| Author | Message | ||
     Glen Poolen Frequent User Username: wgipps Post Number: 220 Registered: 03-2018 |
Is there anything wrong with the search function of the boards at the moment? Ive tried different searchs - the same as i have always done - but nothing brings back any responses. My last search - 'turbo' - for the last 3000 days returned no responses. Tried lots of other searches as well - nothing. | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3582 Registered: 04-2003 |
Glen, Have just used your search for "Turbo" and this successfully returned a large number of "hits". One thing I did do was to use the "Search Topic" box in the SEARCH OPTIONS to restrict the search to Silver Spirit models. In the past, I have found not restricting the search to a specific model or Topic invariably resulted in either too many irrelevant responses or none at all. As an example try the following search:  . | ||
| Glen Poolen Frequent User Username: wgipps Post Number: 221 Registered: 03-2018 |
Thanks David I dont know whats going on. I dont think ive done anything different to any other time i have searched for anything. See attached pics. I searched turbo and got 1 result - this thread. I searched water pump - got no results.     | ||
| Brian Vogel Grand Master Username: guyslp Post Number: 3011 Registered: 06-2009 |
Glen, I have run into this on multiple occasions, and whenever I do I simply turn to the web search engine of my choosing. If you include the following: site:au.rrforums.net/forum/messages as the first among your search criteria it limits the search to these forums. If you're good at using the advanced operators as well it can often be easier to zero in on what you're looking for, too. Brian | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3583 Registered: 04-2003 |
Glen, I think your problem is associated with two things: 1. You are ticking the "Search by Date" section and including a user name for the search. This restricts the search to posts by that user and not all posts on the search topic. 2. You are ticking the "All Topics" box in the Search Options instead of one for the model category you are interested in. This overloads the software search capacity and no results are returned. Please try my suggestion of only entering data in the "Search for" box, nothing in the "Search by Date" box and entering a specific model category in the "Search options". This reduces the workload on the Search engine leading to a faster search and less chance of the search "timing out" and returning few or no results as in your experience. | ||
| Glen Poolen Frequent User Username: wgipps Post Number: 222 Registered: 03-2018 |
"1. You are ticking the "Search by Date" section and including a user name for the search. This restricts the search to posts by that user and not all posts on the search topic." Ahh - that makes sense. But how bizarre that ive always done that - 3000 days has always been my timeframe (its stored in the page metadata on my desktop) and ive searched exactly the same way since ive been here. Anyway - thanks again. Overloading search capacity - not something ive heard of before. I again offer my services to work with you to bring the forum into the modern era. | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3586 Registered: 04-2003 |
Glen, I don't expect the 3,000 day check is causing problems as it is a simple "sort by date" exercise rather than a detailed topic search. Thanks for your offer of help "to bring the forum into the modern era"; I am certain our Administrator's experience would also allow him to do this if it was feasible. As I understand it, the problem is there is no current way of making our forum archives of invaluable information available "on request" using the current forum software and more recent forum software; the task of extracting and finding a way to store these files in new software has been investigated over the years and no practical solution has emerged as far as I am aware. | ||
| Glen Poolen Frequent User Username: wgipps Post Number: 223 Registered: 03-2018 |
Perhaps the 2 heads theory might work. Simply saying 'nothing can help' means you are resigned to the forum as it stands. Nothing ventured. | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3587 Registered: 04-2003 |
Glen, I can recommend Brian Vogel's alternative solution to searching the forum in general however it can pass over our forum files where posts from the early days are archived as access [from my experience looking for information I posted in the early years of the forum] has to be gained by using the forum software to open the archived file and then searching them. To illustrate the problem, in the early 2000's the Swammelstein Silver Shadow forum was an invaluable source of information from its archives however when this forum was closed due to forum hackers and trolls taking up all the Administrator's time, all this information was unable to be accessed or relocated and was lost to posterity as a consequence. I have some information I downloaded at the time in my archives however I relied more on reading the Swammelstein archives when needed due to the time required and the ISP cost of data downloading. Fortunately, this situation has largely disappeared as technology improved and competition has increased the speed and reduced the cost of data transfer. | ||
| Glen Poolen Frequent User Username: wgipps Post Number: 224 Registered: 03-2018 |
