Thanks. Glad to be able to help support the bandwidth and storage expenses.
By the way, the interface was exactly as described, painless, and all but instant. Well done.
On the issue of images in signatures, please NO! Even non-animated signature images are distracting. I like that we have Avatars and not signature images. I know other forums have the reverse, no avatars, but do allow large (100x600) signature images. The signature images tend to be very complicated and detract from the information contained in the posts. I prefer our somewhat more professional appearance.
Allowing signature images also defeats the beautiful characteristic of the current HTML output by the forum--you can make the window very narrow, and the text re-flows to a newspaper column style width for quick reading. My fear is that image signatures would defeat that. I strongly urge you not to adopt and allow signature images.
Regarding animated Avatars, they're cool for about the first two cycles, then they're quite annoying and distracting. a few of the avatars have even been offensive. I'm certainly glad that the Mac OS ten version of Mozilla allows animations to be disabled.
Again, thanks Troy. I'm glad to be able to directly support the costs of the forum. Yours is a clean well run forum, with a minimum of commercial distractions. Those ads that we do have are not obnoxiously placed in the way. I've found out about several companies and products by following the links. I'm also more than happy to pay a subscription fee to help keep us away from having to run too many commercials splattered all around the content to pay for the upkeep, bandwidth, hardware, electricity, hosting fees, etc. I look at it more like a Public Radio model than a commercial television model. Bravo!
Well said on all aspects. I personally advertise on Troy's websites completely differently than others mainly because of the "feel" of the format. Best forums around.....hands down.
__________________ Currently own
2006 Grand Prix GXP - Midnight
2005 GTO - "Monaro"
2004 Denali - Boss's car ;)
1978 Firebird
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I see as a LTGM we get 150x150 avatars. Thanks! I've been dying for larger avatar dimensions.
Couple things though:
Deleting things from the gallery is VERY tedious. I know most people don't want to delete lots of stuff, but having to individually open and delete each picture can be annoying if you have intentions of deleting a huge chunk of them.
Another thing is the 'approval' time. How long does it take for images pending approval to be approved? Not to step on any toes here, but if I want to start another picture thread I don't want to have to wait very long for the pics to get approved and THEN post the thread. I should think that for the 200 bones it costs for LTG we could have instant image approval. ...just a thought.
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Another thing is the 'approval' time. How long does it take for images pending approval to be approved? Not to step on any toes here, but if I want to start another picture thread I don't want to have to wait very long for the pics to get approved and THEN post the thread. I should think that for the 200 bones it costs for LTG we could have instant image approval. ...just a thought.
Whether or not LTGM should be exempt from photo approval or not is an issue for Troy. So I cannot really adress it directly.
On the issue of approval time. One of the mods must go into the gallery admin panel to approve photos. One of us generally checks periodically, but it's not something we do constantly, as there has not been a need. Also, there is nothing to tell us photos are pending unless we log into the admin panel of the gallery. So basically, the approval time depends mostly on when someone gets to it.
If you get some photos uploaded and want to expedite approval time, just send one of the mods a PM for now and ask if they can approve your photos so you can post your new thread. Once they get your PM, they can log on and approve the pics. You could also send the PM to all of us (put all mod scrennames in the send to field) and annotate the PM that you CC'd all mods. That will get you the best chance of them being approved as soon as possible, since we are on and off at different times of the day.
I did see you had a bunch of pics of your wounded Sol waiting approval from an upload yesterday and I just approved them for you!
PS, you may want to make your suggestion about photo approval in the new "Steering Column" forum which is now set up for thegold members.
But a quick tour of the less than perfect forums gives me a headache when the screen is full of pics in sigs that take up more space than all the comments combined. My vote (even though none has been scheduled) is to keep the pics out of the sigs.
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No, I do not work for GM or any subsidiary or supplier.
But a quick tour of the less than perfect forums gives me a headache when the screen is full of pics in sigs that take up more space than all the comments combined. My vote (even though none has been scheduled) is to keep the pics out of the sigs.
Signature pictures can also create headaches for people who are using dialup connections. Click onto a long thread, and you may have to wait for 15 different pictures to load.
Signature pictures can also create headaches for people who are using dialup connections. Click onto a long thread, and you may have to wait for 15 different pictures to load.
Obviously I can't win, but just so I don't leave a sour taste in your mouth... I too have been to forums where the signature pictures are ridiculous... that's why you mandate very strict size rules. a narrow height, a low file-size, and a respectable width.
Obviously I can't win, but just so I don't leave a sour taste in your mouth... I too have been to forums where the signature pictures are ridiculous... that's why you mandate very strict size rules. a narrow height, a low file-size, and a respectable width.
I didn't mean to imply you cannot win. The decision is out of my hands. It is a decision that is up to Troy. Having been until recently on dialup, I just wanted to mention that having signature pictures can become a big problem in using a forum.
-bird
