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New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 2:50 pm
by DesignFlaw06
I'll start of by thanking everyone for being patient. The site went down longer than I anticipated and for that I apologize.

Wayne and I have been talking over the last few weeks about getting stuff organized in relation to the website. There were some changes related to getting the domain, hosting, and administration all in one spot. That was the biggest reason for the downtime. The other major change was the creation of a landing page. I wanted to create a page that could direct people to various aspects of this community, not just the forum. The Calendar Contest is my first goal. There will be other applications coming down the pipe soon.

The landing page isn't pretty and there's not much content yet. I'll be working on it and it should get better. Aesthetically , the forum never looked like much anyway so maybe some work can be done to improve both pages. Other ideas include a forum store, a photo gallery, event calendars & registration, how-to writeups, etc. The main page will be fed with news articles related to the FJR, Yamaha, or motorcycles in general.

Anyway, I'm looking for ideas or helpful criticism. What do you guys think of the direction we're headed?

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 3:06 pm
by Uncle Hud
Looks GREAT. No apology needed -- unless you were getting paid and blew the schedule.

Maybe each visitor to the landing page sees a random photo pulled from a library of 100 files? You know we'd be happy to donate five times as many photos as you want.

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 3:19 pm
by BikerGeek
First, thanks for your work keeping this place running.

Second, I like the landing page!

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 3:44 pm
by CraigRegs
Thanks for all the work on this. Flashy takes a back seat to function, for me. It'd be easy to leave this as a static forum, so I'm excited to see all the new directions for this community.

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 4:22 pm
by bungie4
All that work and you couldn't change the way it smells in here...

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 5:19 pm
by wheatonFJR
bungie4 wrote: Tue Nov 07, 2017 4:22 pm All that work and you couldn't change the way it smells in here...
Smells fine...check yer deodorant.

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 5:42 pm
by LKLD
Canucks don't use deodorant, just a splash of Molsen and a spritz of moose attraction spray.

I like the idea of changing things up some. Personally, I would like to see the forum go to a darker scheme, like ADVRider has...easier on the eyes.

Kudos to everyone involved!

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:03 pm
by Hppants
OK - I'm dumb. You have to hit me in the head with these things.....

Where can I find the "landing page"?

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:32 pm
by LKLD
There's always one. :stickpoke:

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:42 pm
by DesignFlaw06
Hppants wrote: Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:03 pm OK - I'm dumb. You have to hit me in the head with these things.....

Where can I find the "landing page"?
www.fjriders.com

If you haven't noticed, the forums are at www.fjriders.com/forums now. But I added some code so that old forum links are detected and redirected properly and automatically. So if you visit this forum by a bookmarked link like search.php?search_id=unreadposts will redirect and you'd never see the landing page.

Old forum links won't go to a 404 Page not found this way.

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:43 pm
by extrememarine
Great Job Tim! Thank you for putting the efforts into this and tolerating my knuckle-dragger understanding of the neenernet, DNS, Domains, and hair spray.

Pants - if you open a new browser and go to www.fjriders.com, you should see the landing page, with a link to the forum (here).

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:45 pm
by extrememarine
Tim - we forgot to dump Wheaton and the other complainers from the new address...

I'm searching for a Frabreze plug in for Wordpress, but I haven't found anything yet...

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:46 pm
by FredandJeannesRacer
Hppants wrote: Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:03 pm OK - I'm dumb. You have to hit me in the head with these things.....

Where can I find the "landing page"?
It's like when a girl has a "landing strip".
You just know where it's at!

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:48 am
by Hppants
Thanks for the bump on the head - it worked.

My "favorite" for this site is to go straight to the "unread posts". Doing so bypasses the landing page. Regardless, it looks nice Tim. I don't know how you do it. I don't need to know either.

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2017 10:18 am
by Top_Speed1
If I could give a huge but easy phpbb tip? ...and I've customized quite a few phpbb Forums like my https://gokartsrus.com/go-kart_forum

How about a different theme whereas the posts within the thread are separated better. Either better bordering or alternating color (maybe even a white then subtle gray) would be soooo nice. Scrolling down through a thread is very hard to define where one post starts and another ends especially with lot's of quotes within some of the posts.

Sorry, not to convolute this outage thread, but while you're at it, my suggestion is pretty easily done and it would enhance everyone's viewing experience.

Thanks for listening.
-KJ

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2017 10:19 am
by wheatonFJR
extrememarine wrote: Tue Nov 07, 2017 6:45 pm Tim - we forgot to dump Wheaton and the other complainers from the new address...

I'm searching for a Frabreze plug in for Wordpress, but I haven't found anything yet...
All that brown-nosing and I get sucked into the complainer's pile? :threadjack:

I must need some more beatings or something so my morale will improve. :D

Great job Tim! It's amazing you get anything done with Wayne slowing you down... ;)

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2017 10:37 am
by silverback
Will Tapatalk be coming back soon?

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2017 10:52 am
by Redfish
Thank you for all that you do. That Landing Page gives this place a more respectable look. I like it.

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2017 12:01 pm
by DesignFlaw06
silverback wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 10:37 am Will Tapatalk be coming back soon?
It will. Pretty sure I know what the issue is. I'm just waiting on the credentials to fix it.

Thanks for the kind words. These are things that I can do to help the community out.

Re: New FJRiders.com landing page and other changes

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2017 8:05 pm
by extrememarine
Right now, the forum software is pushing notifications out to the tapatalk server (and you're probably seeing those on your phone app), but the app is unable to get back to the forum.

Fix in progress...

Wayne
silverback wrote: Wed Nov 08, 2017 10:37 am Will Tapatalk be coming back soon?