Discussion about moving to new forum software

earlycj5 and oldwillys forums have zero ads so it is possible to be ad free for a cost.

Members donate funds for hosting and such as needed, so they've never needed to run ads to generate revenue to cover costs. That's one of the perks of this place. 

Stovebolt chevy's forum

And 

Vintage Ford Forum

both are pretty easy to use

Just my 2 cents

     I joined this site early 2018 after purchasing my current '46 cj2a in December 2017.

I have had a wonderful experience sharing my hobby work on this site and communicating directly with other members w/ pm emails.  I never would have guessed there is so much to learn about differences between years of civilian jeeps, until I began reading forum threads.

    I have become an active member of Old Willys Forum a few years back and there is an active group of members here in northern California, so very fun to be within driving distance to be able to visit in person with nearby members.  let the good times roll !

    I haven't spent any time on the "earlycj5" forum until last week i popped in to see Rodney's photos of his cj5 build, and i cannot See any photos as a non-member.   So, it appears that i must join as a member just to view project-build photos.    I can't say i like that feature of the earlycj5 forum.

     Having worked in an office using cadd software for mapping i began making microsoft "Word" documents where you could attach into the doc the photos of interest as the doc report progressed (like a thread where the member graphically shows his engine re-furb with photos).

I liked being able to re-size the photos to fit the document, (page size 8.5"x 11") for easy printing for those individual's wishing to have a "hands-on" copy to follow along while in their shop.  And the doc can be printed at a larger format  11"x 17" for easier reading for us old-geezers.    ha

I thought it to be a great idea, because i could edit my text at my leisure oustide of the forums, and when done, i post a hot-link for anyone to save to a flash-drive (thumb-drive) for Backup if desired.

The curse of this idea, is now-a-days we must purchase Windows 365 and pay a monthly fee to have the use of micorsoft Word.    :(      _ _ my big idea fizzled away like steam evaporating.

     Because i had been actively doing my own personal 2x-to-4x conversions on Ford Vans and '70's vintage Ford CrewCab's, i wanted to share my fabrication methods with other users wishing to do a conversion.   I recently joined Ford-Trucks to share my current Do-Over on my Chateau wagon.  What I find annoying is the constant ad-in-my-face, which drives me knuts when trying to digest a thread post.   i don't have answers, but as a "for-instance" is the thread for early Ford Crewcab pickups in the year range 73-79.   The Crewcab thread is not broken down into categories, but One Long Thread containing 275-plus pages.   How many hours do i sift through that many pages without doing a 'search' to find some information specific to my current thought or concern.   Seems awkward. 

Now-a-days with the "Cloud" our personal data is stored somewhere else rather than on our device ?

I am not cloud savy, but i asked a repair guy about all the photos on my iphone, and he said they don't reside on my phone anymore, but on the cloud, and my phone just "see's" them.

My method of Resizing photos for attaching to a thread is to navigate to the photo file on my laptop hard-drive.  Then I double-click the desired photo to open it, which will open in a photo viewer.

Next, i right click on the image, which allows me the option of Re-Sizing to a smaller size.  After the smaller image file is created, I then edit the file name adding "Resized" in text so I know that photo is the smaller version to upload into the forum thread.     I added this hoping maybe it may assist someone who has difficulty managing photo size.    just my method.    thanks

I too, am a member of an interest forum for each of my vehicles in my "fleet" and like mentioned earlier some platforms may require photos to be posted elsewhere and we must provide a Link for members to see the photos (Flickr - Smugmug,  Photobucket,  Cloud?).

I am not cloud savy _ _ _ yet, and if there is a way we can benefit somehow by using the Cloud, here in the forums, i am All-eyes.

Before i forget -  forum Postings which have numbers on the individual threads seems handy for referring to specific information with questions to other members.

     my .02

       Len

This is also helpful for the site itself since it reduces the amount of bandwidth and data that the site has to feed to non members. Think about Google Bots and the like for search engines and you can see how that could add up to a lot of additional irrelevant traffic on the site and eating into the bandwidth quota. 

something that would be good would be a means to auto-size the placed image down to around 1-200 KB. this would help on storage AND for us that want to see the pics and are still on antiquated DSL/dial up crappy lines. when people post big images, if i want to see the post, everything goes into slooowww motion.

an iphone will allow you to email images to yourself in prep to put on the CJ2Apage. you pick the file size and if you select Medium it will be just over 100KB and import into the CJ2A perfectly. and i do not suffer the rotated/upside down file syndrome. theCJ2Apage reads my images whether they are vertical or horizontal perfectly and very quickly.

As we all know the current search feature is less than stellar. We each have our own work around on this.

Please look into fixing this issue with the new forum software.

Thanks, Matt W.

I'd avoid Reddit for this type of forum. It doesn't quite fit the bill for searchable content and different sections, threads are archived after 6 months, and most importantly we would never really have ownership or control of the data. 

There's also already an /r/CJ2A but it's pretty sparsely populated.