Site Upgraded to Xenforo 2

Travis

Travis

Forum Staff
Top Contributor
XS650.com Supporter
Messages
4,535
Reaction score
1,502
Points
163
Location
Roberts, WI, USA
The software this site runs on was updated from Xenforo 1 to Xenforo 2 this morning. You may notice the style is a little different, but most things should work similarly to before. This upgrade was necessary to ensure the site remains secure and compatible with browser updates. It also brings some new features that should make the site easier to use.

If you find any problems with the site, post them here. Missing data and images are my biggest concern. Most other issues can be fixed without re-running the upgrade again.

Things I'm working on:
Tech page
About Us page
fixing the smilies
I will try to implement a dark theme soon as well (as requested).
rebuild album thumbnails
ad positions and permissions
old forum link redirects

Things not getting fixed:
The home page has been removed for now (It may never come back)
 
Last edited:
Change is hard. I get it. This upgrade was a ton of work for me (even with help from a paid developer) and I've been super busy with other things. I've been talking about this upgrade for over a year and gave everyone a week to help test things out and provide feedback. Please be respectful and constructive if you don't like the changes. These changes and upgrades are necessary to keep the site going.
 
Travis said:
Missing data and images are my biggest concern.
Click to expand...
Went back to the first thread I ever started and random ones since then. Everything looks to be there. thumbsup.gif
 
Travis said:
Change is hard. I get it. This upgrade was a ton of work for me (even with help from a paid developer) and I've been super busy with other things. I've been talking about this upgrade for over a year and gave everyone a week to help test things out and provide feedback. Please be respectful and constructive if you don't like the changes. These changes and upgrades are necessary to keep the site going.
Click to expand...
Travis
The major change in the look of the Forum caught me by surprise. I'll get used to it and probably like it better. I do appreciate all the efforts that you put into this Forum.
It did kind of mess up my avitar tho.
1640809153424.png
:rolleyes:
 
mmmm .. my brains already full , wonder what i will have to delete to learn all the new things here ... lol .. looks good so far ,i like the bookmark and also easy f/book access , only just discovered it all this morning so going to be intresting learning trip but doesnt look to hard
 
I am a very new member here, so my use of the site was limited to a month. I noticed the difference immediately before I logged in, and after running through my normal suspicions like Goldilocks and the three bears, I remembered, "Oh yeah, the upgrade." The whole format is much cleaner and more agreeable to the eye. Even though Orange is the Tennessee State Color. Go Titans! Thanks Travis.
'TT'
 
Oh no its Skulllllll......:unsure:

Hey Travis, Yea change gets harder as you get older........."Why the bloody hell did thy have to do that for" :lmao:.

You do a good job keeping the site running. Cheers.

Missing in my Albums.
For some reason one of my albums doesn't show the pictures, either on the album cover, or when you click open the album. All the pics show as blank but if you click onto the pic it does show up.......odd.


Here are my observations on a negative on how the site, (XenForo), have set up the upgrade. I get how adding similar threads to the bottom of the thread pages is supposed to help those, looking for information, to other threads of similar info so they have easy access to more info relating to their query..........Problem with this is a lot of the, (look here threads), it sends people down rabbit holes where the information is often wrong or incomplete because it is so old.
Screenshot 2021-12-30 at 08-11-05 '82 SJ Simplified wiring question.png


Take the Screen shot from nighthogs Thread from today. At the bottom of the page all of the treads one is near 5 years old the others are just shy of 9, 9, 11and 11 years old......

looked at the 76C thread and the wiring diagrams are wrong, (RG does mention a fix), since then, (2017), the 76C diagram has had all mistakes fixed and is posted in the Tech menu, wiring diagrams.

If you look at the 72 wiring diagram thread, (almost 8 years old), it has an XS2 wiring diagram posted. that has been upgraded in the last couple of years and it has fixed all of problems around the and park lights and power around the kill switch and starter relay and electric start with added switches that were missing. This is also now in the "Tech menu" under "wiring diagrams".

from this.................. ..........................................................................to this
72XS_650 73TX_650.PNG.. .72-xs2- XSCafe 1 circuit-diagram-b11325607311619 Colour aaaaa G Text 15 a copy.jpg
There has been so much information posted, learned and condensed in the last 4-5 years, where before that there was a lot of misinformation posted, sending people back to old threads can add confusion and give the wrong information.

I realize this isn't on you Travis, more a XenForo feature but on a site such as ours where over 70% of your traffic doesn't ever post questions, they are being led down rabbit holes and in a lot of the cases getting wrong information, or it is so outdated it has been found wanting or better solutions/information is out there

One more thing that is not a + for me. By having each page, with these similar threads attached to the bottom, each page is smaller with less posts per page.

This must take up a hell of a lot of extra band width for the site

Not to be disrespectful,

You do a great job providing this site.......
 
Last edited:
@650Skull Thanks for the feedback. I know what you mean about the similar threads section. I questioned it at first too. It can be disabled, and the criteria can be modified as well to put more weight on newer posts (among other things). With the improved software behind the search, it isn't too big of a hit on the server to display it. I'll play around with the settings and consider removing it if people don't like it. The number of posts per page shouldn't have changed, but I can check that too.
 
@Travis, Its some of the information side of the old threads that i find wanting...........on the other hand just a couple of days ago an old thread by Teecat, from 2011, got dragged up about tool rolls with some good pics...........It was nice to see Teecat up on a thread and not just purely for nostalgia sake, as he was an old 650 rider member as well, but because it had a good idea with pics...........I do see a plus, just the negative is stronger for me.
 
@650Skull I changed a bunch of settings for the Similar Threads and it already seems much better. Most importantly this setting: Enable recency-weighted relevance searches
It gives the results a half-life so they are considered less relevant the older they get. The half-life can be adjusted. This makes a huge improvement in the quality of the results. There are a couple of other settings that should help too like giving higher relevance to threads in the same forum.

You might remember that Similar Threads was a feature on this site for about 6 years while it was running on the vBulletin platform. That was one feature that was lost when switching to Xenforo 1 that became available again in Xenforo 2.

Let's give it some time and let me see if I can tweak it a little more to make it useful.
 

Similar threads

Travis
Update on 650 Rider
Replies
12
Views
2K
mortikan
mortikan
D
79 Aussie Cafe rebuild - first build - slow build
Replies
5
Views
2K
TwoManyXS1Bs
TwoManyXS1Bs
Back
Top