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Jen, No! Definitely Not Worth Buying the Active Forum Module Last Post 08-30-2007 10:02 AM by Dave. 16 Replies. | Sort: |
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Dave 
Wine Connoisseur
Posts: 5832
 | | 08-28-2007 04:31 PM |
| Your $199.95 would be better spent elsewhere. | | |
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wineismylife
Arlington, TX
Master of Wine
Posts: 12727
| | 08-28-2007 04:38 PM |
| 1001, 1002, 1003... | | | Joe-----Wine is like potato chips around me...if it's open, it's gone. | |
| Bradley Molzen
VinoCellar.com Admin
Bayonne, NJ
Wine Connoisseur
Posts: 5097
| | 08-28-2007 07:04 PM |
| Dave, if you are still having some issues, please let me know what they are so I can address them for you. | | | If you drink wine, you get smarter.... | |
| Dave
Wine Connoisseur
Posts: 5832
| | 08-28-2007 09:13 PM |
| Brad, it is the little things and the big things.
Little things:  Took an agonizing 8-10 seconds for the box to open so that I can reply to this message. I do enjoy watching the little smilies load. Advantage old software  Previewing posts is cumbersome. If I delete the preview pane, I often delete the message. Advantage old software  It is difficult to see which forums have unread messages.  The old software made this easy. I know of no way to mark all messages as read. Thus, the faint little fire symbols are of marginal use. Advantage old software.  I have suffered through the log in problems and the last unread post issues that have driven many posters away. If I were Jen, I wouldn't want to risk my site with unproven software. Things seem to be better now, but are we out of the woods?
If someone sends you a PM, there is a persistent pop-up that renders the site unreadable until you read it. I am just waiting for someone to make me really, really mad. I am going to send them a PM. That will teach them.  Big things:  The Search function is laughably bad. We waited for Active Forum's latest release to fix the problems. The result? Just pitiful. Does your Google work around make things better? I don't know. It is KO'd by my pop-up blocker, and I am using my work portable. I can't allow popups for this site.  Major disappointment.
This site is unbelievably slow. We had problems with the Google ads. You disabled them. Speed improved. You brought them back. The site became extremely slow. You disabled them again. They will be back, mark my words.
This site has lost much of the vibrancy that made it an enjoyable place to visit. Traffic is down to an alarming extent. I am not talking about the Wine Depot exodus. We weathered that (still a loss). I am talking about the huge drop-off in posts and posters after this software was rolled out.
At the height of the problems, you posted the following testimonial (April/May?):
"VinoCellar.com needed a forum solution that was fast, flexible, and fully supported. I found that solution with Active Forums. The latest release is testimonial to how well the team at Active Modules listens to the needs of its customers in creating a truly world class product. I'd highly recommend Active Forums for any site, large or small."Â
Brad Molzen
VinoCellar.com
You are obviously seeing advantages that I am not.
[/rant]
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| Bradley Molzen
VinoCellar.com Admin
Bayonne, NJ
Wine Connoisseur
Posts: 5097
| | 08-28-2007 09:40 PM |
| Thank you Dave for an honest and detailed reply.Â
Big things first.Â
Perhaps I didn't publicize it enough, but the "search" link on the forums page is now DRASTICALLY improved, and fast. (This happened last week) It now searches Subject first, and post text second, and seems to do very well.
After clicking the "search" link, be sure to click the little dropdown arrow, as many options will be opened up. I typically seem to have the best results using "exact match" when searching for a particular phrase...  such as 1997 Banfi.
The google search also works very well, but I unfortunately can't help with your personal pop-up blocker, unless it's a standard type of software such as IE, Google Toolbar, Netscape, etc... there are many easy ways to disable those for only this site, which should be ok since I don't do pop-up ads.  Only downside of the google search, is that it opens in a separate window right now. As time permits, I'll change that.
Google "image" ads were a problem, then it stopped being a problem for a few months, so I thought it was safe. Apparently not, so yes, the "image" ads are permenantly disabled on the Forums page of Vinocellar. Will probably disable the image ads elsewhere as well.Â
My analytics software is showing traffic is climbing back up... hopefully will be noticeable to you soon.  I'm happy that you yourself are weathering the storm, and I'm thankful others have as well.
Regarding the testimonial: Yep. I made it. Was fun to do and has brought traffic to Vinocellar. There are some issues I have with them however, and they unfortunately appeared right after making that testimonial, but it seems they are back on track, I hope. (they fixed the search)
Little things
As my free time permits, I've been making a new, small, lightweight skin for Vinocellar which will hopefully improve the speed. HOwever, if there is a network bottleneck somewhere between you and the server, there unfortunately isn't anything I can do about it. It's the nature of the beast.. (the internet) This of course means other sites might have no bottleneck at all for you, but will for me, and vice versa.Â
re: unread post messages... agreed. Need something to be done.
Unread mail messages pop-up:Â You can turn this off by clicking the "preferences" link while viewing your mailbox.
