The whole point of a forum is to get information and opinions across with the minimum of fuss. Scoobynet does exactly that without the need for all the other "guff" which is totally useless and becomes boring. No need to change a thing.

Les :)

this is the easiest forum i have used both on the eye and to actually use







LEAVE IT :D

Hi Guys :)

Thank goodness it sounds like we're doing something right! :D

The two main features we want to introduce really soon are the ability to unsubscribe to a thread, and the ability to logout, so your cookie is not left on the pc you're using.

Both of which are functional.

The beauty of scoobynet is that it is the community and the discussion that makes it, not the flashy icons and features.

The thread is a valid one though, as it could have been that people wanted this kind of thing now.

To get an idea of how quickly scoobynet grows...

When I took the reins 3 years ago, scoobynet was doing around 750,000 hits a month and had around 2,500 members.

When we launched the shop late last year, it was doing around 18 million a month, and now around 30.

Almost without fail (excluding xmas time) we sign up more new members than we did the month before (I think it's around 1,000 a month at present) and the hits increase by a greater amount than they increased the month before. In other words, it's exponentially growing all the time.

All the best

Simon

Thats some mighty impressive figures Simon. :)

I must add that the VIP idea is a work of genius - makes keeping up with other members easy.

Graham



[Edited by Beefy - 8/16/2003 11:16:26 AM]

I quite like it simple, stuff like vBulletin is nice with loads of features (used to use it myself for a simple forum) but when the traffic is as high as this site I can understand that it would be an absolute nightmare trying to keep it operational at a reasonable speed using vBull/UBB etc.

My only real gripes are the e-mail notification thing (which is being addressed) and the search function could do with a few more features - notably the ability to narrow the search to individual forums such as styling or interior, and the option of boolean operators (all words/any word/phrase) would make searching much more precise.

top site ,leave it as it is I LOVE IT
once again well done for being this into my life ;) :D

I really like scoobynet, but 3 things i would like to see added if possible are the following (not everybody has to agree with me)

1, 75x75 avatars (justs adds a bit more of a personal icon for people)

2, A built in image uploader (but with an image size limit), rather than having to use other uploaders like fotopics, turbosport etc). This is too much hastle to post pics.

3, more smilies :D

Any of the above items would be a good addition to what is already a great forum.

sly

I like it as it is:cool:

A little avatar would be spangly goodness but it's not the end of the world to not have them, signatures with a billion pics suck though:rolleyes:

I think we should have a Scoobynet national day because actually meeting folk off here has made the experience all the better for m:cool: Maybe we could have a big BBQ and drive round some cones on grass.....;):D:p

WEBMASTER/Shaun

I love scoobynet as it is but at the same time would like the option for signatures and avatars to make it a little bit more personal and everyone knows what you drive and you can associate that person with there cars in there signature, iv had many dealings with people on scoobynet and i cant remember half of them! maybe a personal avatar or signature option would work?

At the end of the day, if this option is going to make scoobynet slower then leave it alone, if simon and shaun did upgrade the site and it was better but slower you would still complain.

I hate signatures and avatars!

PLEASE don't change it Simon, it's one of the main reasons I use scoobynet, it's no b*llsh*t :D

:D

I think it's better to keep all graphics/sigs etc to a min.
Dont need all that extra cr@p, just slows things down

If you remeber we did have 'signatures' when the Plus Membership first was enabled, a few people complained about them IIRC, and a poll was put to the community and it was decided they there were not needed.

I personally like it the way that it is, it is clean, uncluttered without loads of images on every thread.

We know that we still ahve a few things that need sorting, but they are being worked on, it is just a case of time to deal with some of the issues.

Ian

The simple ideas are usually the best, keep scoobynet simple and easy to use, lets face it most of us on here only ask questions anyway,so why have graphics etc to make things harder to understand for the newcomer;)and slower.

I also use some of the other forums that are knocking around and prefer scoobynet for it's shear simplicity to the others that have bells and whistles.

Whats an Avatar anyway?

