The "Recommend" Threads - A bit quiet...
 

The "Recommend" threads - great idea, but having just looked for the first time at the Northern Asia categories, there is very little there, hasn't been much activity for quite some time, and mostly it doesn't follow the correct format.

I'm still to do my first big trip so can't really contribute, but it seems a shame to have something potentially so useful being woefully under-used.

How about cleaning up the threads that don't follow the correct format and putting out a call for people to submit what they can?

Maybe it would work better in a wiki type format? Maybe there's an entirely different way of capturing this sort of thing that would be much easier to use?

A frequently updated set of info with GPS co-ords in a searchable format would be incredibly useful.

Al

Thanks for the feedback Al, good points all!

I totally agree! FWIW - the formatting is a result of a free-form field - without the discipline of a proper form, it usually ends up a bit of a mess.


Love to clean them up - but no time! I have a million things I want to do, but there is a strict priority on all of it. Daily keeping the site running, meetings, advertisers, the new DVD series, and a whole host of similar stuff comes first before the niceties. :( Care to volunteer to do the cleanup? ;)


We're struggling with that on several fronts.

A wiki might be better, as would good forms and a db - BUT - we have found that people often don't even know there are other things on the site besides the HUBB - they don't see the left hand menu with it's thousands of pages of info. We currently run Drupal as a CMS backend, combined with vBulletin for the HUBB - the integration of the two so we have a single sign on is difficult, but works. Adding a new system would be a nightmare - impossible to maintain. We are trying hard to simplify, not complicate!

There are lots of great ways of dealing with disparate sorts of information, but integrating them into one website is HARD. We've been struggling with it for years.

A form system in vBulletin would be great, or an application in Drupal would be the best - and we are working on the plans for that, we know what we want, but have no time to make it happen. If anyone with LOTS of Drupal experience wants to help out, we'd be happy to pay - a little - but we don't have a big budget.

So everything has to be in Drupal, which connects to the HUBB, or vBulletin. Note that when a new page is created in Drupal, a post on the HUBB can be automatically generated, and there's a link to adding or reading comments (posts) on the HUBB, and back to the page from the vBulletin / HUBB post, so the two areas are nicely linked.

Yes! Inputting the data is down to the users, but it's up to us to provide a system to do it - and so far we're failing miserably - no time, no budget. :blushing:

Any Drupal coders out there?

Possibly. Will be finishing work in 4 weeks and then have 8 weeks preparing for our RTW, but should be able to find some time to help out if you like.

Can't help with Drupal, but I am a software engineer and have wanted to get into PHP so maybe I'll look into it!

Cheers,
Al