Major Website and Forum Upgrades !!!

[Paul Mossberg]

Great news???tonight will see big changes to the TDReplica.com
web site and our Forums.

Stephen Houser and I have been working over the past couple
weeks to clean up and improve our site. The vast majority of the credit goes to
Stephen. I???m just the QA guy in this process. Stephen did all the coding.

Here is what???s coming for the web site:

• A new Home Page,
  with pictures, cleaned-up text and new links
• A new Membership page, much easier to read and more to the
  point!
• A new public Photo Gallery page, with a revised layout,
  member cars and links to our Flickr site & the private photo gallery within
  the forum (more on that later!).
• The Store page has been cleaned up, which now contains just the
  club grill badge.
• A new Reference Library page combines the content
  that had been on the Manuals Download, Tech Articles and Links pages. In addition, while
  building the new Reference Library:

• We added two Classic Motor Carriages manuals: the
  Ford Assembly Manual and Ford Wiring Instructions.
• We added the London Roadster Maintenance Manual.
• We corrected many of the external links
• We removed dead links

• Email sent via the webmaster links will now be forwarded to my email.
• The Guest Book and the Classifieds pages are deleted as
  neither had seen any activity in a long time.
• The links to the Download Manuals, Tech Articles and Links Page are deleted
• The Donate and PayPal links are removed.

And here is what is coming within the Forum:

• Member names are now displayed in the Forum Photo Gallery! The
  folders are still sorted by the member registration number. We are working on sorting
  by name. But at least you will now be able to find a member???s pictures!
• Photo links and embedded photos in older posts have been
  restored! If you recall, when the forum software was upgraded, the gallery was
  moved to a new URL. And we lost the connections in older posts. That???s been
  fixed!

Here is a teaser of what you will see after this evening:

All the changes will move to production sometime after 6:30 p.m., November 3, 2015.

If you happen to be on the website or in the forum at the time:

• you may see the changes automatically when you interact with the forum or website.
• you may not see the changes until after you leave the website and return.

We have more changes in the works. But meanwhile, we hope
you enjoy the revamped site and find it easier to navigate!

Again, a huge thank you to Stephen! 

PMOSSBERG2015-11-03 14:11:10

Paul Mossberg
Former Owner of a 1981 Classic Roadsters Ltd. Duchess (VW)
2005 Intermeccanica Roadster

If you own a TDr and are not in the Registry, please go to https://tdreplica.com/forums/topic/mg-td-replica-registry/ and register (you need to copy and paste the link)

[john barry]

🙂

[wingsman]

Wow…that is great news and a lot of work. Thank you so much for all the effort!!!

[edward ericson]

Wow. I’m floored. Thank you both.

[newkitman]

Wow! What a great update. I’ll have to have a beer or two tonight after checking it out. Awesome work the both of you!!

Allen Caron
VW based 53MGTD - "MoneyPenny"
"If one thing matters, everything matters" - from the book The Shack

[Royal]

Paul, you’re easily the best TDr moderator I’ve ever known.  …and a special thanks to Stephen also. 

[Stephen Houser]

Lots of traffic on the way home tonight. I’ll be half-hour to an hour late making the changes. 7 – 7:30 or so. Need to get kids and self fed.

Buxton, Maine
1982 London Roadster - "Kit Kat"

[billnparts]

Thanks for all the extra work. Looking forward to the new look.

Bill Ascheman
Fiberfab Ford
Modified 5.0, 5sp., 4:11
Autocross & Hillclimb
"Drive Happy"

[Stephen Houser]

All uploaded. Poking about to find what may have broken or what I may have missed.

…enjoy!

Buxton, Maine
1982 London Roadster - "Kit Kat"

[Stephen Houser]

Hmm… watch this topic seems to be broken. Was it broken before?

Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error ‘80040e2f’
Cannot insert the value NULL into column ‘Forum_ID’, table ‘devinew_forum.dbo.tblEmailNotify’; column does not allow nulls. INSERT fails.
/forum2/email_notify.asp, line 159

Buxton, Maine
1982 London Roadster - "Kit Kat"

[secretagentcat]

Thanks for the great work boys! Its looking fantastic.

[Vicenç Feliú]

The new page looks great!  Thanks for all the hard work!

Vicenç - (bee sense)
Pembroke Pines, FL
1986 Aston - BCW Model 52 - "Montse II"

(1983 FiberFab MiGi II - "Montse")

[Paul Mossberg]

Thanks for the nice comments!

Ed, it might have been. We’re not sure. But Stephen is looking into it.

To all, if you notice anything amiss, please do let us know!

Paul Mossberg
Former Owner of a 1981 Classic Roadsters Ltd. Duchess (VW)
2005 Intermeccanica Roadster

If you own a TDr and are not in the Registry, please go to https://tdreplica.com/forums/topic/mg-td-replica-registry/ and register (you need to copy and paste the link)

[john barry]

The site looks the same  when I bring it  up  …:o

[Bob]

jebarry wrote:

The site looks the same  when I bring it  up

Could just be the web browser cache not refreshing.

