The FUTURE of CCE « CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum

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The FUTURE of CCE

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Started 4 years ago by chdot
Latest reply from gembo
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chdot
Admin

A few days ago someone posted a suggestion -

“might it make sense to change the forum software to something a bit more featureful (while keeping the current forum as a read-only archive)? “

http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=1&page=2#post-310271

Over the past nearly 10 years(!)* there have been comments (even complaints!) about various aspects of CCE.

Before setting CCE up I probably (it’s a long time ago) thought mostly about why and how.

The why was because having started a news site three years earlier ( https://cyclingedinburgh.wordpress.com/2006/07/29/flying-scotsman-film-controversy-continues-2 ) I wanted something that could involve other people more than just commenting on individual stories (which few people do).

Spokes had a forum on its web site which was virtually unused (I did the original Spokes web site. I gave it up due to lack of time. The next version used CMS software that was not an improvement - in my opinion...)

Cycling Scotland also had had a forum but gave it up.

I have no idea why I thought CCE would ‘work’!

The “how” was relatively straightforward.

I was a member of a couple of forums (not bike related) so was aware of the basics and knew I wanted something a bit more than ‘basic’.

I was familiar with WordPress. In the early days it was a great improvement on what already existed (notably Blogger). Now it has ‘more functionality’ so sometimes tedious to work out where things have moved to on the evolving dashboard!

If BBPress had been a WordPress plug-in at the time I might have added it to the existing site, in which case it would probably have been very different and not nearly as good/useful/GREAT.

Obviously I didn’t know that WP was about abandon bbP as a stand-alone option.

Without ChrisFl we wouldn’t be here today - he makes the existing setup stay online 99.99999% of the time.

So, there are two considerations -

‘Future-proof’ software (below)

‘Start again’ possibilities (below below)

I have made no decisions about how much I might want to be involved in future but as I ‘know’ WP/bbP I’m starting here.

(I don’t do FB so I genuinely have no clear idea of the subtlety/benefits of forum v social network in the future of CCE. I suspect the latter would need a lot more moderating - which I have no interest in.)

“

As mentioned, bbPress is a forum software, while BuddyPress is a social networking plugin.
1. Forums provide you with a platform to receive comments, set up topics for discussion. If this sounds like something you need, bbPress is the plugin for you.
2. However, if your requirement, is to have a platform, where users can create groups, exchange messages, then BuddyPress is the plugin you need. BuddyPress provides advanced communication tools for user groups.
“

https://wisdmlabs.com/blog/beginners-guide-bbpress-vs-buddypress-basics/

I have still not seen any forum/software that is notably ‘better’ - happy to look at any examples.

SO

IF CCE is to reboot, POSSIBLY by archiving the existing and starting afresh -

What to keep/change/add?

As is common with forums, CCE is currently post-plateau.

I have no idea whether a new look/focus would add more users and/or alienate current (especially long term) members.

CCE is genuinely unique. (Someone could get a nice PhD out of it.) However much it has been guided by me along the way, the key thing is the contributors whether they have been here 9 years or 9 minutes and post everyday or every year.

Best not to alienate the hivemind soul or new direction for changing times??

Discuss.

* A lot of CCEers have children under 10.

Perhaps Cycling and Children should have been an original category.

Posted 4 years ago #
chdot
Admin

Option 3

Pull the plug at 10th Birthday Party.

Posted 4 years ago #
stiltskin
Member

If it works (& it does).....

Posted 4 years ago #
Morningsider
Member

I have no idea what most of this means, but I think any change should:

1. keep CCE as a standalone forum.
2. mean as little ongoing work for you and Chrisfl as possible.
3. keep the general stripped back look and feel of the forum.
4. keep the old site as an archive - for at least a couple of years, until the relevance of the content declines to effectively nil.

I'm happy to chip in to any review/update/replacement in any way, although lots of others have far more relevant IT experience than me.

Also, CCE 10th birthday in three months!

Posted 4 years ago #
Arellcat
Moderator

I still love the simplicity of CCE. Like Greenroofer's bike that broke its hub gear, sometimes you don't know how good you have it until it's gone (or changed).

Useful stuff mentioned here:

http://citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=18514

Posted 4 years ago #
I were right about that saddle
Member

I'd need to think about this a great deal but in the meantime I echo @Morningsider and @Arellcat.

The things I love about CCE are many. Some of them are almost mystical and I suspect none of us understand them fully, but high on the list are;

1) It not being Facebook, Twitter or Google
2) It being stripped and simple. The retro-austerity is a big deal. No recommends, no emojis, no logging in with Facebook.

All hail CCE and all hail those who make it work.

Posted 4 years ago #
EdinburghCycleCam
Member

As someone who deleted their Facebook account a couple of months ago, I'd obviously prefer no Facebook / Twitter / other social media requirement for logging in.

Aside from that, I'm happy so long as it works - I've only been here for a year or so, and haven't had any issues I can think of (Although being able to embed images wider than the forum width would be nice).

