New forums, new era

[HOW Editorial]

A new database-driven forum system debuts today on HOW, and aside from all the technical mumbo-jumbo, it offers you many new (and, we think, better) ways to find and present information.My HOW Forum - Create your own customized forum to show only the posts you want to read. Do you own a 25.5? Make it your personal "HUnter 25.5 forum. Do you prefer the Cruising world Bulletin Board style? Set it to show all HOW forum activity. You can get really creative with this!Recent Forum Activity - Now "Yesterday's Posts" is an up-to-the-minute list of all forum activity in the past 24 hours. Sort by time, or by forum. See the replies - Articles now show the number of replies on the menu listing -- before you click on it. Improved navigation - More choices for easier navigation. Give 'em a try and let us know how you like 'em. And while you're at it, join us in giving big thanks to Bruce Grant, Carol Donovan, and Steve Dion for providing us the help we needed to get it going.

[Bruce Grant]

Boy, I call in to find out about miller time and lo and behold, my how is on line.Now I have to run around work and find someone with a beer so I can toast the "Grand Event"Way to go.Bruce.Neon Moon

[Phil Herring]

Well, my travel plans changed for the weekend, which allowed me to go live today instead of Monday. I'l also be able to keep an eye on things over the weekend. So, pop a cold one!

[Gary]

Not impressed with the new forums, the old ones allowed you to look back more than 7 days and follow a string of responses to a question. Play around with it tonight and found myself losing interest fast.

[Phil Herring]

The forums will go back anywhere from 21 to 30 days, depending on the activity level of the individual forum. We only started with a few days of posts because we had to manually transfer each and every post from the old system to the new one. So you'll see the menus get longer day by day until they fill out to 3- 4 weeks of activity.If you'd like to rekindle your interest, Gary, perhaps you'd like to cut, paste, and re-type forum posts from the old system to the new one for a few days. Then you'll get your longer menus faster. :)

[Gary]

Maybe little has changed then, but in looking at the "pull down" menu that allowed me to go back no more than 1 week, I ASSUMED, this was the new style. This would have given people little time to receive a response to a question unless the right person happened to see the question, post an answer and the question asker found the response, all within 7 days. (that was sure a mouthfull)Perhaps I should have waited a month or two before commenting, but I had been following a couple of strings and lost them in the switch over. I understand you not wanting to wear out your poor little mouse with all that "cut and paste", I guess people just need to re-ask questions that got lost.....

[Phil Herring]

Gary - Believe it or not, we actually try pretty hard to accomodate everyone's needs in these forums. The old forum system was gradually breaking down under a load it could no longer handle, so we decided to make the change as soon as possible. When making the conversion, we tried to pick up all the active threads. Perhaps yours were not active? If you'd like to copy those from the old forums to the new ones, I'll be happy to give you the URLs so you can do that. My "poor little mouse" has transferred enough of them. Just email me at phil@hunterowners.com

[carol donovan]

To all the C-2ers and testers - many thanks for making a great site even better. A lot of time went into designing, testing and debugging the new architecture and it shows. The new site is FAST... and the new My HOW will really be a plus when searching for specific information.Great job!/cs/v Twilight

[matthewpierson@hotmail.com]

I need help from someone within the sailing community and someone from another website said that you were the one to contact. Here's the deal: I am attempting to put a syndicate together to race in the Mackinaw in the summer of 2000 to raise money for a charity. I have an experienced sailing crew with a National Champion/All-American from the Naval Academy, who also happens to be a Naval aviator, as our most likely skipper. I can raise the money and find the crew. I also have access to media outlets, and I am currently working on getting a satellite hook up so that we can email daily from the boat race to the people that the charity benefits so they will receive more than just money. With the right computer, a scanner, and a camera, we can put them in the race. Here's the problem: There is exactly 364 days until the next Mackinaw Sailboat Race from Chicago to Michigan, and I need a boat at least 30' in length. If you can't help you must know someone, who knows someone who can point me in the right direction on either finding someone to donate a boat for the week or lease it to us. I have been . matthewpierson@hotmail.com involved in rowing competitively, and members of my family have taken part in numerous sailing regattas, and if there's one thing I have learned its that both of these sports are filled with people who care and can make things happen. This is a special cause and even if you can't help, please forward this to anyone who might be able to help mematthewpierson@hotmail.com Matthew BaldinoWK:847-885-3000 x-107

[Dakota Jim]

Ah, now I understand and appreciate the neatness of the new forums. Really will speed the time of looking for new things. Still changing the selection, but that is easy to do.Yep I think you have a definite improvement here. Those that can handle change <grin> and like the new and go for it. Otherwise, the old is still there.Also like the way one can easily select the time periods desired.Looks good to me.

[Phil Herring]

the best part of this is, it's very easy now to make changes to the forums. And the various ways to search them are almost endless. I'm also in the process of putting all the boat specs and photos in a database. So you'll soon be able to search and sort the specs. For example, you could compare the specs only for those boats with displacements between 10,000 and 13,000 lbs. this stuff is fun and makes all the data alot easier to access.