SEEING DOUBLE FRAMES? HIT SHIFT-RELOAD!
(a draft of this message was originally posted here:
http://www.fairfaxunderground.com/forum/read.php?40,11812 in off-topic before the switchover)
Today this website got a serious upgrade. Fairfax Underground went from being hosted on a 400Mhz Celeron tower piece of junk to a quad Xeon server with 2 gigs of ram.
The speed improvements are incredible! The arrest search is exponentially faster.
In addition to the server swap, I will be/have been making some serious changes to this site.
any comments or suggestions on what else needs to be done? please reply and let me know.
my list:
- incorporate the top menu bar into the header of each page instead of in a frame as it is now. 60% of the daily visitors here come from google and get linked directly to the page with the data (and therefore don't get the frame up top). i'd bet visitor retention from google would be much higher if they could actually see the menu. (DONE!)
- fix that damned "designed" typo. would have been done ages ago, but it's a long story. it can't be done until: (DONE!)
- upgrade the software this forum uses. using 5.0.14 of "phorum" now, plan to upgrade to the latest 5.1 "beta but stable" version because it brings in loads of new features and really cleans up a lot. (DONE!)
- completely rewrite the first sticky post and make it much more informational. make this place seem more professional and not a hangout for dumb kids. although i will still stress the fact that pretty much anything on-topic goes.
- SLASHDOT STYLE MODERATION! please god! my php kung fu is not up to par to write it, so i've been pleading with the phorum developers. things like "good karma" for regular positively moderated users, modding trolls off the visible page, etc. for more information, see [slashdot.org] . this may not come immediately, but i wanted you to know that i've been planning to implement it for ages.
- auto-ban users that use html in the topic (to fix the spambots that keep posting in the city/town forums)
- fairfax wiki?
- license plate database (where you can add comments about a driver on the road?)
- better (easier) chat software
- put arrest list in a ramdisk so it runs MUCH faster (DONE!)
- the "Links" section is pretty useless. I'd like to open it up wiki-style where anyone could add links they feel are appropriate and sort them into sections, etc.
edit: The new forum software is installed and has a slightly different feel. Let me know if you find any bugs.
The very top of the screen is kind of ugly with everything squished together, but I'll worry about that later.
any other ideas? let me know! thanks.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2006 11:41AM by Cary.