Site Updates

[okiebluegrass]

I know this is a labor of love more than anything else, but I wouldn't complain if there was more advertising to make you a few $$$$

[shavethewhales]

I actually need to get back into the forum code and get rid of those google ads. They were kind of necessary when I was in school because I didn't have a whole lot of expendable income, but it's not a concern anymore. I'm only keeping the big ad square around because another hotel was interested in renting it. I'm all for making partnerships with the local hotels and getting discounts for our members.

[shavethewhales]

So in general, a lot of the major work of getting the site moved over to the new system has been completed. There's still some things I plan to do whenever I have time to make it prettier and more functional, but all the basic pieces and content are here now. I'm slowly getting up to speed with adding new content as well. I've started the weekly "Attraction Spotlight" series and plan to do a throwback thursday series as well. I also want to add some more nostalgia pages featuring old brochures and whatnot.

If anyone has any requests, suggestions or ideas for the attraction spotlight or throwback thursday posts, let me know.

The wordpress comments system has proven to be essentially unusable. It's always bogged down with spam accounts that I have to keep deleting, and there doesn't seem to be a good way to sort out the bad accounts from the good like we do for the forums. I'm thinking about replacing it with Facebook comments. Any thoughts on that? Anyone know of any other options? There's also Disqus, which a lot of news websites use.

[Gilligan]

Shave, I don't know enough about it to comment.  But, I do appreciate all the work you do!

[Junior, too!]

Shave, if you want me to scan and email you any of the photos and other stuff I have, just let me know.

[Junior, too!]

Wanted to thank Shave for the recent updates and improvements, I like the little freature pieces you have been doing. 

[shavethewhales]

Thanks Junior, I'm glad someone's reading those things.

Our facebook page suddenly got a lot more popular in the last week or so. We something like 50 new fans since the last time I had noticed, plus lots more views. Seems like more and more people are seeking out the fansites like ours to get the scoop on parks. I really need to get more work done on cleaning up some of the pages, but it's hard to schedule it in.

[DollarCityBoy]

I've enjoyed reading your post on the homepage as well.

[sanddunerider]

I like all the upgrades also.

The updates you are doing look great!

[okiebluegrass]

I enjoy the stories. If you ever want someone else to write articles about old SDC let me know, cause I'm definitely interested

[cheesehead57]

The upgrades are great.  Doing a super job.

[Junior, too!]

I'd be glad to redo the diving bell and float trip stuff, and put my gallery of photos with them if you want to move in that direction again. Always glad to share.

[shavethewhales]

After an unusually annoying struggle, I think I've finally got it so that you can post comments on articles through facebook now.
If you don't want the comments to show up on your FB page, simply uncheck the box below the post.

This was necessary because the WordPress system can't be (easily) integrated with our forums, so you had to make a second account for posting underneath articles. Unfortunately though, Wordpress's native comments system is extremely easy to create spam accounts for, and I was simply deleting all the user signups because 99.9% of them were spam. This should work out much better. I know FB comments have some spam issues themselves, but if it gets too bad there are a few more tricks I could roll out to stem that.

[shavethewhales]

So I'm making some progress on upgrading the forums to a new version of the same software. This is necessary because the old version is no longer supported, and the language that it runs on is evolving and changing so that things are starting to break. I've put this off for a couple of years now because it's a messy process doesn't really change anything on the surface (hopefully), but it's definitely time to get it done.

The plan is to keep things mostly the same. The general layout, the wood background texture, the logo at the top, and the stack of paper icons that light up to show new posts will all stay. However the "theme" the current look is based on is not available for the new version, so I'll be taking a new theme and customizing it with the aforementioned things. It will look similar, but slightly different.

All that said, if anyone has any suggestions, now is the time to make them. If you see anything on the simple machines site regarding plugins or layouts that you like, let me know: http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/index.php?action=search;version[]=84;start=10

[Swoosh]

The ability to block certain posters is still my #1