Board Information and Announcements

[admin-MOD]

"We have just broken the 6000

"We have just broken the 6000 mark for registered users...

The discussion board has been very busy with an average of over 100 new posts per day. Lots of people seem to be getting the help they need.

Thanks again to all the dedicated people that take the time to answer questions and provide free help.

The website is on a new dedicated server that is running well. You should notice some improved performance.

The overall traffic to the site has been high this summer.

September daily average traffic was:

• Daily unique visitors: 5633
• Daily pages viewed: 32672
• Daily hits: 243377

"

 

[admin-MOD]

"We have started requiring non

"We have started requiring non-registerd users to enter a verification code on each post in order to prevent abuse of the board.

The screen will look like the following:

Hopefully this will not be too inconvenient.

We encourage all users to register (see the link at the top of the page), most boards nowadays require it.

Thanks.
Andrew"

 

[admin-MOD]

"Congratulations all, we just

"Congratulations all, we just passed 100,000 postings to the board.

Quite an accomplishment considering that most of our posts are technical questions and answers, not just conversation.

Keep up the good work and thanks to all who spend so much time here helping others.


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[admin-MOD]

"<[img]"http://www.marineengin

"

The Sierra Trailer made a visit to our Vermont offices last week.

See pictures here."

 

[admin-MOD]

We have had a number of reques

We have had a number of requests to change the board to cause threads that contain a "new message" to move to the top of the list in a category.

Many other boards and forums operate that way. It should make it easier to follow active discussions.

We have been trying it in the Mercruiser category for the past week or two and it seems to work well.

We are making the change across the whole board today.

Thanks.

 

[admin-MOD]

"<[img]"http://www.marineengin

"

We have just passed 20,000 registered users on the board... way to go!

Thanks to all you regulars for keeping this board active and fun, and welcome to all you newcomers!

"

 

[admin-MOD]

"Starting today we will be [b]

"Starting today we will be requiring registration for anyone posting messages to the board.

We have gone for many years without requiring registration and have allowed users to post as a "visitor", but it seems that the time has come to require registration.

Registering is free and easy to do. You can use the register link at the top of any page on the board. If anyone has trouble registering they can send me an email and I can assist them. Registration will require that you have a valid email address. When you register we will send you a verification email that will contain a link for you to click on to complete your registration. You can delete your profile at any time if you wish.

Unregistered users can still browse and read all posts on the board, including the archived posts.

Thanks,
Andrew"

 

[admin-MOD]

"Greetings to all.

We are i

"Greetings to all.

We are in the process of putting up a new navigation links on the site. It might be a little buggy today. The home page will look different, but the site content is still the same. We are trying to make it easier for you to get anywhere on the site no matter where you are within the site.

Let me know if you have problems.

Thanks.

Best regards,
Andrew

[email protected]"

 

[admin-MOD]

"<font color=""ff0000"">[b]IMP

"<font color=""ff0000"">IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT SITE UPGRADE AND DOWNTIME</font>

Hello all,

We are going to need a little downtime on the board to upgrade to a new format.

We are going to switch the board to the vBulletin software platform. For those of you that are familiar with the different discussion boards and forums, vButtetin is one of the more popular and more powerful of the programs.

We have resisted changing because it is difficult and disruptive to switch, but I think it's time to do it. The new format will look similar but should be easier for members to use and better for us to manage. Registration, posting, photos, attachments, etc should all be cleaner and easier and will already be familiar to anyone that uses some of the other large boating boards that run on vBulletin.

Our goal is not to change the look and feel of the site, and we certainly don't want to loose the friendly and cooperative sense of community that we have developed. The change is not about "getting bigger", but instead getting better and being able to offer more features.

We expect the board to be "closed for posting" on Wednesday and Thursday 3/24-25/2010. Anyone can still browse and search the board, but they will not be able to post.

When the board comes back again sometime on Thursday it will be the new format. We will have imported all the existing posts, photos, user information etc. We expect it to go smoothly, but there are certain things that users will need to do to get going again on the new board. We will import users usernames, date joined, number of posts, etc, but we will not be able to import your password. We will send an email to all registered members with a link to log in and select a new password (or your old one) but you will need to select a password. The other item that might not import is the user "avatar" or thumbnail image associated with each user posting. We are working on that, but I can't say for certain it will import.

There may be some bugs work out in the first week that the new format is in places.

Thank you all for your cooperation with this.

Regards,
Andrew

I will post this same message in the site suggestions section at the bottom of the list of topics. If anyone has any concerns or comments, please post them there."