Les

Even with 75x75 avatars I believe that would use a huge amount of bandwidth. The file size is quite small but with 30m hits a month multiplied by the amount of times you post, you are going to be looking at a huge amount of bandwidth.

I know this is quite a crude way of working it out, but it will help to put it in proportion.

Just a quick question for the Webmaster, out of interest roughly how much bandwidth does the scoobynet logo use each month?

Simon/Shaun,

I agree with CW42 on the fact of being referred back to Page 1 of a multipage thread, when actually the most recent page is the more appropriate. Is this an easy implement???

Phil

NO! NO! NO! to Avatars and signatures.


Totally distract from the content and are invariably nauseatingly insipid and puerile. Yeuch.

This is easily the best resource on the net. Leave it alone please.

S/N is fine as it is.

I quite like the 'simplistic/uncluttered' layout.

I also use other forums (car & non-car) and think a lot of the 'whistles & bells' are a bit pointless, and detract from the content.

That's why I visit S/N, content !

For what it's worth, I think the BBS software isn't bad but I do think it needs some time lavished on it. Hopefully this can happen.

Cheers,
Nick.

Scoobynet is brilliant, the only thing that annoys me is that when I click search, todays date doesn't come in the 'to' box. :D

It's :cool: as is, I hate all those stoopid sigs and avatars.

It's a tool for communication and it works.

I don't like the orange colour by the way ! :D

Please could someone explain Avatar?

Is a small picture of your car or cartoon character or any image etc, which appears under you name on the left hand side every time you post.

[Edited by chrisp - 8/18/2003 1:19:35 PM]

...and is a waste of time and space....and look stupid ;):):D

sigs would be suicide n a forum this size hehe, firstly itd kill the bandwidth of wherever they were posted. Secondly they would slow the board right down. Imagine the 56k boys trying to open a 20 page topic with a thousand replies...... thats 1000 signatures to load. Would kil the bbs for anyone not on adsl.

Small avatars could work but again leave the board open to abuse. What stops people havig porn or unsuitable avatars. The mods cant check 1000 extra each month.

Photo uploader again would drainbandwidth. People wuld post pointless pictures just because they have the facility.

What may be an idea is to build into the member profiles an uploader for maybe 3 small pictures, so people can have their own car up. That way they could link to it on show me your car topics and you ould see what each prson drives. That way yo wouldnt see it very post, but if you view their profiles ud see their car.

Surely these would only slow the BB for each user the first time a thread is opened, as from there on the images will be cached on the local PC?

Mind you, on a personal note, I dislike the way some BBs allow massive signatures that spread across the bottom of each post with no limits on number of images/sizes etc. Make the forums very hard to read.

Couldn't agree more!!! :)

I think Scoobynet is the clearest and easiest to navigate of all the BBs I've been on.....good work guys, keep it up! :D

OK, not read all of the posts on this thread, so sorry if points have been covered.

Scoobynet is, afaik is custom written, it's not one of the normal bbs systems out there. Outdated? well, not really, ok, so it does not have flashy things like signatures and avatars and things like that, BUT, I prefer it like that. I was/am a member of the RSOC bbs and a few other bbs'es and the pictures in signatures and avatars narked me off, as it took soooo long to load the bbs. Anyone who claims they don't use bandwith or put a load on a server should not be in charge of a bbs, They DO, end of story.

For the amount of use (abuse?) that SN gets it stands up pretty darn well IMHO.

It's NOT down to the mods to change things, that's not in thier mandante, some of the mods are not programmers, so they could not do it anyway. It's down Simon and Shaun, and others who help out.

Ok, so a better search would be great, but apart from that I like the way SN is, I think it's great. The ammount of information on here makes it a valuable resource.

If people really don't like it then learn to program, or if you can program, offer your services to Simon to help write the bbs. If I had the knowledge then I would offer my services to give something back to the community that has given me so much.

Put it this way, would you rather have SN the way it is, or not at all? I know which i'd prefer.

Urgently needs the ability to unsubscribe from threads.