Posted 4 years ago #
chdot
Admin

Apparently -

CityCyclingEdinburgh.info is a forum for people cycling in Edinburgh, surprisingly enough. Three things amaze me about it.

It’s consistently polite. There are heated discussions, certainly, but it’s the friendliest forum I know by a long stretch, and the amount of personal attacks in the five years I’ve been reading I could probably count on one hand. That’s amazing for an internet forum.

Its members have just the right breadth of weird knowledge to make a forum interesting and pleasingly unpredictable. The thread on the Scottish independence referendum was the best online debate on the subject that I found, there’s always a fun array of mechanical bodges circulating onto the front page, and there was even a healthy thread on chimneys and their component bricks a while back.

And finally, if you come across a “grass-roots” cycle event or campaign in Scotland, chances are it started on CCE. The amount of scheming, cunning plans, and general machination is remarkable. When the bike revolution comes, it will be controlled from the shadows by someone in CCE.

“

Written by someone involved with CCG (no longer even archived it seems).

https://www.darkerside.org/2017/06/visited-citycyclingglasgow-recently/

He used/liked http://nodeBB.org

Posted 4 years ago #
crowriver
Member

I suspect that CCE is a "generational thing" like most of the internet. Remember USENET newsgroups? A previous, pre-web generation. Existing users of CCE appear to be happy to keep it more or less as is. There will be some new users popping up from time to time, but that will diminish over the coming years.

The younger cycling fanatics will be conversing somewhere else: on a network they can easily connect to via their smartphones, most likely on social media of some sort.

If CCE needs to migrate to another platform due to security worries, or to make it easier/less time consuming to administer, by all means do it. Otherwise it might be better just leaving it until it can no longer sustain itself? Entropy will do the rest...

Posted 4 years ago #
paulmilne
Member

My only complaint is the broken links to some of the cycling websites in the right hand sidebar. Other than that, this does what it does very well indeed.

Posted 4 years ago #
LivM
Member

I think CCE is super but have the following desires for CCE 2.0:
> Mobile device friendly
> Able to add images directly without them being hosted elsewhere
> Lose the "sections" from its current place above the Topics - I rarely, if ever, use them for browsing and all that they mean is that I have to scroll past them to get to what I really want to see.
> Some way of seeing which are New comments or Topics since my last visit.

I think it's great having the old content - so many times you see a thread pop up that is many years old but someone has found it relevant (look at the pace of change of infrastructure construction...!)

Posted 4 years ago #
amir
Member

It would be nice to see evolution rather than revolution but I am not technically aware enough to know how possible this is.
I agree with @morningsider except on his point 4. I think the searchable/referrable access to historical discussions is valuable and is worth keeping.

Posted 4 years ago #
Baldcyclist
Member

I suspect buddypress would begin to add complexity that the current site deosn't have, that said it depends who CCE.2 is for?

BBPress would maybe offer, an experience more akin to that which 'we' are used to.

Both would address security, and offer routes to potentially manage gdpr/accessibility/other concerns more easily.

I've mentioned before, I have some experience in this space and happy help with any local mock-up's/theme stuff, and build, that sort of thing (though I'm not looking for more sites to admin ;) ).

Drupal is another popular cms which offers forum functionality, and may/or not be available via your hosting provider. Wordpress still more popaular, and probably easier to get on with.

The issue with images is space - which can be expensive. Though it would be good to more easily add images.

Lastly if CCE were to disapear how would I know which which bikes to buy. ;)

Posted 4 years ago #
chdot
Admin

For anyone considering the technical side, (random web finds.) -

“

Why I chose to use nodeBB over phpBB, Discourse, MyBB and other forums.

“

“

Migrating from WordPress/BBPress

“

Posted 4 years ago #
chdot
Admin

“The issue with images is space - which can be expensive. Though it would be good to more easily add images.”

Yes.

“Although being able to embed images wider than the forum width would be nice”

Do you mean sized to fit?

There was an auto resize plugin but it stopped working.

There was a simple bit of code that could be put in the img tags that worked, but I’ve forgotten where I found, and posted, it.

There are some photo posting ‘tutorials’ in old threads.

Anyone want to do an update and then get a link in top or side bar?

Posted 4 years ago #
Rosie
Member

CCE Forum is a great resource for campaigning. Something will come up about infra/an area of Edinburgh, and a search will find useful info.

The format does look old fashioned for those used even to blogs, let alone the Snapchat generation, however it does work. It’s the contributors who make it, and there are some very good ones here. I do like the historical threads, though it can be a little depressing seeing how some piece of infra was a hot topic 5 years ago and is still in a sorry state.

Others will have technical ideas of improving the form without hurting the content.

I run Spokes’s Facebook page. It’s hard work finding something you posted on 6 months ago. There may be search facilities I don’t know about, but Facebook is for the ephemeral, the digital equivalent of today’s news, tomorrow’s chip wrapper.

I could wish for better searching, and also being able to add images and videos. I’ve been shown how to a couple of times, but I can’t get it to work.

Keeping talk civil is an important achievement, given the way political discourse is polarising and tribalising generally.

