Kevin Tiller

Note- this was posted to my old blog and I am just moving to over here.

It was funny the other week that southaustralian noticed some new emoticons and posted a thread about it (whilst I was composing one also). I had barely even finished uploading them. I think I browsing anotherinvisionsite and saw some different icons and thought that we hadn’t added any new ones for a while. checked out the usual suspects that gave some free downloads so add them. Total time from initial thought to all done was maybe 20mins or 30mins.

Most people have passed comments about our homepage for a while, a bit cluttered etc. It is in the same software as wikipedia and so we are limited to a degree as to how it will work. Wombatface is a bit like the resident interface gatekeeper – he checks it out and passes judgement (he is generally right) and we try to improve it – usually simpler or less heavy in kb. I know he’d bee fiddling with his own version of the homepage but was surprised to see him whack it onto the homepage. however “happily surprised” as he’d done a good job and getting other people to make their own changes is something that I am personally keen on – I don’t want it to be “my site”. Most people think it is an improvement. We will be putting more and more onto the wiki system.

We do need to update our forums to the very latest version (not many changes) and we can now upgrade mediawiki to the very latest version (and the bridge software between the forums and the wiki – allows use of the same username/password). We were waiting for our server to upgrade to php5 which we need to run the latest mediawiki. Hopefully their won’t be any instability or outages (no dates in mind yet – whenever I chase Mick).

People are using the chatroom a bit more now. I added in a few extra chat rooms, as when I was in there it seemed that some people wanted to talk about running, some about dogs, and some about punk (guess which was me) and rather than talk over each other it would be good to change rooms. I suspect we need to upgrade to the latest version of that software also, sounds like there were a few intermittent glitches etc.

The other change – made the week after six foto back in March that no-one has commented on (plu ? wombatface ? were you asleep? or what ?) are the new favicons. I use the inks bar in my browser and try to have no text just the favicons – refer this image:

There are 2 new favicons, one for the forums and one for other parts of the site eg the homepage. I would like to get a bunch of different ones as I am sure that people link to different parts.

We also changed the photogallery – read this – I think that was around March also. It’s really good but I must work out how to move the old photos to the new gallery and tidy it. I am expecting to get torrents of emails saying they can’t find their photos now.

Other than that we haven’t changed much – behind the scenes we have dumped our old ticket system and gone for a simpler gmail interface (coolrunningaus@gmail.com – however best just to contact us via info@coolrunning.com.au). Our main helpers there are sook and colin townsend – they can also deal with ad requests, news postings, forums issues etc as not everything is done by me (yippee ! or is that yahoo!)

Adios.

As this was posted to my old blog I did get some comments :

Plu – Hi Kevin, I was on the ball for the Gallery changes but stalled when I did not know how to get all the photos across.  Also I was not sure  what to do with the photos in the Forum. I still remember your comment on people voting with their feet and using Picasa and photobucket – still think about the effect of those  types of galleries.  Completely missed the  favicons – not  sure how to get them but I want them. cheers  Plu

Sook54 – I reckon the new homepage look is great! Thanks to wombatface, Kev and whoever else was involved. One thing that will be good to get fixed when we have a chance is the weird extra menubar for the wiki, which is on the home page and confuses new people when they click the Login/create account link (which doesn’t take you anywhere – would be good for it to take you to the standard forums register page)