This Forum is cluttered.

[icemanistheking]

There are about 30,000 posts a day, and so many hundreds of forums that nobody knows how many (the forum list in admin cp is the page that goes on for ever, you can try and count them up but you always fall asleep or lose count before you get to the end or the computer crashes). Cloudflare the giant global CDN cannot serve our content fast enough and gets huge (terrible, crippling) lags. We close 40 or 50 forums a year and archive some of them. We are just about to open a half dozen more.

Nobody knows the solution as it's only going to get bigger. Soon we will need guides and sherpas to help people find their way out. We've tried closing threads that don't see any action for 6 months, maybe it needs to be 3 days. We gave up asking people to try and stay on topic around 7 years ago, it didn't work - the best way to view this forum is a social forum where the first post is about some kind of vaping thing but after that it can be tennis, TV shows or the Nics game. Search doesn't work here unless you are after golf scores and suchlike.

Just try and go with the flow otherwise you'll go mad like the first 4 forum managers did. One is in Berlin Hospital for the Mentally Deranged, one took up long range trucking to avoid ever seeing the internet again, one disappeared without trace and is assumed to have jumped off a bridge, and one is in Broadmoor Institute for the Criminally Insane but escapes regularly by convincing people he is a psychologist - he is very plausible (as he is intimately acquainted with lunacy). You can meet him in London and chat before the van with a team of large men in white coats with syringes come to get him. He seems fairly normal considering.

Luckily I was crazy before I got here otherwise they'd be pumping me full of lithium down at the basket-weaving factory now. When they tell me the site has a 5-minute lag, we just got hacked, the front page is displaying arabic propaganda for some mad mullah, half the staff resigned, and we are changing over to phpBB3 next week, I just giggle, change channels and sink another Calvados.

C'est la vie baby!

At this point, it would probably take a whole redesigning if it's that overwhelming. That said, I was laughing by the end of your post so... Things always seem easier to accomplish from the outside, and I'm sure we all understand that. But if it's only going to get bigger, shouldn't that especially call for a redesign? I dunno, I have a feeling I'll always be here no matter what, and it seems most people just find the area of the forum they like and stay there for the most part, but along with less clutter, I think a lot of the subforums that are buried might get posted in more. I tend to completely forget about the RBA/rda board, for example, because I can't see it, and when I go to look for it, I can never quite remember where it was at.

 

[s528]

the best way to view this forum is a social forum where the first post is about some kind of vaping thing but after that it can be tennis, TV shows or the Nics game. .

Hope Ray Rice gets the chair.

 

[ScottChensoda]

Please can we have a 'Love' button

Pass!!

 

[olderthandirt]

There are about 30,000 posts a day, and so many hundreds of forums that nobody knows how many...

...When they tell me the site has a 5-minute lag, we just got hacked, the front page is displaying arabic propaganda for some mad mullah, half the staff resigned, and we are changing over to phpBB3 next week, I just giggle, change channels and sink another Calvados.

C'est la vie baby!

I always had a feeling that rolygate "gets it".
Lithium and Calvados, now we know the rest of the story! (-;

 

[nyiddle]

Yeah gotta agree, one of the first things I noticed was how the boards are sort of.. All over the place/cover the same topics twice.

 

[tiburonfirst]

Yeah gotta agree, one of the first things I noticed was how the boards are sort of.. All over the place/cover the same topics twice.

twice?

but very understandable nobody believes that their question and/or contribution to a topic could be anything but unique! and so it goes

 

[classwife]

Yeah gotta agree, one of the first things I noticed was how the boards are sort of.. All over the place/cover the same topics twice.

I've got MANY - MANY hours in the past few weeks working on that one...Hundreds of threads moved and Subs archived.

 

[edyle]

Under the supplier section you have 80 sub-forums one for each supplier on the front page, these can all go into one folder and from there one can choose the supplier of choice, no reason to put 80 sub-forums on the first page and this is without touching other topics, huge mess in my own opinion and can be easily fixed simply by putting into one folder named suppliers and from there everything remains the same, without consolidation, but again no need to flash 80+ suppliers on the front page. Fixing the supplier section alone will have a great impact on the over all lay out and a much better user interface in terms of forums and lay outs. I think there are 150 sub-forums on the first page, no need.

Actually there is a rollup button over on the right that you can roll up the supplier list, or any other grouping.

 

[edyle]

The supplier forums are not supposed to show up in the Today's Posts search, but certain suppliers still do:

nicoticket
heavenly vapes
killer juice
vaporart

 

[00gt1]

I think once you get used to the enormity of ECF and what it encompasses, you'll find it's pretty well organized

I 100% agree with this statement, given it's enormity, there is always going to be room for improvement, however, how it's managed currently is MORE then adequate, I find it admirable. Many forums a fraction of this size has succumb to trolls and flamers and redundant posts/subs due to poor management however this forum is not one.

I also agree that it gets tedious every day seeing the same questions asked over and over again in the newbie forum and the same topics discussed over and over again however I find it VERY nice that people here have the patience to take time to answer and explain the same question over and over and point to resourced already in place. I cannot think of any way to manage this problem any better than is being done by limiting new members posts as is done currently. It's just the inherent nature of a forum this size. That being said, I'm not entirely convinced that this is a problem at all, every person, and every question has it's own unique spin in how things are asked and how they learn.

 

[Pinggolfer]

Try finding a simple topic for a new member such as the Kanger ProTank 2. http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/search.php?searchid=26575011

Last count 200 pages of threads. You would think the first thread would be the Kanger Protank 2, but it's not.