My argument is it is simply time to upgrade this place. The cobwebs are everwhere. Im not being critical fo you or the administrators - that is a simple observation from someone who spend 90% of his time on computers in different forums, discussion groups, tutorials, etc, etc.. Your troubleshooting pages refer to browers from the 1990s that no longer exist and havent for years. Your basic HTML formatting instructions went to god everywhere else more than 15 years ago - its the only place i know of that need anything like that - formatting has been standardised across software for years. The data this site contains is invalauable. not and issue - its probably the only place for it all in the world in history. Its protection is paramount. But it is digital. If it is digital it can be copied. If need be - and you probably already know it - that for a few hundred dollars you can run a bot over this entire site and copy everything into a updated database. It might take as little as a coule of days to complete. It is easily feasable - i really dont understand the argument. You can play around with the front end to make this place look modern and fresh and easy to use (like all other modern forums and like places) without even need to touch the storage of the data here. Soon enough you might not be able to use the suggestion Brian provided because this domain isnt secured. Browsers wont recognised it. This is a forum of RR owners and it is trapped in the early 2000's. Simply because our cars are classic doesnt mean our information systems need to be. I really want to help do that - im not looking for a fight. Glen | ||
| Trevor Hodgekinson Experienced User Username: wm20 Post Number: 154 Registered: 11-2006 |
I for one am very pleased with the mechanics of this forum. Coming from a science / engineering background I appreciate the KISS principle and when it comes to computing that means leaving things alone unless there is a drastic need to change them because things that are needed no longer work. Apart from the left over shadows, the other thing rusting in the yard is a pile of motorcycles and the clubs that I have joined all have web pages . One of them decided that their forum site was old & needed tarting up. Results ? 1) because no one understands modern web programes, when ever the site get hacked a couple of hundred dollars goes out to a web pro to fix it. 2) because it is loaded up with all sorts of "I am smarter than you" scripts it has become a major PIA to update, so no one does it thus the information is very stale rather than before when only the look was stale 3) because the softwear is current, every hacker knows how to hack into it. 4) because it rarely gets updated people have stopped coming to the site 5) because of all of the fancy pants scripts that do things like make backgrounds translucient none of the members with older computers can open the pages and when they do it takes forever & a day to open 6) because of all of the above they went onto face book & I left because there is no way I was going to allow my personal details & motorcycle details to be stored by Face Book. I am on about 30 to 40 forums and this one is the easiest by far to navigate through, downloads faster & is more convienant to use, particularly the nice little navigation arrows that allows you to go directly to the last ( or first ) post in any thread. With every forum I am on, every time the administrators upgrade the forum softwear it creates more problems than it fixes and in every case the volume through the forum drastically decreases because the casual browsing public find it onerous to use. Prime example is a Lawnmower World forum which 2 years ago was getting around 100 posts a day. This morning there were 4 and the owners are now thinking of closing it down. | ||
| Geoff Wootton Grand Master Username: dounraey Post Number: 2188 Registered: 05-2012 |
I'm with Trevor on this. I find the forum loads instantly, has all the features needed and is easy and fast to navigate. The only feature that was less than excellent was the search facility, but even this was corrected when the owner allowed the site: keyword to be used by external search engines. The one thing that has not yet been mentioned is this forum is free to use. It seems a little ungrateful for us to be calling for major upgrades (at major cost) to a facility that is free to use and working perfectly. A big thank you is in order to the owner. | ||
| Glen Poolen Frequent User Username: wgipps Post Number: 225 Registered: 03-2018 |
Geoff - Firstly while Im not sure exactly, nothing in this world is free. The site has to be hosted somewhere. David may be able to explain how the site is funded (if he chooses) but I would guess the RROCA funds the monthly hosting fee at least. So it is free for everyone overseas but funded by RROCA - thats my best guess. Open to be corrected. Secondly - how is making a suggestion ungrateful? i would like to see this be the best it can be because I use it. I think it is dated and user-unfriendly. But i still use it and will continue to. Thirdly - to your point Trevor - something is going to have to happen with this place soon enough. It is going to have to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS. While i dont know the timelines for this, at some point a major upheaval is going to take place by necessity. I dont know how this place is setup but given it is an ancient setup im thinking it will be harder rather than easier - by simply buying an SSL certificate. Fourthly - Trevor - 1 forum out of the 30 or 40 you are on had a problem. What about the other 29 or 39 forums you are on? Im suggesting here that we are allowed to get onto the front foot and kill many birds with one stone now instead of getting into a panic about it later when deadlines are provided. Again, im not bitching and throwing complaints or problems at the administrators. I have made a suggestion and offered to help implement it - Im not sure i can do anything above that. Cost - cost is a part of life. Perhaps all the rich RR owners from around the world who use the forum might donate some money to the cause - who knows.  Im simply putting up my arguments for. People will put up their arguments against - and thats what is great about forums especially well monitored forums where nobody gets down into the gutter or gets into name calling. In the end David and his advisers will decide. I look forward to discussing it more. | ||
