Website updates - well worth a read!
Posted: Tue Jan 19, 2010 7:17 pmSi and I have been very busy updating the club site with lots of new functionality, and restoring the missing functionality from our old site. To that end, here's what's been done, and why it's good for you.
Social Networking Integration
If you like any of the articles listed on our front page http://miniclub.ie, you can click little buttons at the end of each article which will allow you to publish them to Digg, del.icio.us, Stumble, Technorati, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail.
Comment on front page articles using your Social Networking login
Because the front page is separate to the forum, you need an account to post there. The simplest way to do this, is click on an article you want to read, then click 'add a comment', you'll be asked to login with either your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo, OpenID or AOL account, and you'll be instantly able to post comments. This is a pretty slick interface, and we think you'll like it.
A whole new Gallery
This is only out of the box, so it's going to take a while to have all our photos from the old gallery transferred over, but there's some content there for you to play with now. Go to the main page, http://miniclub.ie and click the Gallery. It's a whole new way to present the photos from our finished events, and if you click on each thumbnail, they'll expand full screen in a lightbox for you to see them in full detail. While the lightbox is open, if you move your mouse the the left and right edges, buttons will appear allowing you to go to the next or previous image
Auto Image Resizing
It's back by popular demand. If you post an image in the forum which is excessively large, our server automatically resizes it to a comfortable resolution, and if you click on it, it will then open up in a lightbox for you to see the entire size.
Search Engine Optimisation
We've integrated SEO into the front page system, and the forum's sofwtare too, which means Google will fall in love with us. Why is this good? Because it means we'll be consistently high in the Google ranks, and that will attract new members to the club.
The most recent threads are now on the front page
Right up there on http://miniclub.ie on the right hand side, is a widget which will show the 8 newest threads on our Forum. A handy little springboard to catch up with the latest news and chat.
Quick Reply
Rather than hitting reply, waiting for the next page to load, typing your reply, then hitting submit and waiting for the next page to load, all you need to do now is scroll to the bottom of the page in any thread, hit Quick Reply, and like magic, a reply box will appear, so you can make yourself heard and only have to load one page in the process.
Our forum has gone from bb2nuke 2, to phpbb3
Technical stuff? Yes, but simple too. Going to the new forum means we have lots of new functionality to lock our spammers, to allow you to create friend lists, ignore lists if you don't want to see a particular persons posts, and as admins and mods, it allows us to keep the forum tidy by including things we didn't have before - such as merging threads, moving forums, etc. To celebrate, we also increased your PM inbox limit to 300 pms.
The MINI Club of Ireland? There's an app for that!
We decided that as so many people now have iPhones, and iTouches, that it would be very trick to be able to access the forum, and PMs on the iPhone just like you do with Facebook in a standalone app - which makes everything much faster. So, go to your appstore, and download either touchBB lite (Which is free), or touchBB, and enter this address for the forum URL : miniclub.ie/forum - simple as that, you have instant MCOI access wherever you are, with super fast load times.
Catch up with all the latest with one click
There's a new feature on the main forum page. It's called Catch-Up. It's the first forum you see, but it's not a forum at all really. What it does is run a search on the Database to show you all the threads which have been started/replied to since your last visit. Pretty neat! Won't work on the iPod/iTouch app, but will work on any browser.
So you've done all this, is there anything we can do for you?
You could pay our road tax, but what we would really love is for everyone to come here and discuss their MINIs and Minis first and foremost. We know everyone's on Facebook and Twitter, and it's nice to chat there, but this site lives on having members coming in here, chatting, asking questions, organising events, buying, selling, and generally having fun. So we're asking really really nicely for you to leave Facebook and Twitter for the social chats, and for anything MINI/Mini, or showing off photos of your cars to do it here first, Facetube second. It would make a big difference to the site's traffic, and would encourage more people to join the club too. We can't do it without you.
Social Networking Integration
If you like any of the articles listed on our front page http://miniclub.ie, you can click little buttons at the end of each article which will allow you to publish them to Digg, del.icio.us, Stumble, Technorati, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Mail.
Comment on front page articles using your Social Networking login
Because the front page is separate to the forum, you need an account to post there. The simplest way to do this, is click on an article you want to read, then click 'add a comment', you'll be asked to login with either your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo, OpenID or AOL account, and you'll be instantly able to post comments. This is a pretty slick interface, and we think you'll like it.
A whole new Gallery
This is only out of the box, so it's going to take a while to have all our photos from the old gallery transferred over, but there's some content there for you to play with now. Go to the main page, http://miniclub.ie and click the Gallery. It's a whole new way to present the photos from our finished events, and if you click on each thumbnail, they'll expand full screen in a lightbox for you to see them in full detail. While the lightbox is open, if you move your mouse the the left and right edges, buttons will appear allowing you to go to the next or previous image
Auto Image Resizing
It's back by popular demand. If you post an image in the forum which is excessively large, our server automatically resizes it to a comfortable resolution, and if you click on it, it will then open up in a lightbox for you to see the entire size.
Search Engine Optimisation
We've integrated SEO into the front page system, and the forum's sofwtare too, which means Google will fall in love with us. Why is this good? Because it means we'll be consistently high in the Google ranks, and that will attract new members to the club.
The most recent threads are now on the front page
Right up there on http://miniclub.ie on the right hand side, is a widget which will show the 8 newest threads on our Forum. A handy little springboard to catch up with the latest news and chat.
Quick Reply
Rather than hitting reply, waiting for the next page to load, typing your reply, then hitting submit and waiting for the next page to load, all you need to do now is scroll to the bottom of the page in any thread, hit Quick Reply, and like magic, a reply box will appear, so you can make yourself heard and only have to load one page in the process.
Our forum has gone from bb2nuke 2, to phpbb3
Technical stuff? Yes, but simple too. Going to the new forum means we have lots of new functionality to lock our spammers, to allow you to create friend lists, ignore lists if you don't want to see a particular persons posts, and as admins and mods, it allows us to keep the forum tidy by including things we didn't have before - such as merging threads, moving forums, etc. To celebrate, we also increased your PM inbox limit to 300 pms.
The MINI Club of Ireland? There's an app for that!
We decided that as so many people now have iPhones, and iTouches, that it would be very trick to be able to access the forum, and PMs on the iPhone just like you do with Facebook in a standalone app - which makes everything much faster. So, go to your appstore, and download either touchBB lite (Which is free), or touchBB, and enter this address for the forum URL : miniclub.ie/forum - simple as that, you have instant MCOI access wherever you are, with super fast load times.
Catch up with all the latest with one click
There's a new feature on the main forum page. It's called Catch-Up. It's the first forum you see, but it's not a forum at all really. What it does is run a search on the Database to show you all the threads which have been started/replied to since your last visit. Pretty neat! Won't work on the iPod/iTouch app, but will work on any browser.
So you've done all this, is there anything we can do for you?
You could pay our road tax, but what we would really love is for everyone to come here and discuss their MINIs and Minis first and foremost. We know everyone's on Facebook and Twitter, and it's nice to chat there, but this site lives on having members coming in here, chatting, asking questions, organising events, buying, selling, and generally having fun. So we're asking really really nicely for you to leave Facebook and Twitter for the social chats, and for anything MINI/Mini, or showing off photos of your cars to do it here first, Facetube second. It would make a big difference to the site's traffic, and would encourage more people to join the club too. We can't do it without you.