 

[00gt1]

Try finding a simple topic for a new member such as the Kanger ProTank 2. http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/search.php?searchid=26575011

Last count 200 pages of threads. You would think the first thread would be the Kanger Protank 2, but it's not.

Fair enough, that being said, maybe a solution for this would be to dedicate a team to expand The ECF Library. That way there are locked, informative posts about common search topics.

I have no clue the setup or if the forum is using php or not but setting up a basic infomatics page to trend common new member searches is a very easy thing to implement on most forums. This could then be a base to expand the library topics and be used as a standardized, easy to access reply to common topics. These library threads could also be indexed higher and prioritized to be the top results when searched.

 

[rolygate]

The search function, basically, doesn't work very well. There are no ways to fix it in vBulletin, our forum software. If you are persistent, and patient, you will probably find what you're looking for but it takes about ten times too long.

A Google custom search works well, we used to run that here; but the problem is they run their own adverts on it and (a) we need any advertising revenue as it's our main income; (b) it was unfair on our registered suppliers as it took visitors away from the site; and (c) we need stuff that makes visitors stay on the site, not go somewhere else. So, the search worked very well but the cost was too high.

There are two proposed solutions to this: develop an in-house custom search that works better than the vB / Sphinx one we use, or wait till we move to a better forum solution.

We will be moving to XenForo forum software one day, it's been planned for over a year now, but the problem is that ECF is so heavily customised and has so many unique or heavily expanded features that moving is a huge project. For example we have over 50 different usergroups, each with their own ruleset, promotion schemes etc. I don't know if there is any forum anywhere that has so many, and re-creating all that lot from scratch (it couldn't be migrated/imported) is a job and a half.

If you know how to use google to max effect it's probably the best way to search ECF currently. The trick is to use the right search terms, and keep varying them till the search eventually produces what you need. Remember google treats single and plural as separate entities, so a search for 'mechmod' will probably get different results from 'mechmods'.

 

[Pinggolfer]

If you know how to use google to max effect it's probably the best way to search ECF currently. The trick is to use the right search terms, and keep varying them till the search eventually produces what you need. Remember google treats single and plural as separate entities, so a search for 'mechmod' will probably get different results from 'mechmods'.

Thank you and you are correct as the google search does pull up articles related to the search from ECF. I'm finding much more useful then using the search feature here.

 

[Katya]

Just try and go with the flow otherwise you'll go mad like the first 4 forum managers did. One is in Berlin Hospital for the Mentally Deranged (don't ask), one took up long range trucking to avoid ever seeing the internet again, (snip)

Gosh, I miss those two.

What a shame!

 

[tiburonfirst]

well ................ roly just gotta try harder!

 

[JerryRM]

Just try and go with the flow otherwise you'll go mad like the first 4 forum managers did. One is in Berlin Hospital for the Mentally Deranged (don't ask), one took up long range trucking to avoid ever seeing the internet again, one disappeared without trace and is assumed to have jumped off a bridge, and one is in Broadmoor Institute for the Criminally Insane but escapes regularly by convincing people he is a psychologist - he is very plausible (as he is intimately acquainted with lunacy). You can meet him in London and chat before the van with a team of large men in white coats with syringes come to get him. He seems fairly normal considering.

Luckily I was crazy before I got here otherwise they'd be pumping me full of lithium down at the basket-weaving factory now. When they tell me the site has a 5-minute lag, we just got hacked, the front page is displaying arabic propaganda for some mad mullah, half the staff resigned, and we are changing over to phpBB3 next week, I just giggle, change channels and sink another Calvados.

C'est la vie baby!

As far as I know, this forum has had 4 managers. The first one left, before I joined, the second one is the long distance driver, the third one disappeared and Roly is the 4th.

That means that Roly is either in Berlin Hospital or Broadmoor Institute. That's a surprise, I thought that Roly resided in the Tower of London. LOL

I now return you to the regularly scheduled hijacking.

 

[00gt1]

The search function, basically, doesn't work very well. There are no ways to fix it in vBulletin, our forum software. If you are persistent, and patient, you will probably find what you're looking for but it takes about ten times too long.

A Google custom search works well, we used to run that here; but the problem is they run their own adverts on it and (a) we need any advertising revenue as it's our main income; (b) it was unfair on our registered suppliers as it took visitors away from the site; and (c) we need stuff that makes visitors stay on the site, not go somewhere else. So, the search worked very well but the cost was too high.

There are two proposed solutions to this: develop an in-house custom search that works better than the vB / Sphinx one we use, or wait till we move to a better forum solution.

We will be moving to XenForo forum software one day, it's been planned for over a year now, but the problem is that ECF is so heavily customised and has so many unique or heavily expanded features that moving is a huge project. For example we have over 50 different usergroups, each with their own ruleset, promotion schemes etc. I don't know if there is any forum anywhere that has so many, and re-creating all that lot from scratch (it couldn't be migrated/imported) is a job and a half.

If you know how to use google to max effect it's probably the best way to search ECF currently. The trick is to use the right search terms, and keep varying them till the search eventually produces what you need. Remember google treats single and plural as separate entities, so a search for 'mechmod' will probably get different results from 'mechmods'.

Roly, wouldn't it be easier to just create a TSV file with key index terms and then index those with tsvpipe to integrate a hierarchy into sphinx? That would seem to give you the best of both worlds without losing revenue from adverts. Or are you indexing with ReST?

 

[olderthandirt]

LOL, love it when they start talkin' all techie and stuff (-;
(didn't understand a thing said in above post, the worlds a safer place for it too)

 

[JerryRM]

Something to do with the Sphinx, OTD.