Posted 4 years ago #
Greenroofer
Member

I'm in the camp of 'if it ain't broke'... (provided of course that that's not too much work for the people who keep the site running).

I like the pared-back style and the limited options for formatting and content. It's the contributors who make CCE what it is, and with the current format those contributions shine through without the distraction of animated emojis and silly avatars.

Posted 4 years ago #
gembo
Member

We are a self defining liberal urbanite erudite collective. Our only real miss step was when we had a mountain bike forum reach out and we took the mickey out of their 109 rules which were apparently a standard set of rules they had borrowed. We critiqued the grammar of these rules and their intricacy. I still feel bad about that.

I access using an IPad. I tend to just use text. I post a lot so would miss the chat if there was a facebook type reboot.

Looking forward to the internicine swift and angular debate around organising the pub for the 10th birthday.

I think the forum is strong on theology and geometry

Posted 4 years ago #
chdot
Admin

This page is 6 years old, but clicking through to the ones that still exist reminds me why I didn’t go with ‘normal’ forum styles 9 years ago.

https://www.londoncyclist.co.uk/10-best-cycling-forums

Posted 4 years ago #
chdot
Admin

This looks better than most and has more members than CCE -

https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php

Posted 4 years ago #
crowriver
Member

@chdot, I have to confess I am also a member of YACF. Originally I understand it was ACF, but then a schism appeared and YACF was born. ACF is no more.

Details on the forum software they use: https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?action=help

It's a great forum, but relatively few folk from north of the border regularly posting there. Most users from the south of England. Very good for discussion and news on stuff like audax or touring. Much larger user base, so not always as polite as CCE.

What is nice about CCE is the local aspect. Edinburgh cyclists need it, or more accurately a subset of Edinburgh cyclists, many approaching or indeed (ahem) inhabiting middle age. Useful for local news, views, and a bit of campaigning. Sometimes a good thread about stuff happening elsewhere in Scotia or further afield.

Posted 4 years ago #
Arellcat
Moderator

CCE is very much more than the sum of its parts.

I remember when 'we' took over the Cycling Scotland forum (the original light blue one) and used it to advertise and organise weekend rides and discuss hyperlocal stuff. Then they took it away and eventually replaced it with that white and yellow one that was no good at all. No-one cried when they took that one away.

I was a member the Cycling Plus forum. When BikeRadar took over, a lot of people left to form ACF. And as crowriver said, ACF eventually imploded (owing to a benevolent dictatorship that went sour) and yACF was formed with a co-operative of admins. The search function is still broken, though. yACF for a long time had a particular vibe that I didn't like, though it stemmed from the personalities of its founders and prominent members.

What CCE has to its credit is a manner of actively discussing politics and politicking, but without too many toys being thrown out of the pram. At least, that's what I've seen. Other places (e.g. Bentrider, of which I am, unsurprisingly perhaps, a longtime member) explicity forbids any discussion of politics: I've seen a lot of good contributors permanently banned for it, although a shoot-from-the-hip attitude does seem to be more common over there. "Oh yeah?" "Yeah!" "Say that to my face, I dare ya!"

If the forum software were to change, vBulletin might be attractive. yACF uses SMF and has a grey colour scheme like us, but otherwise has its own look and feel. But CCE's main page, with a list of two or three dozen latest topics, is incredibly useful to me: it's one click. I don't have to type passwords* to see what's been goin' down recently.

* I delete cookies often so websites never keep me signed in.

Posted 4 years ago #
LaidBack
Member

Currently works for me but like all media may need update.

I think the CCE forum fills a huge gap in Scotland. I know @darkerside started a Glasgow site and no doubt others have appeared in other places.
Of course it's not just about cycling in the city - otherwise we would have missed out in @iwrats bike packing and the amazing Audax events.
It has a great community feel with no big brands taking over (well apart from Aldi & Lidl).
Routes are talked about by people that know them well - rather than infrequent visitors 'up for a day or two'.
Of course people from other places are welcome and it could easily become the Caledonian Cycling Forum (or name to be voted on!)
Then it would attract more members from rural Scotland?

Posted 4 years ago #
chdot
Admin

“I remember when 'we' took over the Cycling Scotland forum”

Don’t really that!

Tell me more...

Posted 4 years ago #
chdot
Admin

“Of course people from other places are welcome and it could easily become the Caledonian Cycling Forum (or name to be voted on!)
Then it would attract more members from rural Scotland?”

Steady...

Posted 4 years ago #
chdot
Admin

This sorta?

https://forums.appleinsider.com/categories/general-discussion

Posted 4 years ago #
chdot
Admin

[+] Embed the video | Video Download Get the Flash Video

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Posted 4 years ago #
toomanybikes
Member

The only issues I have with the current format of the forum are that the search function doesn't seem to work for me at all, and often things I'm looking for could be in multiple categories, making the categories not very useful.

Posted 4 years ago #
Roibeard
Member

If there is a change, I think there are a few of us who would appreciate continued support for RSS consumption...

Robert

Posted 4 years ago #
chdot
Admin

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk

Posted 4 years ago #

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