Shopbot Bulletin Board (Note to admins)

[myxpykalix]

This thread has been running about a month....I've seen nothing yet. I would be willing to put the time and effort into setting up something off this forum for a better system of show and tell, even if its temporary, if anyone is interested in posting pictures and descriptions let me know. I'm not interested in competing with this forum just an additional place to show and tell and vent if you want to.

[hines]

Would you use vBulletin, IPB, or ?. Might be good to try something out. If it were a success then the admins would be able to see the results without having to risk changing their current setup. I say work with Erik and Keith. Their sites seem to be setup pretty well. I'll help out in any way I can.

[dray]

Someone just set one up and migrate files! I have been looking off and on all day long and nearly 1/3 of the threads are asking authors for files, besides Ive had threads deleted etc.

Yahoo boards are even pretty good w alot of space, Im going to set one up there if no one jumps on it.

The other thing is.... Who still uses dial up? Its kind of a waste of time when you can 100x the transfer speed for another few bucks a month.

[danhamm]

Shopbots are sold all around the world..and there are a lot of places that don't have access to anything but dialup..

[dray]

I traveled to 12 different countries in the last 2 years and there was cable or dsl in all of the hotels... Ill ask on main board who has or doesnt have dsl, but this board could reallly be an easy way to get help and files.

All the other boards I use, like cnczone and a bunch of others use an easier interface, easier to upload docs, photos, files.

The more user friendly the less likely to scare off people that may have some huge insight on something we may want to learn.

I know its an ordeal to move forum but for me when i read a new post, its really advantages to see a pic of what they are talking about.

Ill bet that less than 3% of the users are on dialup.

As with opensource software the easier it is to modify or to get info on the more popular the product is.

There are thousands of shopbots out there and maybe 50 pics of theings ppl created, its a shame to waste the collective talent here because of ppl's frustrations about posting pics, files etc..

Anyways thats my 2 cents on it

[myxpykalix]

As I said before, some type of simple survey to determine the average user connection type, whether they would upload more pictures, and other relevent questions might help determine what type of software to use, but they have to make the effort to ask the questions...

[Brady Watson]

Migration to a new message board would be a BIG undertaking, and one has to ask, is it REALLY necessary? Sure, I would love the board to be updated to the latest and greatest interface, but it seems to be working just fine for most things that you need to get across. I would guess that with all of the production changes and tooling up that SB has to do for the new tool that it would be a wild diversion to update the board rather than spending time doing what needs to be done for rolling out the new PRS tools.

The dial-up thing...a hotel in a metro area is one thing. They are connected to the grid and have access to the broadband networks. NOT EVERYBODY DOES! My friend lives just outside of New Orleans and can/could only get dial-up at his house BEFORE AND AFTER Katrina. There are many places that can only get dial-up in the US & Canada, not to mention other places around the world.

Attachments and pictures are limited to 50k & 640X480. There are any number of programs out there that you can use to reduce the size of a picture without losing much detail in the photo. There is a FREE program that I use call PIXresizer that you can download externally here Pull in your picture, resize and post it on the board. You can still get your idea across without it requiring a ton of bandwidth. This picture was 1024X768 and 236k. It shows enough detail to get an idea across:


18630.jpg

If you have pictures, videos and other files that HAVE to be larger than the limit, or you are just too lazy to resize them, you would do best to host them on your own server or an external blog, Flickr or a whole array of other places, as many users on this board already do without complaint. Then you can direct others to your site with a link and show them whatever it is you couldn't do here. Just about every ISP gives you free webspace to host a site, pictures or files.

I think it's nice that ShopBot hosts this board on their dime...notice there are no advertising banners and other distractions plastered all over the board. This board is simple and clean...and it's got more useful information on it (in my opinion) on CNC Routing (and many other topics) than any other board on the net. I'm sure, as with any software out there, that the board will eventually be upgraded to something else...In the meantime, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

Just my $.02
-B

[paco]

Isn't Quarter Dollar = $0.25

[richards]

Brady,
Your link took me to Crustcrawler, where I couldn't find the PIXresizer. However, I did find it at Bluefive.

[Brady Watson]

Thanks Mike...I must have left that on the clipboard from last night...LOL!

-B