You guys might want to think about sending an email notification to all your members that you are back up and running and to not use old bookmarks to this site.... I have no idea how long you have been back now but for about the last 2 weeks (or seems that long at least, maybe it was just one week you were down?), clicking on my old book mark lead to a page that said you guys were down, then a few days later the page came up incomplete and then today "no longer supported format call the administrator"... Finally I typed in trainboard.com and the nice new website is up and running and it looks great! But I would find it hard to believe that I'm the only one that got stumped by thinking you guys were still down because I got fooled by where my old bookmark took me... Thanks and I'm glad your back! -Jon Pope
Jon- That is and has been in process of being worked on... We don't go onto other groups and promote ourselves, so that avenue is out. Right now it is word of mouth and Google. Our problem is with 30,000+ actively registered members, how to do it and not get nailed by spam filters. A mailing that size causes big headaches. I don't know if the software would allow breaking it down into smaller batches. Even if possible, that could really be quite a chore.
Initially there was a redirect from grapevine to highball. I know...that's how I got here. Last night I was working with the other computer, which had not logged into TB in the new format yet, and got the same dead-end, site gone, contact admin type of message. I would have thought you'd get a six month redirect. I don't think it's going to other forums to promote yourself...it's e-mail alerts to those in your old grapevine database. Dave
As has been noted several times previously, many things are ongoing. I just checked. The redirect is still there, as it has been since the change. Tested it and working just fine. As to going to other forums, that is a separate observation from emailing. The latter as I noted is in process. Going to other forums to announce "our new site" is a suggestion a few folks have made. It is considered to be rude, bad 'Netiquette. We don't allow it here, and don't do it to others.
I am not sure what you are seeing, but when I tried it, no way. Yesterday on the 64-bit machine, I got the error mentioned by the thread originator. Just now, trying to remember the URL, I typed in this into a new tab: http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/index.php and it is a grey screen, no graphics, no data, no activity, no redirect. Now, since most of us avoid home pages and bookmark where we want to be, the possibility that the redirect is ONLY for the home page is probably. Let me check: I cannot GET to a home page on highball. It automatically hits a redirect to where we are now. I am not sure what you've done, but if I type in the old grapevine url's, we go no place usable.
Tried grapevine/home, got this: Not Found The requested URL /grapevine/home was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. Apache/2.2.29 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.29 OpenSSL/1.0.1e-fips mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/5.5.23 Server at www.trainboard.com Port 80
The problem with a mass mailer is... 1. The server/hosting provider usually has a limit of the number of SMTP relays that can be sent daily. 2. Email servers are starting to reject emails as spam if there is a logo or a link in them....even if there is no history of spam. 3. Bounced emails can be part of the spam blocking program's algorithm to mark something as spam
http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/home Still the same 404 error. No idea, other than it doesn't work on two computers. Nobody knows. POSSIBLY, since you have admin credentials, it goes through differently. Dave
I would think anybody wanting to find the new site, would. We seem to be able to find almost anything else in the world. Do we really need our hands held that tightly? Doug
I get 404 error with the link above. I get the redirect with http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/content.php
This is almost like photos and avatars. Okay. Everyone knew the site was down, having new software upgrades. We had a notice that sometimes kept us up to date on progress. We watched that, maybe got busy....and when you come back to look (heck you waited 7 days, what's another week or two?) and you get a 404, why even bother to try to look for the site? They'll fix it. We all have confidence, right? We have bookmarks where we want to be...I don't need to start at the front page..I want the forums. Now you get a 404 error, well, most of us do. Why would I think that I needed to change from index to content in my url? Something in the redirect ain't working. Here's another that don't work no more: http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php? Grey screen More precise, right off the algore: www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?141879-LIRR-railroad-layouts-articles-models Grey screen. And another linked through Frisco.org: http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?149063-TRAINBOARD-HO-Special-Run-(Thread-2) Grey screen. Right off the algore. You got links? Do they work? Dave
Plus...additional to....on the top menu bar, right below the Trainboard banner. Home Forums Railimages Members Have yet to figure out what the "home" button is for. That's where I get the redirect but it's back to the forums. Comes up in the address bar as "http://trainboard.com/", no grapevine, no highball, under that I get the "FireFox prevented this page from automatically redirecting to another page", hit "allow" and I'm back at the forums: "http://www.trainboard.com/highball/index.php" Is that right?
Agree with scalecraft. /grapevine is not redirecting. It's actually infuriating, because my browser auto-adds /grapevine. Need to clear the cache I guess.
Home is intended to take you from wherever you are within the site, back out to the Forums Home page, current/new site. That's what it does for me.
Okay..another nomenclature change. In the past, on various forums, "home" takes you to the home page...hence the name, right? Like, "Welcome to Trainboard, where we stretch you mind" or some such, with news of the day. NOT an automatic redirect and back to the forums. So...I'm on oh, Railimages....and want to go back to the forums...okay, which button do I push? Forums? No, that would be too easy. So I select "home", get a redirect, and have to do a second button to allow, THEN I'm back at "forums". I just checked, and it seems all of those choices have home, forums, railimages and members buttons at the top. Dave
Not positive of this, but for some folks not getting the automatic redirect like I didn't, it might be an auto refresh issue... When I updated pages on my company website, if I did not set it to auto-refresh, A person who visited that page before updates and then visited again after updates would not see the updates, unless they refreshed the page.... But I'm a heavy equipment designer, not a web designer... So most likely its something completely different that's wrong... But it was similar to the problems I was having....
The redirect from www.trainboard.com now points at the main page of the forum. If people are still redirecting to the old site, then it is loading from your cache and has not refreshed. Charlie
