Changes coming to the VentureRider site

[Aussie Annie]

:sign yeah that:

[petekadish]

Don ... Just a short note of thanks for the great service which you so generously provide for so many. We all appreciate you!

 

Be Safe!

Pete.

[Zfrebird4]

... I don't know where we found a guy like you with such skills, .... but I sure do pray we NEVER loose you, ... and that I GET TO MEET YOU on a ride before I retire from scooting at age 101!

 

JackZ

 

Do what you gotta do to this site. Next to the Good Lord, it's in NEAR (don't get carried away with that) PERFECT hand. (Ask you wife if you need help in understanding that; LOL). Jz

 

:mo money:And ... spend what you need to make it all easier on you ... and of course, ... better for all of us! LOL

[Chaharly]

Sometime in the near future, I will be making some major changes to the VentureRider site. This is not something that I want to do but am pretty much being forced to do.

 

This site is a conglomeration of several different software packages that are somewhat integrated together so that a single login works from the home page, the forum, classifieds, etc. It is a common occurrence that I have to upgrade the software from time to time. Sometimes it is to add new features but it is often because new security vulnerabilities are discovered. Once they are discovered, it is not long before the hackers and spammer find out about them and then we are open to such attacks.

 

The problem is though that often if an upgrade is required in one area, for example the forum, then it causes problems with other areas such as the home page. So it's a chain effect, an upgrade here ends up requiring an upgrade to other parts of the site. Often it is after an upgrade is already done before you find the problems that it caused in other areas. An example is this last upgrade where an upgrade to the forum software caused such things as the "Mark Forums Read" and etc. to stop working on the home page and also the side menu here. That is because the side menu here on the forum is actually part of the home page software. It all gets so confusing.

 

While it can be irritating and cause a lot of work and debugging each time, the problem is that the people who wrote the software that I am using on the home page appear to have pretty much given up that business. They are no longer offering upgrades or support for the software. This last little change and the problems that it caused created some real headaches and several hours to figure out what code needed to be changed so that it all worked together again. As more changes are made to the forum, the problem will get much worse.

 

The bottom line is that I am going to have to completely redo the VentureRider home page from scratch. Remove the current software and integration and come up with a new solution. Over the next week or two I will be looking at various options and making a decision on what will the be best route forward. There may be some changes that some of you like and there may be some things that go away that some of you will really miss. It can't be helped and I promise that I will try my best to retain all the current features that I can.

 

The good news is that the actual discussion forum will remain pretty much the same. The decision that I make for the home page will determine if there are any changes at all to the forum. If there are changes, it will still be the same basic software and no changes in the way that it actually works on your end. Also, we should not lose any posts. The only thing that we might lose, at least temporarily, are some of the custom features that I have added over the years. If so, I will add them back as soon as possible.

 

Well that's the story. It is not going to happen today or this weekend but will be happening soon. This is such a big change that when I do it, I will very likely have to shut down the site for at least a couple of hours. I will give advance notice before doing that.

 

You know, that means alot of work for you, but it can also mean a much more integrated and useful site for us. Thats alright though, it just makes that 12 dollars much more worth the money, even though it already is worth every penny!

[Chaharly]

Sometime in the near future, I will be making some major changes to the VentureRider site. This is not something that I want to do but am pretty much being forced to do.

 

This site is a conglomeration of several different software packages that are somewhat integrated together so that a single login works from the home page, the forum, classifieds, etc. It is a common occurrence that I have to upgrade the software from time to time. Sometimes it is to add new features but it is often because new security vulnerabilities are discovered. Once they are discovered, it is not long before the hackers and spammer find out about them and then we are open to such attacks.

 

The problem is though that often if an upgrade is required in one area, for example the forum, then it causes problems with other areas such as the home page. So it's a chain effect, an upgrade here ends up requiring an upgrade to other parts of the site. Often it is after an upgrade is already done before you find the problems that it caused in other areas. An example is this last upgrade where an upgrade to the forum software caused such things as the "Mark Forums Read" and etc. to stop working on the home page and also the side menu here. That is because the side menu here on the forum is actually part of the home page software. It all gets so confusing.

 

While it can be irritating and cause a lot of work and debugging each time, the problem is that the people who wrote the software that I am using on the home page appear to have pretty much given up that business. They are no longer offering upgrades or support for the software. This last little change and the problems that it caused created some real headaches and several hours to figure out what code needed to be changed so that it all worked together again. As more changes are made to the forum, the problem will get much worse.

 

The bottom line is that I am going to have to completely redo the VentureRider home page from scratch. Remove the current software and integration and come up with a new solution. Over the next week or two I will be looking at various options and making a decision on what will the be best route forward. There may be some changes that some of you like and there may be some things that go away that some of you will really miss. It can't be helped and I promise that I will try my best to retain all the current features that I can.

 

The good news is that the actual discussion forum will remain pretty much the same. The decision that I make for the home page will determine if there are any changes at all to the forum. If there are changes, it will still be the same basic software and no changes in the way that it actually works on your end. Also, we should not lose any posts. The only thing that we might lose, at least temporarily, are some of the custom features that I have added over the years. If so, I will add them back as soon as possible.

 

Well that's the story. It is not going to happen today or this weekend but will be happening soon. This is such a big change that when I do it, I will very likely have to shut down the site for at least a couple of hours. I will give advance notice before doing that.

 

You know, that means alot of work for you, but it can also mean a much more integrated and useful site for us. Thats alright though, it just makes that 12 dollars much more worth the money, even though it already is worth every penny!

[Freebird]

Is it me or is this deja vu all over again? Didn't we change to this new version/new look (vBulletin) a couple of years ago because the old one was easily corruptible or something like that and this one was the premier software to avoid whatever problems we were encountering... or am I just imagining things?

 

I have always run the VBulletin software here. Well...almost always...when I first started the site, I started with something else but that only lasted for about a day and then I started over completely.

 

Since starting the site, I there have been many upgrades to the software due to various security issues and also new features. It is a constantly evolving package and that will not likely ever change.

[Grandpagak]

good luck boss!! i have the faith in you!!! :thumbsup2::080402gudl_prv:

[Freebird]

Don, I question your sanity.

 

The project you're describing sounds perfect for January or February, not riding season (which just started!). You've already gone through the pain of patching it together for the latest upgrade, why not wait 'till the snow flies for the rework?

 

Just thinking you shouldn't be hunched over a computer when you should be getting saddle sores.

 

Yea, the timing may not be the best but we sometimes don't choose such things.

[pegscraper]

The writers gave up and have stopped writing upgrades for this software? That seems surprising. It looks like this was a very popular software package. In the past few years, I've seen other boards I sometimes visit change from whatever they had which was sometimes very cumbersome and start using vBulletin, and countless other boards that I tripped over one time were using this. I've never seen anybody leave this and go to something else. It will be interesting to see what you as well as other boards come up with.

 

I appreciate all the work you do for this, Don. I don't know how you find the time...

[Freebird]

It is not VBulletin that is going away. They are coming out with new updates all the time. In fact, they recently released a brand new version that I have not even upgraded to yet due to problems that some folks are having with it. I am waiting for the bugs to be worked out before installing it here.

 

It is VBPortal that has been discontinued. That is the software that I use for the home page. It integrates closely with the VBulletin software but they have not upgraded it in a while and it appears to be going away. Even after updating VBulletin 3.8 last week with a minor security/bug fix version, it caused some compatibility issues with the home page that I had to figure out. There is no way that it would work the the latest VBulletin 4.

 

Therefore, to maintain current with future VBulletin releases, I will have to find a new solution for the home page. I certainly plan to stay with VBulletin for our forum.