RE: Re: [OFFICIAL] - The NEW user forum

Hi, Tom

Thank you for your constructive feedback.

You you might know, I got many complaints here on the forum about the forum.
"The search does not work". "Yahoo does not work with my browser". "I don't get
forum emails". "I don't want forum emails anymore". Searching Gmane will bring
back all of these postings.

Hence I spent time searching for a new solution. I tried several systems.
Installed them on my web server. Tried to break them. Tried to backup and
restore them. Tried to hack them. Tried to use them.

After weeks I finally settled with UBBThreads. I implemented the solution, fine
tuned the setup with the help of users like David, Richard, Markus, Michal and
others over the past weeks. 

I knew that users would slap me into my face because we use some of the email
functionality. I also followed the forum exclusively via email. But the benefits
of the new forum software by far outweight the loss of the email functionality.
But you can get digests for your favorite forums directly in your Inbox, and you
can easily reply via email. So not too much is lost.

The UBBThreads system is the commercial predecessor of the very popular UBB
forums used on a gazillion of sites. UBBThreads is under development since two
years and still has no "Yahoo-like email" feature. There are literally hundreds
of extensions and plug-ins for UBB, but none of them implements an "per posting"
email like Yahoo has. There is one project under way, but it's too early to say
where it's heading.

For me, this means two things:

1. There is no real demand for such a feature 2. If it will be implemented, I
can just plug it into the new user forum

The new forum will be it. It's so much better than the crappy Yahoo web
interface, and the daily digest function is nearly as good as the Yahoo emails.
Plus, you get an RSS feed, a working search function and more.



** Side note (not related to your post!)

I sometimes wonder if users also write to Adobe, ACDSee, Microsoft, Rob
Galbraith, dpreview.com or others and demand that they want to be able to follow
their support forums via email. Or if they just use these forums as they are...



I do all this in my spare time. I actually paid a fee that worth many IMatch
licenses for the new forum software and the new server because I think that it
will be an extra benefit for my users!

You don't pay a cent for the new forum. It's  free. Use it or leave it.

-- Mario


-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Moore [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Montag, 31. Januar 2005 20:07
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [imatchuserforum] Re: [OFFICIAL] - The NEW user forum


Even though I wouldn't endorse Mr Alford's prickly approach to posting his
thoughts, I have some sympathy for his point of view on this topic. As a regular
reader and very occasional poster to the Imatch mail list, I read it only
through email. I also receive many other lists via email. That's the way I work
and I don't want to change it. 

In particular, I don't want to convert to RSS for the half or so of my lists
that support it (also the implementations that I tried don't identify the poster
in the headings list and that's one of the ways I filter), and I don't want to
use a web browser in addition to Outlook to go through recent postings to find
the occasional nugget.

In addition, I don't like receiving digested postings as they take more time for
me to review quickly and skip what I don't think is important or interesting.

In my case, I registered for the new forum, set up my personalized home page and
won't go there until I have a problem. True, the site is better organized and
hopefully, has a better search engine. Great, that means that I will be able to
find a fix to a problem when I have one. What it also means that I will be less
likely to contribute my two cents when a newbie or whoever, has a problem that I
could help with. More will be on the shoulders of the Imatch acolytes that hang
around the forums. Perhaps that's good, maybe I might mislead someone - not
being an "expert". I imagine there will be less contribution from the occasional
posters.

I think it's a loss - simply because a proper (i.e. not digested) email option
has been dropped. Whether this was for technical or economic reason, I don't
know: too bad, nonetheless. 

Tom Moore

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Moritz [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, January 31, 2005 11:45 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: [imatchuserforum] Re: [OFFICIAL] - The NEW user forum
> 
> 
> Maybe it has something to do with being permanently logged into the forum.
> When I logged in, it asked me if the site should remember me (You need 
> to allow cookies). If it is not that, then I have no idea.
> 
> Moritz
> 
> On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 17:22:04 +0100, Arno Waldus <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> 
> >
> > Moritz schreef op 31-1-2005 16:36:
> >
> >> Or, using Opera as your browser, email and RSS feed client, you 
> >> have everything in one application. I have not noticed an increase 
> >> in time for browsing through the messages of the RSS feed. But 
> >> again, what is wrong with spending a little more time on something 
> >> you are interested in?
> >
> > Moritz,
> >
> > I don't use Opera, but Mozilla Thunderbird instead. It also supports 
> > RSS feeds. But... most of the messages are not readable. I get the 
> > message that access is denied. I need to logon.
> > Do you get the same message? If no, what do I miss?
> >
> > Thanks in advance.
> >
> > -- Arno
> 
> 
> 
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 




 
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