Forum needs link to home page, something like it had before. The little TD picture at top left corner of page did that, now gone. I thought maybe it was moved to the MG emblem picture on bottom, not clickable.

Reason I noticed this is because I use a frequently used link or bookmark directly to this forum.

If going to tdreplica.com first you probably wouldn’t realize since it always shows the left side menu.

[Bob]

Oh, and I was finally going to get that badge from the store link. I know it had Paypal button before, so if that’s not going to be used anymore I will send mail order instead.

Thanks from me, too, for this site and the work done to keep it going.

[Paul Mossberg]

Thanks for all the comments.

The PayPal link has not worked for years. We lost nothing by deleting a broken link.

To buy a badge, send a private message to Billl Collins. All the info is on the store page.

I will check the home page link. I’m on my phone now, so not able to check.

First time in, you will likely have to click refresh to see the new site. Most browsers cache prior content for faster page loads.

Paul Mossberg
Former Owner of a 1981 Classic Roadsters Ltd. Duchess (VW)
2005 Intermeccanica Roadster

If you own a TDr and are not in the Registry, please go to https://tdreplica.com/forums/topic/mg-td-replica-registry/ and register (you need to copy and paste the link)

[scubasteve]

GREAT JOB!
I could spend all day here!
I LOVE YOU GUYS!

Amor Conquista Todo

[john barry]

Paul   Thanks for the refresh hint ..:-)

[Paul Mossberg]

You will need to do the refresh in each browser that you use.

I’m sure most of you stick to one browser. But I have been testing the site with IE 9, IE 10, Firefox and Chrome. After the production move, I had to refresh each broswer to see the new site.

Paul Mossberg
Former Owner of a 1981 Classic Roadsters Ltd. Duchess (VW)
2005 Intermeccanica Roadster

If you own a TDr and are not in the Registry, please go to https://tdreplica.com/forums/topic/mg-td-replica-registry/ and register (you need to copy and paste the link)

[Paul Mossberg]

Re: the link to the Home Page…

If you accessed the forum from the home page, the left side banner should remain visible. The link to Home is the top link in the banner.

I bookmark http://www.tdreplica.com, so the above is what I experience.

LRH, are you bookmarking a different URL? I need to know so that I can recreate your user experience. Thanks!

Paul Mossberg
Former Owner of a 1981 Classic Roadsters Ltd. Duchess (VW)
2005 Intermeccanica Roadster

If you own a TDr and are not in the Registry, please go to https://tdreplica.com/forums/topic/mg-td-replica-registry/ and register (you need to copy and paste the link)

[Bob]

PMOSSBERG wrote:

bookmarking a different URL?

Updated my bookmark and frequently visited in Chrome to the main site or home page.

Luckily, so you can see what I meant, I still have another bookmark link that goes to the forum without the ability to get out to the Home page.

https://tdreplica.com/forum2/forum_topics.asp?FID=2&title=vw-based-kits

Just found out something else about this, aside from losing a way back to Home page. While reading a forum section and if wanting to bookmark it specifically, can’t be done unless right-clicking on the link and using copy link address to use in address bar and bookmark that way.

Otherwise only http://www.tdreplica.com is all that will be shown on the address bar and only bookmark to that every time.

Not sure if that would ever be considered a problem or necessary, but does require some web browsing acrobatics if wanting specific topics bookmarked.

[john barry]

LRH  yep  had the  same issue ..

[Stephen Houser]

“Not sure if that would ever be considered a problem or necessary, but does require some web browsing acrobatics if wanting specific topics bookmarked.”

I share the same problem and agree the URL acrobatics have annoyed me a few times, most specifically on mobile devices. There are other ways to present the sidebar that could solve this but didn’t want to try and solve everything at once or solve things that were not problems. I’m working on small steps to ensure nothing gets broken in the process or is irreversible if it doesn’t work.

I’m happy to hear the first steps are good ones. Similarly happy to continue working with Paul in collecting and sorting out the problems that need to be fixed and what the best next steps are. And most of all, working to get my London Roadster back on the road next summer.

Stephen

Buxton, Maine
1982 London Roadster - "Kit Kat"

[Stephen Houser]

LRH wrote:

PMOSSBERG wrote:

bookmarking a different URL?

Updated my bookmark and frequently visited in Chrome to the main site or home page.

Luckily, so you can see what I meant, I still have another bookmark link that goes to the forum without the ability to get out to the Home page.

https://tdreplica.com/forum2/forum_topics.asp?FID=2&title=vw-based-kits

Just found out something else about this, aside from losing a way back to Home page. While reading a forum section and if wanting to bookmark it specifically, can’t be done unless right-clicking on the link and using copy link address to use in address bar and bookmark that way.

Otherwise only http://www.tdreplica.com is all that will be shown on the address bar and only bookmark to that every time.

Not sure if that would ever be considered a problem or necessary, but does require some web browsing acrobatics if wanting specific topics bookmarked.

Oh, also, that has always been a problem because the site uses HTML frames. The current changes made it no worse or better.

Buxton, Maine
1982 London Roadster - "Kit Kat"

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