Back Up

[Pegasus1300]

It appears that the Venturers website is back up and running.

[naturbar]

Wow, first time for me to look at that site..... NOT impressed.....Don has done a much better job with this site ......thanks again Freebird for all your hard work and passion ........... Even tho you ride a Hardley... :-)

[Yammer Dan]

Running?? From what??

[CaptainJoe]

It appears that the Venturers website is back up and running.

 

Yup! Good to see them back up and running!

 

Although there's never a good time for a site to go down, It's probably better to happen now than in riding reason when things are happening.

 

As far as the quality of the sites, it is more than adequate to get the job done. IMHO

 

There is no way they could afford to pay a programmer to take the amount of time that Don does for free... after all this is his baby...

[Freebird]

I know what they were going through. If they care as much about their site as I do this one, I know that they were stressing out big time. As for the site itself, it is entirely different. They are using PHbb for the forum software. PPbb is a free open source forum software. It is widely used and there is really nothing wrong with it. Some of you who were around when I first started this site over 10 years ago may remember that I actually built this site originally with PHbb because I had limited funds to dedicate to a new site. It only lasted about a day or two because I saw right off that it just didn't have all of the features that I wanted. So....I opened my wallet and bought the software that I felt would serve us better.

 

It served us well but when I got ready to upgrade a few weeks ago, I had to buy it again because my license just didn't include the upgrades to the newer version. It all adds up folks. A lot of the customizations here I figure out myself. Some are beyond the scope of my abilities though and I search for mods from other places. Some are free, some are free for a "lite" version and the "pro" versions cost money. Our classifies software for example was NOT free. You know that we went through a couple of different trials and that was because I was trying out a couple of free solutions but they just didn't meet my expectations. I try to give you the best of what I can find. I ended up purchasing an upgrade to what we had previously been using, PhotoClassifieds. I had to open my wallet but I felt it was best for all of you.

 

Believe it or not, even the "Thank You/ Likes" addition I ended up paying for the "pro" version. Simply because the "Lite" version did not allow you to collapse the list of people who thanked and liked for a post.

 

Another package that I actually paid for was the "favorite smilies" system. The version that I used on the old site was free but I couldn't find anything similar for this new version of VBulletin and it was requested several times that it be added back. So.....open the wallet again.

 

Upgrading the site is not an inexpensive undertaking but it had to be done. I felt that if it had to be done then I had to try to please as many of you as possible and sometimes that takes a bit of money. I have no problem with that because I think you all deserve the best that I can come up with.

 

As for what they are using? If it works for them and the members there are happy with it then that's all that matters. What we do here does not make us any better or worse than they are and vise versa. It's all about the user experience and the friendships.

[eagleeye]

It's all about the user experience and the friendships.

 

I think that says it all.