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Lets be honest about this site


Miki
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Yea, a cunning plan, so cunning that only the most cunning of cunning will know what the plan is. I am told that it is known only as cunning plan B in inner circles and in those dark clubs, where the trousers appear shorter than they really are.

Yes do as Il says and try the cunning contingency plan, we are strong we can handle it...........

 

 

 

 

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I1, Both yabb and phbb were discussed by the mods, James and the IT dept several months ago (and again more recently) however has already been explained, Archant are keen to keep all their web presence on the same system which it seems is compatible with neither yabb or phbb...........do you know of other forum software that uses asp.net

( I am not the least bit technical so you will have to forgive glaring errors here, that is what I have understood)

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Both yabb and phbb were discussed by the......................

Yes apparently we did look at them but decided they were too expensive and went for Drogba and Robben instead and as it turned out, a very wise decision indeed 

You've got to laugh or you would cry

 

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Most companies developing things like forum software stay well clear of asp.Net. That is not to say that there may not be others (I don’t know of any), but there are a lot of companies out there. Its just that the “Microsoft route” is not popular for such things

I personally think yaBB not great as, whilst it works fine, it has the “hobbyist” look and feel to it and almost certainly would not present the image LF are seeking. Which raises an interesting point; what sort of image does the current forum software present for LF. phpBB is basically “the industry standard”. asp.Net does not really feature anywhere.

I keep posting to this thread and I’m not trying to cause problems – rather to help by trying to get the IT group behind it all do just do something. However, the situation this forum is now in a “classic failure of an IT Group”. It is causing the demise of the forum yet IT will do nothing. They have set a global “strategy” that is causing users problems as well as impacting LF’s reputation. What may damage LF’s reputation more is not the failure of the system but the fact that nobody is “big enough” to resolve the situation. I am aware that there is a planned hardware upgrade which is expected to address the performance issues. However, there will still be the bugs and feature constraints following the hardware upgrade. Others have explained that LF’s “hands are tied”.

There is no point in having a web presence (in-house or external) if nobody uses it.

LF (or rather its publishers) are a company and at the end-of-the-day, commercial interests must take priority over IT “strategy”. If a company cannot recognise that then it has grater problems that a forum that does not work.
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It's probably worth referring you back to this topic: http://www.livingfrance.com/instantforum/shwmessage.aspx?forumid=29&messageid=46914#bm50401 and in particular the explanation from Tim Stephenson (Archant IS). At the time it was thought he might be trying to blind users with science - those who know forums, Microsoft, ASP.NET etc might like to read it again and comment. As Tim suggests, please look at some of the other Archant sites which are on the new servers, which we are told will solve the speed problems. In particular try http://new.edp24.co.uk/Forums/ which uses this same forum software on those new servers - I can't personally see any really significant improvement over what we have, but that may be down to my dialup connection. If you want a further comparison, another Archant magazine with a forum using this software is http://www.pilotweb.co.uk/Forums/ which seems rather slow to me, and it has a mere fraction of the users we get.

As part of the moderator team I have looked at other ASP.NET (rather than Perl etc) discussion forums. There seems to be very few available, I have found a couple which are far superior in performance but lacking in features and appearance. This is about the only 'professional' option I have found. Far from being free, each end user licence costs US$119 ($299 for the Developer version), plus another $119 for a year's support. But then Archant probably has a special deal covering several licences. The version of the forum on the software supplier's own website (http://support.instantasp.co.uk/) does seem to run considerably faster than Living France's forum.

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Thanks

Nelson - I was hoping other users, icluding those with boadband connections, might try those other sites which use the same forum software but are on different servers, because the publishers' IT people have said that the speed problem is due to the server rather than the software (there are other issues too, as you will see from the link to the other topic in this forum). On a dialup connection they seem better, but not a great deal better, so I couldn't really make a comparison.

Living France will, apparently, be able to move to the faster servers when some incompatibility on other parts of the magazine's website is resolved.

I agree with Miki that this site isn't too bad today, though I have had several 'server error' messages. I thought it was very slow yesterday though.

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I wonder if the flashing advert about holiday lettings has any effect on the speed of the forum? Why is it there? Another forum I use has annoying flashing adverts and once you get rid of them it speeds up. But you can't get rid of this one. Pat.
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"for some time I was seeing a third page with no messages on it."

This usually happens when a post is deleted that was on that page and the forum software doesn't remove that page.

On the subject of forum software, when part of this site is compatible, IT will move the whole site over to new servers. The problem at the moment is to do with the connection to the server and the speed should be on par with the other websites mentioned when the change takes place. Hopefully it won't be the connections to the servers that is the weak link when this happens.

Some of the other problems with the software should be resolved with the update to 3.5, but there is no date as yet for the release.

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Yep,

I agree the site is far too slow which means I post less and I look less as I simply do not have the time as the pages take so long to load and then there is always the possibility of error messages.  LF have been sold a piece of yidd!

I'm sure James has tried his best, all we can do is tell the powers which be that they need to improve the site as there are areas which the software can be improved.  Someone must have signed a contract of delivery somewhere?! Someone needs to be taken to the pub and plied with a few vinos and promised another contract........ capiche!

Deby

 

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sold a bit of yidd..........the software can be improved.  Someone must have signed a contract of delivery somewhere?! Someone needs to be taken to the pub and plied with a few vinos and promised another contract........ capiche!

Blige me Duchess, bit of West Londonese coming out there

Come on James, give them hell,  you have some of the best "brains" in France on this site and the worst piece of forum machinery. You wouldn't expect Chelsea to run out in dodgy clobber, come on give us the dogs wotsits, so we can "forum" properly. If not, well The Duchess has contacts in high places, if you get my drift..............

