Part of the reason to change is for business objectives. We feel the new forums can help us reach more people and expand. People who firsts familiarize themselves with current style forums never quite become comfortable with this older style (that many of you, and many of us are very happy with). Beyond helping us attract new users, the new forums can be indexed for search engines. A Google search on constraints will pick up threads on constraints in the new forums, but not the old. Flash videos and many other newer items can be embedded in threads, so there will be some good new items and not simply a bunch of negatives.    There are also a number of administrative reasons for us to do this as well.  For intstanAs some of you have recently commented we have lost to ability to forward emails when a user has replied to your thread.  This too, can now be fixed.

However there is an even larger reason which is  inescapable: the current forums run on some very old technology, and it has nearly hit its limit. Every day we are in danger of bringing the whole system to its knees. There are no updates to this software, and eventually we will have no choice in the matter.  Frankly we are amazed that we’ve been able to push it this far.  Thank you for your understanding in this matter.  If there is anything we can do to help bring you up to speed with the new forums just let us know.

Is the content of the old forums, which is the total repository of "lessons learned" going to be transferred to this venue?  If not, it seems like burning all of the books in a library because you want a new building.  The old forums were searcheable, and a continual source of information on problems that others had met, and conquered with the help of the wise men using TurboCAD.  Steve

Is the content of the old forums, which is the total repository of "lessons learned" going to be transferred to this venue? 

Though it will not be transferred to this venue, it will be preserved. 

Thank you. The preservation is much appreciated.

Alan C.

There needs to be more folders such as before v16 v15 v14 etc etc!!!!!

Tom

It looks good to me.

I thought the old forum was a little long ion the tooth.

There needs to be more folders such as before v16 v15 v14 etc etc!!!!!

Tom

Tom,

I am not sure this is necessary in this style forum.  If version confusion becomes an issue we will address it.

I think it is necessary. You'll never get everybody to post the version they're using when they have a problem. That will just end up with a bunch of unnecessary posts asking "what version are you using" and will just increase the size of the files that TC will have to deal with. A forum is nothing more than a database application with a bunch of forms and tables. It wouldn't be difficult to add one more form to the "problems" section similar to this- http://msgboard.alphasoftware.com/alphaforum/forumdisplay.php?f=4.

Just looking at the few number of problems posted in the last few days, indicates that people are not using the problems forum as they did before.

I would also suggest that in the Post Reply screen, when you hover over a tag that the description not include "javascript etc", just what the button does.

I thought about the same thing.
It might however be possible to make it a prerequisite to pick the software and version number from a pull-down box before creating a thread in the problems subforum though? I don't know how much this forum is customizable without going into too much coding.

Edit: I don't know how smart it is to spread the forums too much out, because the problems that come forwards might be on multiple versions, and therefore the answers aren't getting there very fast. If someone asks in the TC14 forum and someone that mostly hangs in the TC16 forums will possibly not see it immediately. I know I'm at least going to hang mostly on the TC16 forums in the case of creating new subforums. (Not that I'm able to answer that many questions, but you catch my drift.)

If the forum gets very bloated however, it might become an answer to split them up. I don't know how many threads is going to be created per day.

Just thinking out loud here.

Most of the experts, like John and Henry, who responded to questions in the old forum looked at all versions. I just can't figure out how TC made a conscientious decision to not provide a version selection. It's second rate and unnecessary to be so in 2009. Of course, I'm just p............g in the wind.

I only visit 2 forums regularly the TC forum and Delphi forums, Turbocad was always the easiest to use. I typically run into this current style forum while researching products, but after a couple days they seem too hard to follow so I quit going back, I don’t like them. I feel you will have the same results with the newbie’s looking for help with TC. I am fortunate I started with V8 and was able too learn TC through the forum, I now know what a good program Turbocad is. I believe that if it wasn’t for forum would not have kept with it. What I find amazing is the amount of interaction between IMSI and the users lately, I can’t ever remember it ever being this strong and positive. Anyone from IMSI that reads the forum knows that the majority of the contributors did not want it to change. Why didn’t you start a thread asking the question if we were forced to change forum styles?   You could have gotten a lot of feedback and I think you would have had a better forum in the end.

In case you haven’t figured it out I personally don’t care for the new forum.

Paul Strand

Hi Paul

There are many features that a lot of the users of the old forum came to love. My personal favorite was the way in which it indented the replies.

Part of the history of that forum engine was that it was acquired by Macromedia that was acquired by Adobe. Somewhere in the process somebody announced that they will post the source code in the public domain. That never happened and the engine was never updated and we could not run it on newer servers and I could find no alternative with an equivalent feature set.

Again, my apologies, especially to everybody that frequents these forums.

My hand was just forced with the lack of hardware and software support for the machine that ran (runs) the old forum.

(I also assume in the typical Murphy's law fashion, since there is nothing critical running on that machine any more, it will just refuse to die and outlive all the other servers in our building)

Regards
Mauritz

I also assume in the typical Murphy's law fashion, since there is nothing critical running on that machine any more, it will just refuse to die and outlive all the other servers in our building)

Regards
Mauritz

Kind of like my Dell Inspiron laptop (from '98) that hasn't been shutdown in the last 5-6 years. It still comes to life when the mouse is moved. :-))

John R.

...and we could not run it on newer servers and I could find no alternative with an equivalent feature set.

Hello, Mauritz,

Thanks for clarifying.

I actually do like the new look, and don't mind the doodads and gizmos. I think the consensus is the dislike for the Flat/Linear format, as opposed to the Threaded/Indented that we've all gotten used to. Maybe some programmer will eventually upgrade SMF 1 to at least include that option, or maybe something else will come along. (I kind of like the look of ubbcentral).

-edit- Fixed hyperlink. Too dumb to figure it out first time.

Hi Paul

There are many features that a lot of the users of the old forum came to love. My personal favorite was the way in which it indented the replies.

Part of the history of that forum engine was that it was acquired by Macromedia that was acquired by Adobe. Somewhere in the process somebody announced that they will post the source code in the public domain. That never happened and the engine was never updated and we could not run it on newer servers and I could find no alternative with an equivalent feature set.

Again, my apologies, especially to everybody that frequents these forums.

My hand was just forced with the lack of hardware and software support for the machine that ran (runs) the old forum.

(I also assume in the typical Murphy's law fashion, since there is nothing critical running on that machine any more, it will just refuse to die and outlive all the other servers in our building)

Regards
Mauritz

Well, 10½ months later, and this 'new' forum is still a mess. Oh for the old forum which separated the versions of the tc program. It's not just the horrible layout, its also the fact that there are not version categories. Maybe I'm getting old, but it appears to me that so often with computer software, there is more substantial meat in the old stuff than there seems to be in the new whether it be a missing favourite feature, simplicity of use, or just speed through absence of bloat. So much for progress! I welcome evolution, but for efficiency not drag.

Alan-

As a relative newcomer, having the forums by version seems like a very bad idea. A lot of the material in older versions is still applicable as the new versions come out. Therefore for a novice one would have to do the same search in each versions forum, in order to answer a query, wasting a lot of time. I like the new format.

If people listed their version, as is required on some sites, then a person only interested in a particular version could include that in the search -- with the caveat that if the question was answered in an earlier version, they would not get an answer.

Ed