Thanks all, for your thoughtful comments, as each comment has merit. While the current forum has both strengths and weaknesses, there is little we can do to change its inner workings, hosting the with Wild Apricot. Though we've all felt the shortcomings of this choice, it does make for a reasonably painless and non-techinical administrative solution. I understand this was one of the primary goals in the move to Wild Apricot, and that's a good thing. And with Jay's (and others') constant efforts, the site is becoming much better than I would have expected. Kudos to those efforts!
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Dick,
I like your thoughts about a forum void of categories... or with limited categories delineated by their temporal nature. It is frustrating to retrieving search results inundated with "already-sold" items, reminders about past events, etc. But, I caution against removing or restructuring the current forum topics. This will surely lead to dead links, thereby diminishing the effectiveness of current search routines. I'm sure all of us have come across this from time to time...
Adding new topics is a different matter and has no impact. Neither does changing the name of a given forum topic, provided that the id number associated to it remains the same and that the intended meaning remains the same.
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The biggest shortcoming of the current hosting solution is the lack of a good search engine, both for the forum and for the core site. While this was promised long ago (by Wild Apricot), it has not been delivered. It's possible, however, that there may be effective work-arounds for this enhancement that may never come.
Though it's nice to have a reasonably simple editor to format posts, the net result is the most incredibly bloated HTML output that I've ever seen. (This probably doesn't mean much to anyone other than Dick. But, if you right-click in your browser window and search for an option something to the effect of "View page source", then scroll near the bottom, you might see what I mean. Look for long strings of embedded tags like "</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>". There is never a need to have this kind of code!)
This is of the biggest hurdles that one faces in designing a search engine for the forum. I don't know what arrangements were made with Wild Apricot, but I would hope that we have the ability to acquire regular downloads of the forum core database. If so, I would also hope that the core data does not have all of the bloating that appears in the end HTML. Again, if so, then it would be possible to continue to host the forum with Wild Apricot, but create a background search utility that would search against a mirrored dataset, yet link to the live forum. IF this is possible, then it might also be possible to combine the data from the archives that I now host on my own server.
I would be happy to discuss this possibility offline, with anyone who might be interested. My time is a bit more restricted than it was when I first created the archives at
Westsail.info, but with appropriate starting data, the process should require a great deal less effort than initially required to build that site.
It wasn't my intention that the initial suggestion to add ad forum topic would metamorphose in this manor. But, Dick's thoughtful comments seemed to beg for further discussion on the issue. The longer we wait to do something like this, the more difficult the task. I find great benefit from the Forum, though I would like to see it get more input than just from the handful of very loyal contributors we now have. I find their contributions to be incredibly helpful, but it never hurts to hear alternate opinions and experiences. Enhancing the general effectiveness of the forum is the best way I can think of to grow the site usage and thereby increase the value of our beloved vessels. While there is much to be gained by the WOA site in general, ask yourself what percentage of your total time spent on the site is viewing the constantly changing forum content.
Jack