Board Software Upgraded

[edburke]

The board software was upgraded from 1.8.15 to 1.8.16 and I missed a step while doing it.  This has resulted in avatars and user rank stars not displaying.  I am working on it, but it might take some time for me to figure it out, please bear with me.

If you find any other issues, please let me know.

[TacSupport1]

Again, thank you for the hard work, Ed!

I also really, really like the recent topics box on the index page. Makes it much easier and quicker to find new threads and posts.

[edburke]

An upgrade to version 1.8.17 has fixed the user ranks, still trying to figure out the avatars

[edburke]

And thanks to the MyBB user community, the avatars are back!

[edburke]

The board has been updated to version 1.8.19. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.

[TacSupport1]

With the importing of the RSS feeds, it's consuming the module used to display new topics and new posts at the top of the main index page. Any chance of disabling the RSS feed from showing there? I was really enjoying that module as a quick and easy way to see all the new topics and posts.

[edburke]

I have tried, and I can't find a way. I thought that marking them as read automatically might help, but it didn't. There's no discussion taking place in the RSS threads as I had hoped, so they'll probably be going away. In fact, with the lack of registration conversions from visitors and lack of robust topic discussion, the whole site probably won't be around much longer. $175 a month is a lot for a site that isn't seeing that much traffic.

[Rollup]

I have tried, and I can't find a way.  I thought that marking them as read automatically might help, but it didn't.  There's no discussion taking place in the RSS threads as I had hoped, so they'll probably be going away.  In fact, with the lack of registration conversions from visitors and lack of robust topic discussion, the whole site probably won't be around much longer.  $175 a month is a lot for a site that isn't seeing that much traffic.

Maybe it's time for you to shut down the board Ed. I have been a member for a long time and have watched the board slow right down. If it's costing
you a lot of money and your getting nothing out of it I would pack it in. The internet kind of sucks because some forums have slowed right down to a crawl. Facebook sucks in my opinion.

[yogibaer]

Ed,
I hope that you doesn't close this site.
I always enjoys the photos posted here every day from the first time I met this group. Wasn't it first a usegroup, than Yahoo-Group and now your site? That's a long time of nice memories.
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are no alternatives for me as I'm no member of these services. For me they only want my profiles to spam me with junk.

I don't comment the photos posted here because english isn't my mother language  and it is difficult to find the right words for me.


The other problem for me is to find the time to photograph apparatus here in Germany and the Netherlands as I spend to much time with my job.
So this year I haven't take any photo from a Fire Apparatus here in Europe.

I hope you stay the site alive
Juergen from Germany

[GA_Dave]

Perhaps, instead of shutting down the board completely, could it be scaled back by deleting sections that see little or no activity, possibly reducing cost by having a smaller site? I would hate to see Firepics go away. I have been here for a long, long, long time, and the site is part of my daily routine.

Yes, many of our former posters have gone to social media. I also post on social media, but there are two big drawbacks to posting there. The design is such that one misses many posts because of the heavy traffic volume. On Firepics, things I posted 12 years ago are still easily found. The other is the frequent theft of photos by others. Copyright is no longer sacred on social media. I post here without concern that others will post my pics elsewhere.

[edburke]

Unfortunately, Hostgator will not entertain the possibility of moving back to the other account that the site was hosted on. It's not the size of the board, but the resources that it used at the height of it's popularity in 2005 when they made the site move to a dedicated server. Even though the resource use is but a fraction of what it was, they believe that the site has the potential to use those resources at any given time, so they demand the dedicated server. Moving the site to another host, with all of the parts involved is a huge pain, and would take many, many hours, if not days, and then probably weeks to fine tune.