Announcement Welcome to the New Motoring Alliance Site

Member -

Welcome to the new site!

First, I want to say thank you for your patience while we migrated from our old platform to the new platform. We had estimated it would take around 20 hours. As it turns out, it took a little longer than that. By 3:30am, we had to pause and get some sleep before we made a mistake. Some areas are still a little rough around the edges, so to speak, but we're mostly functional. Here is where we stand at this time:

1) Forums - these are around 80% done. You will see they were re-organized to leverage the new functionality, specifically “prefix.” This is a really nice feature similar to tagging. Check out the “How do I” thread on this: https://www.motoringalliance.com/threads/filter-using-prefixes.30222/
2) Showcase - this is what will become Garages and our Market/Classifieds section... with a lot more functionality. Once we get the forums fully implemented, I’ll be working on this section which will take a few days.
3) Media - that essentially is galleries and albums. I have some work to do there also.
4) Groups/Clubs - the forums for Clubs are in the forum below. I’m still working on the new Clubs/Groups implementation design. Stay tuned!

I encourage you to continue to check this thread for updates and use the “Site Feedback” forum to identity issues you find, make suggestions and help us make the overall site better and better.

It goes without saying, Steve and MCS02 were critical in helping test, provide feedback and overall just help. Without them, we would not have made it this far.

As always - if you need anything never hesitate to let me know either in the site feedback, PM, email. Whatever you are comfortable with.

Now back to working on continuing to implement the site.

Thanks,

Josh

 

Correct - you also have "Alerts" which you will see in the upper right hand corner next to the "flag" or next to the "Envelope"

 

Understood - there was a lot of change. I’m going to try and pull together a quick video which walks everyone through it. Steve, MCS02 and I didn’t initially plan on this much. But as we used prefix more and more it kind of happened over time. Essentially we tried to pull together general discussions etc (I.e. non technical) and technical into a seperate. By using the little colored “prefix” things/menu’s at the top you can quickly filter. This will get better over time. For the initial cutover they had to be kind of Generic.. as we move forward we can refine. That said, if you want to see anything on the forum that is has a prefix you can do that.

Let me know if you have any questions -

 

@old81 Thanks for the patience - I tend to start with... oh that won’t be that hard. Then somewhere along the way I go.. hmmm this is more than I thought.

 

FYI - working on the "Racing" section of the forum right now. Just letting you know if you see a few things move around.

 

Thanks!! There is lots more to come. Once I finish with the core Forum... I will be working on the garages and classifieds. Both will have the ability to be searched and “refined” by checking a box to filter into what you want to see..

 

If you have questions - let me know. Make sure you take a look at the “How Do I” section.

 

All -

What are the next things I will be working on:

• Continued configuration and bug fixes and “how do I” articles. Keep the feedback coming!
• Articles & Home Page - going to do some preliminary work here. By that I mean formatting, layout and configuration. (Phase 1 - next few days will be pretty basic).
• Garages & Market -(Currently called showcase). This is where most of my time will be spent. Like the forums it will be a phased process. However here are the highlights:
  • Classifieds - So the one downside of this platform is classifieds. By that I mean I really wanted something “easy” that worked well as a market place. Searchable, Filterable, etc. There are no good plugins for this. So I designed a way to use showcase to do this. I did this for two reasons:
  1. I can make the presentation of what you are trying to sell much better (I think.. you tell me when done)
  2. It will be searchable and can have on screen “refinement”
  3. I can do this native without additional add-on’s etc.
  4. Ultimately the next version of Xenforo (the platform this site runs on) has a much better framework for things like classifieds. It was just released so I went with the “stable” platform. Once its stabilized and the few add on’s/plugins are ported and stable we will be able to upgrade quickly.

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  • Garages - going to normalize as much of the vehicle information like “models.” This will allow you to go in and refine what you want to see very quickly. Example, R53/Cooper/S. It will work like “amazon” or “eBay” with check boxes. Some of this is “automated”.. much will be manual which I’m still trying to figure out a way not to have to do it that way. It will be Phased and take time..
• Library - Short answer is that was a seperate plugin on vb and its a custom import script that “mostly” worked on different test we ran. By that I mean it moved over the data but there was still some limited requirements for the old system and photo location. Ideally I would be able to import this directly in so its 100% native. This will help with upgrades etc going forward or I will do it manually.

Ultimately - we’ve laid the foundation... we got the engine running. Now its doing the exterior, aero, tuning etc.

Keep the feedback coming, make suggestions. Its your site.

Josh