Standarizing forums.arcademuseum.com (combine forums.klov.com into it)

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Standarizing forums.arcademuseum.com (combine forums.klov.com into it)

What we are thinking of doing:

We are thinking of keeping the forums solely up at forums.arcade-museum.com, and having forums.klov.com redirect to the former, instead of being an alias of it.

Since moving to vbulletin, the forums have been accessible via: forums.klov.com as well as forums.arcade-museum.com. With the new change, typing in any forums.klov.com would simply take you to the same address on forums.arcade-museum.com.

The positive side of this:

-- You could access the forums via either URL.

The negative side is is becomming more and more obvious all the time:

-- Lowers our search engine results, since Google et al see both sites as having duplicate content. While we could block Google from seeing one of these sites, other problems (and wasted search engine benefit) would arise when users link to URLs on the blocked side

-- There is a need to fix problems caused by running the forums on 2 URLs, which wastes time we could use for other upgrades. Additionally, some of these issues don't seem to get our attention quickly (ie: any time the site emails anyone a URL it currently isn't including the domain name in the link, so the link doesn't work).

-- Inability to quickly update the software on the site and to add new features without issues popping up. We just added a trader rating system, eBay style, though it currently can only be seen by admins (trader ratings are not the same thing as reputation which was turned on earlier today). Our weird site settings are creating issues with it. Though we could easily fix these issues, these fixes would ad yet one more piece of customization to the forums making it more labor intensive to upgrade in the future, and thus likely making upgrades less frequent.

What this would mean.

-- Any time anyone went to forums.klov.com it would redirect to forums.arcade-museum.com

-- Any url within the forums on klov.com would also redirect. In other words, if you bookmarked a forums.klov.com thread or msg it would simply change the name in the browser for you and take you to the same page on forums.arcade-museum.com

The positives of changing:

-- Fixes all the negatives I've mentioned above.

-- Trader ratings would roll out at the same time (which in turn would hopefully help to further cut down on flame/personal attack wars at the same time).


The negatives of changing:

-- It is always possible that some corporate or educational networks might block 'forums.arcade-museum.com' and yet not 'forums.klov.com' simply because their firewall sees the word 'arcade'.

-- Some people may like things the way they are

-- forums.arcade-museum.com is a longer url than forums.klov.com, though remember, typing it the later would always take you to the former.

Longer road.

-- Similar issues affect the main KLOV.com and ARCADE-MUSEUM.com web sites. Search engines may punish us for having 'duplicative' content. Logging into one site and jumping to the other means you are again, not logged in. I'm inclined to keep mostly just the KLOV database on KLOV.com, and have not only the forums but online library, vaps, etc. solely on an arcade-museum.com address (with links from KLOV just like there are now).

Thoughts and comments...?​
 
Trader Ratings system is currently up as a 'beta'. It only works if you are on forums.arcade-museum.com (not forums.klov.com).

Any ratings you place on another member are likely to be permanent however, even though the system is being labeled a 'beta'.
 
A member's trader ratings show up only in the For Sale and Wanted Forums, as well as in their user profile. The feedback rating doesn't show up in any other threads, since the idea is for trader ratings to be just that...for deals done...for voting on someone's content contribution to the forums, use the scales icon.
 
As some general advise tonight. We are actually testing the boards with some different configuration settings. In short, if you are on forums.klov.com it might kick you over to forums.arcade-museum.com at some inopportune time and you will be logged out. So you might want to just go directly to forums.arcade-museum.com for the next 24 hours or so. In the future, it would matter, as any redirect put in place would happen the moment you went to forums.klov.com.
 
Sounds like things are moving in the right direction. The consolidation of one domain is likely a good idea and was probably an eventuality anyway. Do what needs to be done to make things all around more beneficial for the community (all aspects of it).
 
Trader Ratings system is currently up as a 'beta'.

Any ratings you place on another member are likely to be permanent however, even though the system is being labeled a 'beta'.

thats because itrader is no longer a supported plug in.....been in modification graveyard for a while now....they recommend not using them once they are in graveyard
 
thats because itrader is no longer a supported plug in.....been in modification graveyard for a while now....they recommend not using them once they are in graveyard
Beats not having it though. It's a bit of a hassle trying to find feedback on someone in the feedback thread even with the search function.
 
Ink,

iTrader wasn't always kept current, which is one of the reasons we never installed it until this month. It was recently taken over by another developer and updated for our software version. That is the reason we finally installed it. We haven't had any major problems with it, though it will add minor complication to our future upgrade process (ie: potenially a little more labor intensive...)
 
Ink,

iTrader wasn't always kept current, which is one of the reasons we never installed it until this month. It was recently taken over by another developer and updated for our software version. That is the reason we finally installed it. We haven't had any major problems with it, though it will add minor complication to our future upgrade process (ie: potenially a little more labor intensive...)


yup for sure....

itrader had been known to cause some SQL/DB performance problems

there will be no future updates for itrader...the coder has abandon the project long ago...years back in fact..i have not seen any new coder taking it over.... hence beta

the first time u try to update the forums....u will have major malfunction in DB and plug in's....seen many site owners have this prob.

so if that's worth it...so be it...going to be some major SQL DB work arounds in future here....and itrader will be no longer functioning @ that point anyway....so u lose all your ratings.

new forum updates are released the last tue of every month....so...if u like to stay current

the last vB versions supported for itrader were 3.5.x & 3.6.x...back in 05-07'

we are up to 3.8.3 now and soon 4.0.x

this board appears to be up to 3.8.x....w/ the options it has....but i dont see the vBulletin registered trademark down below.....so cant tell u exact ver u have for sure.

i'm not trying to bust balls...just giving u guys the heads up is all....to avoid future probs.

if u need some SQL help in future ...LMK
 
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ink... don't spook me... last thing we need is upgrade headaches.

We are running a 3.8 series vbulletin. iTrader supposedly has been taken over by some one else and has been updated to a version 2.5. That is why we installed it. I'll pm you more and we can discuss offline.
 
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