RichM

Confused. I don't appear to have any messages from you?

But it wouldn't have worked well for the foreseeable, or rather after April 2017 when Invision cease security updates for it. To put it into context; Had we decided to stick with the old version for the foreseeable, it would be a bit like leaving your Narrowboat on a dodgy stretch of canal with your doors unlocked/wide open when you're away. No doubt some people do that, but I'm not prepared to take any security risks when we're talking about thousands of member registrations in the database. As for your other point - well that's a matter of opinion and I appreciate everyone has different views. My recommendation would be to spend a little time familiarsing yourself with it. RichM

There is, you click on the flag icon next to where it says the time stamp of the post in question

Thanks for the feedback. I posted an announcement last week of our intention to launch a new theme. Going further back to the upgrade last month, we advised from the onset that the upgrade would be a work in progress in that we would launch the update, review feedback and then implement improvements based on the feedback given. This enabled us to perform the mandatory upgrade quickly and we appreciate those who came along for the journey. We hope most people will enjoy the new theme but fully appreciate that some may prefer the previous theme. As such, you can revert back to the last one by clicking the "Theme" link at the bottom of the page, followed by selecting "Legacy". I would of course suggest giving the new one a try. - If you decide it's not your cup of tea, then of course you can revert back to the last theme. I think it's a given that we cannot possibly please everyone no matter how hard we try to do so but we hope to alleviate this to some extent by providing choice. We have also introduced other improvements based on user feedback. These are mentioned in my announcement posted here. Best, RichM

Which iPad are you using? I have a 1st gen iPad mini at home but I've not tested that but will give it a test when I get home. As for the logo, I will resize it shortly after the Shift (new) theme becomes default. Most of my time for CWDF is consumed by server maintenance and general admin, design is not so much my area of expertise.

Out of interest, is anyone using different colour options on the new Shift theme?

It should now show the number of greenies awarded per post. Not sure why it disappeared. RichM

I'm a little late to this topic, just seen it! While on the topic, does anyone know where Black Prince's "Primrose" moved on to after leaving their fleet? I think it was a 5th berth but not certain. - Just curious as this was one of the first memorable narrowboat holidays as a child back in 1997.

No, not seriously. It's just intended to be a bit of fun. It also provides a form of recognition to contributors and while not perfect, reputation is one way to measure it. It also has another useful feature in that it shows "popular" content or rather, content that has received a lot of greenies. Link: http://canalworld.net/forums/index.php?/leaderboard/

To add to Dan's post above; The next minor software update will allow us to set "Condensed view" as default which we may do.

We've also enabled reputation to be displayed within member profiles and to compliment this there is a new Leaderboard which you may access by clicking "Leaderboard" on the main menu. It's intended to reward our frequent contributors or rather, those who receive a lot of positive feedback in the form of greenies for the posts they submit. Though it's only a bit of fun.

This happened to me only last week! Blocked flue which probably wasn't helped by using house coal that I got cheap. Made a right mess although wasn't obvious at first. I'm still cleaning up after it. Lesson learned for me! RichM

It shouldn't be visible to members as it's in testing though I see it is visible for some reason! Feel free to have a play around in the meantime. RichM

It was an unplanned outage, sorry... We are on a temporary server which was set up by us and supported entirely by us, to speed up the rebuilding process during the migration to the new version of the software. It has 3x 120GB SSDs and we have 3 data stores spanning across the 3 hard drives. We store most backups off site but we hold some on the local SSDs. CWDF uses more space than it did previously and the last backup task caused it to run out of space. Not ideal though the current server was only set up for temporary use. I perform regular house keeping tasks but we are still running tight so will need to work on it this evening when I'm home from work. In an ideal world we'd have terabytes of storage but we use faster SSDs for performance with the downside of having less space. They are not cheap. RichM

We plan to add an additional theme to the site which will likely replace the one you see now. It will bring many design improvements. Though we will leave the existing one as an option for those who would prefer to continue using this one. Rich

Yeah that's correct. Members will only see the edit options for their own posts which is probably a good thing.

Thanks for your feedback. Users can just leave it as is if they don't want to change the colour. There is no requirement to pick a colour unless they want to change it if that makes sense and changing it is just a case of clicking literally two buttons. Cheers Rich

Here we go: (Blueberry palette)

Hi all, We've been reviewing feedback recently from our members in regards to the the new forum software. We promised to make continual improvements where possible based on user feedback and we understand that one of the common gripes is regarding the current theme. There are some things that are not quite so easy to change which we have to bear in mind, but we still have options. One of the options is to add alternative themes. The idea here is to give users choice, meaning that they will be able to continue using the current theme should they wish. We're not going to please everyone and I think most will agree that's a given, though we can hopefully alleviate this by providing choice. I wanted to share with you one of the possible themes we may implement. It's not finalised yet and it's pending Daniel's sign-off but I wanted your opinions on the attached theme. This one has many benefits, including: - Higher contrast - Less clutter (particularly at the top where the header is) - The ability for users to easily choose between several different colours according to their taste - Responsive Please ignore duplication of the gallery images. Proposed theme: Optional colour scheme (one of many): Optional colour scheme (one of many): Colour palette for users to choose from:

I use them, makes it nice and cosy on those cold dark nights, also compliments the stove well and a useful source form of lighting.

I used to run a vBulletin powered forum which was somewhat larger than this and I agree, vBulletin is superior in some ways and I too prefer it from a user point of view. Moving to it wouldn't be too challenging from a technical point of view either having done it before and vice versa. Both are are widely used around the world by some of the largest forums in the world. Problem is; I am not sure users would find it easier to acclimatize to vBulletin as it is vastly different and some features (including the member map) would probably have to go. Then there is cost. It would cost us £321 for the licence plus more on design work. We are a completely non-profit community funded by members. That said, it was/is definitely on my radar given my previous experience with it but it wasn't a viable option. Also, a lot of work is done behind the scenes that people do not see. For example; I'm now planning a server migration to host the site back in the UK while using AWS to store our data as to avoid running out of space. All of this will also need configuring to meet our requirements. Then the chat room will need to be replaced with a new one before May (more on that soon) What you see on the face of it is just half the work that goes into it. All comments will be taken aboard but do remember we have working lives too. Next week, I will be working 7 days straight...

Will need to compromise. - powering my guests hair-dryers is an idea that can go out the window. I have not yet done much research as this was my first port of call. I appreciate all suggestions and will compare them.

Thanks for the recommendations. Shoud have said my budget is £600 tops. Found this one, anyone know much about them? Appreciate it's not going to be a Honda. https://www.generators-direct.co.uk/camping-and-caravan/clarke-ig2000-inverter-petrol-generator

Looking for a suitcase style generator, ideally over 2kW, pure-sine wave and as quiet as possible. Any recommendations? Cheers RichM

Although it's not currently shown, I prefer it with the reputation displayed next to posts but then I am slightly biased because my phone screen is relatively large. I appreciate users with smaller screens may place more value on de-cluttering their screens among other things. Horses for courses. The location can be useful in many different situations, e.g. if a member asks where they can find X, others may refer to their location to give the most relevant advice so not sure I like the idea of trading the two. In any case it's not my call to make but the outcome of the poll will be interesting to know. RichM