Signatures gone

[klenger]

I assume this is temporary. How long?

 

[Doc Tinker]

Probably until the site is moved to a new server. I heard two to three weeks somewhere.



Doc

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

Signatures are not gone, the default has just been changed to not post signatures. We've requested in the past that you post your signature on the first post on a thread and not after that. If you want to post your sig simply slick on the option box at the bottom of the thread. We are also putting some restrictions on signatures - max of 6 lines and no pictures in your sig, that restriction will take place in about a week. Details on all the changes can be found in my announcement at the top of any of the forums.



-Steve St. Laurent

Lead Moderator

 

[**ICEMAN**]

Originally posted by Steve St. Laurent

We are also putting some restrictions on signatures - max of 6 lines and no pictures in your sig



-Steve St. Laurent

Lead Moderator

what if you have 2 trucks?

3 lines per truck or 6 lines each?

 

[chuck3]

Testing Signature.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

6 lines total, you'll have to make due with that - it's a compromise.

 

[Joe G.]

Steve,



Not to be nit picky or anything, but you might want to change that to a specific number of characters. If a signature is just one line of typing it can be very long line. The browser wraps this line to fit the window. So the number of lines displayed is affected by the size and resolution of the monitor as well as if a maximized or normal window is used.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

It will be limited by the number of characters Joe. The number of characters per line varies depending on browser settings, screen resolution, etc - as you said. We haven't figured out yet what the software allows as a restriction so we're ballbparking it for now.

 

[Joe G.]

Ok, just thought I would mention it. My sig is actually three lines. One long one, one with just a line feed, and a short one. It usually wraps to be four or five lines of text with a blank one.

 

[klenger]

Testing adding signature

 

[klenger]

So, the signatures will need to be added manually from now on? The fact that the signatures have been removed from pervious posts seems to be a problem as many times members refer to their sigs in their post for deails about something. Now they are gone.

 

[klenger]

I get it. The old posts with signatures are still there. On the new ones, you have to add it manually. I can deal with that if it helps solve the problem.

 

[illflem]

Ken, if you mean manually by clicking the show signature box, yes.

 

[Joe G.]

Ken,



One thing you should note is that the character count will include the HTML code that is not displayed. That is, the stuff in the URLs in the links that does not appear on the screen is still sent to the browser and counts.

 

[illflem]

I assume that the brackets and letters for colors will also count



will[COLOR] take up half a line.

 

[Hammer]

Am I the only one who has a problem with what they are doing here now or does anyone else????,,Here's my outsiders take and see what you guys think,,The greatness of this board we " PAY" for is the ability for people to be individual in their posts and signatures,avatars included,,I do not mean to beat war drums on this Steve but there are other sites who use the same type of setup with larger membership bases,more posts,more threads,with bigger avatars/signatures who do not charge for membership and they do not cry money issues to the membership,,Most of them use the same amount of advertising from companies like the TDR and other than routine upgrades are very rarely ever down,,Now here's where my problem arises,if the site here has these problems that you state above and its a money issue for upgrades to handle the load ,one who pays to be here has got to wonder how this could be???,,Its not hard for those here to figure out dollars and cents by computing the number of members by cost and trying to understanding why,WE(the membership),have things limited or removed because of server/money issues,,Its kinda a,wonder where my money is going to deal,,Equipment,servers,yadda,yadda, yadda,costs alot to upgrade,blah blah blah,woof woof woof,give me a break here,,Sounds like the old dog and pony show again... ... .

 

[Rammin On]

Yeah --- kinda like being stuck in a mental ward -- I want my cigarettes NOW Nurse Ratchett

 

[nevinst]

Question for Steve

Steve,



How can you view someone's Signature if they didn't opt to post it (or forgot to as many people are doing currently)? I tried looking in the person's profile but it doesn't have that information. Is there any way to see their signature info? If not, any way to add that capability?



Thanks,



Troy

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

Troy, right now there is no way to view a persons signature if they do not post it on a thread. We will work on that once we get past the server issues we're dealing with right now. That isn't an option in this software - we may be able to make it work by doing some custom programming on the templates but it's a low priority item compared to the server upgrades.



Hammer - if you read my announcement you'd see that there is absolutely no hesitation on spending money on the TDR's part to solve the problem. The problem is finding a solution that will actually work. Noone's cyring money issues on behalf of the TDR AFAIK. The server has been upgraded several times in the last 6 months alone. Believe me when I say that the TDR has looked around at all sorts of different solutions. Have you read my announcement at the top of every one of the forums? If not, please do - it will explain a lot of what's going on right now. If you read that announcement you'll see that a decision on a new host has been made and that new server hardware is being ordered on monday. Out of curiousity which sites are you talking about with larger membership bases, more threads, etc? If one of the sites you are talking about is the Ford Diesel website you might find it interesting that the TDR site actually has 6 times the amount of traffic! Another recent example put on here for a high usage site (which was a site we had looked at and talked with recently) was the Corvette site, which had about 60% of the load when I checked it.



If you think you are frustrated as a user on the site, you have no idea how frustrated the admins and owners are about this. We/they have talked with many vendors and other forum hosts and each time an upgrade was made (4 in the last 8 months or so) it was "supposed" to solve the problem. The solution that is in the works now is a quantam leap forward - WAAAAAAY beyond any solutions that have been recommended. Going from 1 dual processor 900 mhz machine with 1. 5 GB of Ram, yada, yada (the best that the current host had to offer, and was supposed to be "way" beyond what we'd need) - to TWO servers with dual 1. 9Ghz processors, 2 gigabytes of RAM, a RAID 5 hard drive array, etc - one for serving the web pages and one for the database. We have been making regular announcements about the plans as well as posts on the TDR website forum about the issues and what we're trying to do to rectify them. There is no hesitation to spend money to correct the situation - but when talking about $15,000+ in hardware you do need a reasonable certainty that it will solve the problem. It would be foolish IMO for the TDR owners to buy $15,000 worth of hardware and have to throw it out next month. Unforetunately, many people don't seem to be able to see the announcement that's at the top of EVERY one of the forums . Also, remember that the entire website overhead is above and beyond what was there previously. The magazine subscription has remained at $35/month since way before the website came out - so the website simply added to the overhead.



I'll again thank you all for your continued patience - and we are working HARD to resolve this in the VERY near future.



-Steve St. Laurent

Lead Moderator

 

[Deezul1]

Thanks for doin a good job guys. Everybody be a little patient for a while usually it gets better after one of these upgrade sessions.