| Trevor Hodgekinson Experienced User Username: wm20 Post Number: 155 Registered: 11-2006 |
Glen. Update to all of them have been long term detrimental SSL's become a problem because the keys always need to be renewed and unless set up to be done automatically they always seem to happen Friday evening after close of trading so the sites become "insecure" for several days unless people have access to the administrators private email address to alert them. Many of the moderators have given up because with each change either their computers need to be upgraded or the process becomes so difficult that they can no longer be bothered. I used to moderate several of them then found I could no longer do this because the new server soft wear had become Microsloth specific and needed routines included in the windows tool box that the Mac of course does not have. Four of the "forums" that I am still on are actually strait mail lists and run off Listserv on various University servers. Simple, easy and never ever off line but a right royal PIA to search. Way back I learned my lesson with archiving sites when Geocities closed down and the extensive resource list for BSA motorcycle became worthless particularly as many of the people who originally uploaded the information had either closed down ( businesses ) or died So now days anything that is considered worth while to keep is downloaded and kept locally , usually on 2 computers , both running mirrored 3 way raid drives one of which is external. The fact that I can still access this forum on the old G4 is great as most sites will no longer load on the old HTML 2 browsers and those that do will not display in a useable way. Eventually I would imagine that the soft wear will go so out of date that it will no longer run on newer servers but untill that day I for one am more than happy for things to remain the same. People come to visit & are flabbergasted that I still have my Quadra sitting there on a desk. I do all of my writing on it and run my repair business with MYOB VI on the anchient 040 chip which running at 25 mhz can still process what I type substantially faster than I can type it. A page of text still runs at a touch under 100 kb using Semantic great Works till I save it in Word 4 format when it blows out to 2Mb I would imagine that this entire forum could be run off any 20 year old computer in some ones garage provided it has a couple of external hard drives & a static URL. Old soft wear was very efficient because storage was very expensive , ram was astronomical , drives were small & processors were slow ( sort of ). The prime example of how to modernize yourself off the web is Yahoo Groups. Extensively used and for at least a decade the biggest hosting platform. Then around 2000 they started to modernize and ever since then it has been downhill. Each 7 every "upgrade " made it harder to use and far less user friendly to the point that people abandoned in it droves till now when it is virtually gone | ||
| Glen Poolen Frequent User Username: wgipps Post Number: 226 Registered: 03-2018 |
Goodness Trevor. The days of Apple v Microsoft as far as the internet goes are long gone. Im flabbergasted by what you describe. I can see a hamster running in his wheel on your desk to keep the interwebs working! Dont assume I am talking about a wholesale change to the forum, its data, or anything of the sort. Ive simply suggested a more user friendly front end - the user interface. There is nothing here that I have seen that is complex. Its just old. SSL updates are nowadays automated - the hosting service looks after them all. | ||
| Glen Poolen Frequent User Username: wgipps Post Number: 227 Registered: 03-2018 |
BTW Trevor - Are you talk about Q&A as a word processor by Symantec? Word 4??? OMG!! | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3590 Registered: 04-2003 |
Glen and everyone contributing to this discussion: The forum is an independent entity to the RROC[Australia] and is operated and paid for by a benevolent member [our Administrator] of our Club as a service to the world-wide Rolls-Royce Community regardless of whether they are Club members or not. I volunteer my time as Moderator being my contribution to the world-wide Rolls-Royce and Bentley Community as do all of our registered and unregistered members and there are also the "lurkers" who remain invisible whilst benefiting from those who contribute to the Forum. The individual State clubs all have their own Club websites which largely cover Club functions and associated car events and rarely cover the maintenance and preservation of vehicles by their custodians and certainly not to the extent and depth that occurs in this Forum. I recently posted Bill Coburn's story of his history over many years with Rolls-Royce/Bentley motor vehicles and the genesis of his "magnum opus" Tee One Topics and this is but one example from many similar individuals around the world. Suffice to say, there is and always will be robust discussion about future directions and means of maintaining a viable forum in the future. At the same time, in my opinion, we must be cognisant of both the costs involved in providing an advertising-free open forum free-of-cost to users and the generosity of those who willingly carry these costs. I have also been a volunteer moderator on another international car forum dedicated to one model from the manufacturer's wide range of vehicles for the past 10 years. This is operated by a commercial organisation that charges advertisers for the inclusion of their advertising in the forum. This organisation recently updated their software and, in my opinion, this has resulted in an inferior forum structure and a more complex and less user-friendly interface compared to the previously used software. A classic case of "one step forward and two steps backwards" in my opinion. . | ||