Glad things seem better with the logon process.
| | | If you drink wine, you get smarter.... | |
| Pool Boy
Laurl, MD (DC suburb)
Master of Wine
Posts: 13802
| | 08-28-2007 09:50 PM |
| Why does the search function not place the results in some date order? that would be very helpful, even if only as an option. Thanks by the way for explaining that other options were available for the search function. that was not at all intuitive, at least to me. | | | www.roguefood.com -- www.cellartracker.com | |
| Bradley Molzen
VinoCellar.com Admin
Bayonne, NJ
Wine Connoisseur
Posts: 5097
| | 08-28-2007 09:52 PM |
| Date order? Perhaps that should be an option, but by default, for now it does a relevancy order first based on subject, then based on body text. Sorting options would be nice.
The little down arrow is a rip-off of the Microsoft Live stuff I believe... but not like many people use it. I'd like to have that expanded by default I think. | | | If you drink wine, you get smarter.... | |
| Winetex
Austin, Texas
Master of Wine
Posts: 11429
| | 08-29-2007 08:22 AM |
| Can the Search order the results by date? Some wines have pages of results and I have to scan them when I know there has been a recent thread. It should be most recent hit first.
Search does work better than before and you can get pretty specific about the search. | | | |
| wineismylife
Arlington, TX
Master of Wine
Posts: 12727
| | 08-29-2007 09:09 AM |
| Personally, if you wanted to really get fancy with the search, I'd have an option to only list the first and last post of a matching thread. | | | Joe-----Wine is like potato chips around me...if it's open, it's gone. | |
| Dave
Wine Connoisseur
Posts: 5832
| | 08-29-2007 12:55 PM |
| In my humble opinion, search is not fixed just yet. I did a search for "Kosta Browne" in Wine Commerce. I got 22 pages of results in apparently random order. Posts from a single thread were scattered about the 22 pages. I clicked on one of my hits and read the post. I hit the "back" button to return to my search results and the entire search was gone! If I want to read all 22 pages of hits I will have to do about 500 searches.  Talk about tedious!  What am I doing wrong?
I see no way for search to report results by thread title rather than individual posts. If I could, I would probably get about 50 hits with my KB search rather than 1000. I could just click on the threads that looked interesting. Sorting by date rather than randomly would be a nice touch too. | | | |
| Pool Boy
Laurl, MD (DC suburb)
Master of Wine
Posts: 13802
| | 08-29-2007 02:40 PM |
| Dave, you shared the same experience I have had since learning about the search parameters. The back button thing and having to re-enter the search every time is so tedious. | | | www.roguefood.com -- www.cellartracker.com | |
| Bradley Molzen
VinoCellar.com Admin
Bayonne, NJ
Wine Connoisseur
Posts: 5097
| | 08-29-2007 11:35 PM |
| Curious what browser you guys are using. With IE 7 I'm not getting this behavior.
What happens if, instead of hitting "back" you just hit the search button again instead?
Thanks. | | | If you drink wine, you get smarter.... | |
| Dave
Wine Connoisseur
Posts: 5832
| | 08-29-2007 11:47 PM |
| I am using IE7. I ran the exact same search again and both methods worked. This has happened to me in the past as well. Hitting the back button took me back to a fresh search screen. I posted a complaint and later it worked properly. I just assumed that it had been fixed, but now I wonder if it is a sporadic problem.  Search is pretty useless for me, but I'd be happy to try searches from time to time and see if it happens again and if there is any pattern. | | | |
| Pool Boy
Laurl, MD (DC suburb)
Master of Wine
Posts: 13802
| | 08-30-2007 09:07 AM |
| I use Firefox v2.0.0.6. I will never use IE again if I can help it. | | | www.roguefood.com -- www.cellartracker.com | |
| Pool Boy
Laurl, MD (DC suburb)
Master of Wine
Posts: 13802
| | 08-30-2007 09:13 AM |
| I just tried using search again. I searched on the word 'Babbo' to find my long post about my dinner there 5 years ago. The search function did work as it returned 4 pages of posts with the word 'Babbo' in it. But there were issues.
1) If I am searching on just a single word, how is it that the returned results are out of date order? Many of the posts had the word in the title and many also had it in the body of the message post. What criteria are used for determining which are the most relevant? I'm curious because it'd be ideal to post these in date order, or at least give me the OPTION to return results not in relevancy order but date order. Another option would be to provide the ability to narrow the date field VERY SPECIFICALLY instead of posts in the last 10 days, 30 days or only up to 365 days (the current max, outside of 'all' dates) -- which does not exist right now.
2) I get the same Dave experience of when I hit the back key -- again and again no matter what search words I use to try to search on. It takes me back to a blank search list screen. This makes the search function too tedious and laborious to use effectively making it a useless function for me. | | | www.roguefood.com -- www.cellartracker.com | |
| wineismylife
Arlington, TX
Master of Wine
Posts: 12727
| | 08-30-2007 09:15 AM |
| Brad, you want to make everybody happy when it comes to search? Fire up the old software on your server and go to the advanced search page. Whatever you see, duplicate it. Problem solved. | | | Joe-----Wine is like potato chips around me...if it's open, it's gone. | |
| Dave
Wine Connoisseur
Posts: 5832
| | 08-30-2007 10:02 AM |
| WIML is on something. If you could bring back just half the functionality of the old software, people would be happy. Of course the old software didn't report search results by thread title so I won't be happy, but you could live with that!
I did a search for Kosta Browne posts in the last 60 days. Looked at one and hit the back button.  The results all disappeared. Hitting the Search button again seemed to fix the problem. | | | |
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