 

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Lets be honest about this site O.k. lets.....

   It`s crap fed up of being timed out waiting for your post to go up double postings ect. ect ,,,,,,

  But I love it

   I have been helped encouraged, laughed at, taken the micky out of a few, and still helped even more, made friends through it,could go on and on.

              So be French take the rough with the smooth lay back wait and enjoy it like I do. Its life in the slow lane........yes!!

                          Dave Olives in bed

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Agree in principle Dave but alternatively, one could say life's too short to hang around waiting for the forum to load up and there's a whole big France out there, including munching in Cancale and I know what I would rather be doing when things are slow 

 

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"It`s crap fed up of being timed out waiting for your post to go up double postings ect. ect ,,,,,,   But I love it "

Thanks for that. The moderators are very well aware of the difficulties, which we cannot do anything about, so it's probably even more frustrating for us. But we don't know of any other place on the internet that has so much good information on living in, and moving to, France, so that makes it well worth the struggle.

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It is a fact that this site is a disaster due to poorly performing forum software. There are thus far fewer posts and it has generally become a lot less interesting. In the software industry there is an expression “fit for purpose”.

I cannot understand why, after so much feedback from their users, the organisers have not put into place their contingency plan. Professional IT people always have such a plan when implementing something (such as a change to a new forum software). It would be unbelievably amateur for there not to have been one.

There are other French interest forum’s “out there”. They work, have friendly people, interesting facts and discussion and I now spend time there rather than here.

I’m afraid, apart from the fact that this forum has become a pain, frustrating, etc. I find LF’s attitude in doing nothing about it very disappointing. I know they have plans for the future, but this will not address poor functionality and software bugs. Most companies care about their users.

In fact I only came back now because I got an e-mail about new posts. Otherwise I don’t bother anymore. from glancing at the list or "Members active in the last ..." and the number of posts I believe I'm far from the only one to go elsewhere.
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I'm new here. Just found it and just registered. I was surprised that it was "a bit" slow (both in looking at threads and in user activity). I noticed there was a list of people who were logged-on and it was not many so I was not using it at a busy time (at least I hope not). This topic is quite "informative" and seems to show where the problems are.

I just seem to spend my time waiting. The comments on functionality here are very true. In my short time here I've noticed that where you are answering something somebody else has asked, you can't quote it decently like you can on other forums. You have to cut/paste from the other post (and no text formatting options to highlight it). We live in 2004 and technology can do this (plus all the other things).

Could have been an interesting forum but I have to say "I can't be bothered" as my first efforts here have been just too much hard work.

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Well if further proof were needed then Floyd has provided another voice of the newcomer, who has visited and simply walked away due to the slowness of the forum. We most certainly have lost some good names and if newcomers are walking away as well, then....................

Please don't keep saying "tomorrow", having lived years ago in Spain and now for many years in France. To Mañana & Demain one can probably now add Tomorrow to those other infamous "mots" 

Of course it will be a good forum again, swift and great to use............. tomorrow !

 

 

 

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I would suggest, that if anybody felt strongly enough, they could try contacting somebody high up in the Archant organisation - the main Archant web site gives these names:

Archant Life
Managing Director

Johnny Hustler

Archant

 

IS DirectorSusan Bastin

Might be worth letting them know that the corporate sofware policy is in effect a bad PR move?

I'm not passing the buck, just think that comments to the top from readers/site users might carry a bit of weight.

 

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Thanks Bill,

Emails sent off and it will greet them both on their screens first thing Monday.

I would hope that most regular users will also send off an e-mail to the 2 addresses you offered us. Like so many things, if no one complains, the hierarchy will just say all is OK and it will stay like this until one by one,  experienced members and many newcomers will slowly vote with their fingers and stop posting.

I am sure none of us on here, blame any of the Mods or James, for the awful changeover, in fact I suspect many of us feel quite sorry for you all. You are the front line and so.....................get it sorted !

 

 

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After 5 pages and 46 posts (mainly) commenting on or answering poor performance poor functionality bugs, etc. with this forum system, I do not intend to e-mail the Managing Director of Archant.

Clearly their IT capabilities speak for themselves. Their attitude to the users speaks for itself. Their relationship with their software suppliers speaks for itself. Their IT evaluation and planning speaks for itself.

I now believe that the IT group had no contingency plan (as this would have been “activated” some time ago given the ongoing issues). Implementing such a change without a contingency plan is un-believably amateur (the sort of thing that gets IT a bad name).

Unfortunately this is not unique in the history of IT failures, though most companies would have acted by now without having to get the Managing Director of the publishing company involved.
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It seems that Miki's campaign has paid off and the promised move to the faster servers has happened ahead of schedule.

Thanks are due to James and the rest of the IT people at Archant, and to the directors for listening to us and taking action.

Sorry if the move means users have to re-enter login information, but I think it was worth it to get an end to the time-out errors.

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[quote]It seems that Miki's campaign has paid off and the promised move to the faster servers has happened ahead of schedule. Thanks are due to James and the rest of the IT people at Archant, and to the di...[/quote]

All

Further to these messages, I can confirm that the LVF Forums have now been moved to Archant's new hosting platform.

This was actually scheduled to happen towards the end of this week, but as another project has been completed ahead of schedule we have been able to bring this forward to today.

Due to some other issues, the forums still are not running at peak performance. I am currently carrying out some database optimisation work which should help resolve this.

Please let me know if you experience any further performance issues with this forum.

Regards

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