| RR Forums Administrator Board Administrator Username: admin Post Number: 117 Registered: 10-2002 |
Here's a quick note on this matter as I don't have much free time at the moment. I have no intention of upgrading/migrating/enhancing the forum software any time soon. It is very risky, time-consuming and frankly I don't think it's necessary. HTTPS has been on the to-do list for a while and is achievable without too much fuss or cost, but again, I don't think there's an urgent need for it. I may expand on this subject when I can find the time. For now please continue to enjoy the existing amenity of the forum. | ||
| Glen Poolen Frequent User Username: wgipps Post Number: 228 Registered: 03-2018 |
David - might the upgrade you mention have anything to do with my search issues that started this thread? I really dont understand what had changed from any of the other searches i have ever done here. Glen - Not that I am aware To the Admin - i appreciate your time and effort and please be advised that i am experienced in technology strategy and I am always eager to help especially on those matters that interest me - like RR. I dont work full time and have plenty of time on my hands to help. | ||
| Trevor Hodgekinson Experienced User Username: wm20 Post Number: 157 Registered: 11-2006 |
Glen, The "Evil Empire" is just as evil as it was when Mr gates was at the helm. Anything compiled as a PDF within Microsoft publisher will only correctly display on a windows box with a current version of windows or with the current version of Adobe Acrobat. I buy a lot of mower repair manuals & used to think they had become corrupted, but no they are specifically written not to display properly in Mac Preview. We use a lot of File Maker data bases. I can open all of the ones made on a windows box but the windows box will not read my files & when it does it scrambles the fields. Semantic saw the writing on the wall so they sold Great Works to Microsoft who called it Microsoft Works as a stand alone for 2 years then bundled it with Windows just after they bought Word Perfect. And we are only talking 5 years ago when I had to stop moderating. What you should see is the old joke showing the tree branch with a dozen variations of a rope swing. Very few "upgrades" actually make anything better for the end user, Most allow the host to interrogate your hard drive and profile you which is really of no net benefit. Most of us are time poor yet we persist with web pages that take forever to run through routines that are of no benefit to us. While having 3 dimensional half tone images of Rolls Royces meandering across the screen might be sexy, unless it is going to be added to the site there is no need to wait while the browser downloads the 67 routines and 1100 lines of programme that allow it to be displayed. Moderator Input: I remember the "Tree Joke" from the mid-1960's and have posted a copy below. . | ||
| Trevor Hodgekinson Experienced User Username: wm20 Post Number: 158 Registered: 11-2006 |
As for our benefactor. If you do not currently have the letters OA after your name , you should. My eternal gratitude is yours | ||
| Glen Poolen Frequent User Username: wgipps Post Number: 229 Registered: 03-2018 |
Trevor In my former life Q&A and Wordperfect were the only 2 word processors we had to choose from on the 3 computers within our office of 60. I preferred Q&A - simple and easy to use. I thought Word Perfect had too many features - was showy simply for the sake of it. This was in the early to mid 1990's. And when Wolfenstein came out as a game - computer time was scarce. | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3591 Registered: 04-2003 |
Glen - now I can really show my age  .... My first exposure to what is now known as word processing was in the late 1980's using a Commodore 64 computer, a C1541 floppy disc drive, a Commodore dot matrix printer and Speedscript software and later the original WordPerfect software on a home-built clone 286 microprocessor PC. My strata management business ran on the Commodore computer well into the 1990's when the IBM clones proliferated and we graduated to DOS, Word Perfect and Lotus 123 then the original Windows - my son and I assembled our own computers with each processor major upgrade until the laptop computer "came of age" as an affordable alternative to a desktop computer. Said son is now a recognised world expert on "Cloud Computing" based in the USA. | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3592 Registered: 04-2003 |
Here is a copy of the original 1960's "tree joke" - if my memory is correct, this joke originated in the UK and is a good example of British humour at the time:   | ||
| Glen Poolen Frequent User Username: wgipps Post Number: 230 Registered: 03-2018 |
Im the ealry to mid 80s i was using Apple IIs at school and an Amstrad computer at home. I used to program on them. I had a job interview when i was 16 at a small company in East Malvern that later turned into MYOB/Quicken/Reckon (dont remember which one) - but they are now a global accounting company. I could program their computers as they wanted easily but i didnt know accounting!! cest la ve |
