to your posts on the Hudson was no spike toward you. I am used to just putting stuff out and see if people like it. Will post more as my weather turns better.

Here is the PDF of Flyer.

Look forward to it. BTW, there were others in that thread with interest also, it wasn't just me. Think about it though, if posts went like that on Stovebolt or H.A.M.B. they would never have the community built up that they do...food for thought.

I applaud your effort of putting stuff out there to see if people like it, and in the case they do like it a followup would be fitting to help strengthen these forums.

I don't even really know you, but have seen enough of your posts and have been conveyed enough about you to know that you are one of the people the Inliners should be embracing. You obviously know a lot about Inlines, if it was up to me I would have delegated some of the forums to you and brought you into the fold.

It is not easy to build communities, and I never said it was, but I have build a few of them, so do have some experience.

I just don't understand how they have failed to embrace you, I'm at a loss to come up with any reason that makes sense.

I haven't been on in a little while and I see we now have new software and can post pics. That is a great upgrade indeed. Thanks for bringing that to fruition. It was one of my peeves about the site when I signed up. I remember when stovebolt required a photo website to be used. I refuse to upload my photos online just to link them to a thread I am in. I much prefer attaching them using the server of the site. I am glad we have that capability now. I hope Inliners can get more member traffic now, this forum is typically very quiet.