For the popup adds, just use one of the aforementioned popup blockers.

Speaking of which, do they make popup blockers for Safari on IOS?
I get them too but thankfully theyre "anchored" at the bottom of my screen rather than always in my way.

No. Never works. Both old and new data needs to be accessible in the forum. Search for people is complicated enough without having to surf two forums for information.

Edward

Meh, just let the archives go. Half the time the links to the tech info and pictures to go with the descriptions are long dead. I like that JayAyala is just writing up new tech articles, that's really what we need to do. Keep Moving forward and upward, most of the tech just gets regurgitated from those of us who have done things onto those who are trying to figure it out from one of the old posts.
Then there's the constant stream of dudes not searching or unwilling to search just making new posts asking the same old questions. The community collectively has the tech and that's what makes this place great.

I dig the archives. Lots of good info there that has been forgotten. Ex. The gen 1 rotor/ gen 2 caliper safety thing. I ran across it when resear hung the upgrade. I've never seen it mentioned anywhere else in the site. Glad I found it as I like the brakes to work and given the heft of my front bumper I'm sure other drivers appreciate their flawless operation as well.

Gentlemen:

I apologize for the belated response to your complaints. Between flu and sever bronchitis, I have been down sick for close to 2 weeks and not had an opportunity to monitor on-going things.

I do want to address a couple of critical points raised...

If it were not for the ads being displayed, this site would not exist.

NOTHING is free. The site is hosted from a server farm and access to the internet is not free nor cheap.

Archive vs current is always a challenge. Yup, I could spin up a more up-to-date version of this forum software which would abandon the legacy/archive data from the past few years.

Almost did that until it became evident that doing so would require everyone to create a new account. And, there is a surprising large number of search requests serviced that come from other site linkages to archive 4x4Wire data. Pirate4x4, ask.com, and many others have links to site data.

So, jettisoning archive data is not a viable option when trying to maintain a site that enjoys a good Google search ranking.

I would gladly dump all advertising if I could maintain a cash flow that would keep the site on-line. With that, I am sure there are going to be comments that it doesn't cost that much to host a site. I invite you to submit proposals that will support 200+ concurrent users with reasonable response time. On top of that, provide for firewall and anti-virus protection with current server software updates and hardware maintenance.

For those that remember, August was a bad month for 4x4Wire due to a site hack that resulted in additional costs to keep the site on-line.

I apologize. I don't mean to demean nor be dismissive of your complaints. I do know the realities of keeping the site on-line.

And, ads are the reality of producing the income to pay the monthly bills.

Prepared for sticker shock... <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" />

I would make donations often.

PM me. I'm willing to talk about this. Maybe donate infrastructure and bandwidth.

200 concurrent users is dirt nothing in my world. We have direct Tier 1 connectivity and the hardware and facilities to back it up.

From a paid hosting standpoint, though, hosting a site is not cheap. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />



I don't think there's anyone on (especially) this forum that has any idea how any of this runs. I don't see that you have any reason to apologize.

I appreciate you guys keeping the forums rolling. Its not a glamorous, sexy job.

Edward

To be honest I would gladly lose some archives for a newer forum. They could be copied, might be in a different format. Servers are getting cheaper and cheaper, and 200 users is not significant honestly.

ClayTK also offered to donate some Godaddy services a while back, I think we could help John out collectively and make Trail Talk Forums more modern and usefull.

One thing to do with the archives is to clean up the tech articles and turn them into a series of .PDFs (hopefully find some of the old pictures).


John, maybe take a page from Pirate4x4.com and have different tiers of member based on donations to the forum. The ads are fine but it's the placement of some of them that gets annoying, like the little pop ups. Pop ups are no big deal on a real computer but with more and more people surfing on tablets and phones they suck.
4x4wire is the best and we appreciate what you do, Let us know what you need from us to help. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

Thanks Edward, installed that Firefox blocker, I'm good to go.