Live????

Keep forgetting about this... is it fully live now?
Lots of queries popping up on FB pages (various) do you need to be an IKSA member to access? I reckon that will hold it back if yes... not really a rant, more of a test

Howarya... yep fully a-live & kicking alright and has been for quite some time now TH.

Not much interest in using it as it's difficult to compete with the instant "updates" from Facebook, but does have the edge of being less disposable and searchable so topics can still be found after a day or two of posting.

At the moment, and for the foreseeable future, this is limited to posting by IKSA members only (non members can browse everywhere except the Heading Out area, just in case they're there trawling for the purposes of breaking into cars).

The reason has less to do with pushing IKSA membership and discriminating against non-members and more to do with the only reliable way to prevent any hacker or spambot creating an account and spamming the hell out of the forum as happens with all other open forums - creating an administration headache/overhead for me and our server.

One way to circumvent this is to manually approve all users that register to use the forum, or force some sort of security/captcha mechanism - however there are a couple of negatives when I looked into this - one being the amount of manual work required (by me) to monitor/moderate this and two, more importantly for us, the way our membership system (the bit that manages the membership signup/renewals/expiry, etc.) is integrated with the general user population and what changing that setup would require in terms of redesign (believe me this was difficult enought to stabilise, so changing now makes me feel edgy).

As I said above, non-IKSA members can browse and read posts in the general sections - unfortunately, they are unable to create new topics or post replies.

As interest has been low in using the forum (despite many requests from members to have one again) and the difficultly in competing with the proliferation of Facebook into everyone's lives (and personal information & habits ) I haven't spent much time investigating alternative approaches in opening the forum to everyone (well "everyone" except the spammers and hackers).

If there's sufficient interest in getting this opened up, then maybe the prospect of a few quid to support the IKSA and get covered in to the bargain (for the cost of a pair of winter booties or a fraction of the price of a new kite!) is a small price to pay.

Always interested in hearing ideas and thoughts in to how this could be better - and if there's a real appetite for using a forum, then maybe it would be worth investing some more of my time in.

There in lies the problem I would guess…"At the moment, and for the foreseeable future, this is limited to posting by IKSA members only"
and I get all the reasons for it.
Was going to post a rant / comment/ query here and link it to FB to see what response would be from FB members, but guess not much if they can only browse.
Shame we can't build a reference library a la KS.IE for the Why can't we questions i.e. offshore/malahide estuary ha ha
Anyhoot, cheers for the reply Master

"a reference library al la KS.ie".... ah ha, yes!

I did attempt to reach out to Mr. KS.ie a couple of times to see if there was a possibility to get some of the archived content from that forum to upload/migrate over here, but didn't get a response.

At the time of closing, there was the option to take responsibility for the old forum but at the time there was no bandwidth or skills to take it on, nevermind understand what it would have entailed - and I think by that time it had already had it's best days and people had already started to defect to Facebook anyway.

It would be interesting to see what kind of reaction there would be if this conversation even was linked onto a Facebook group.. and if the appetite is REALLY there to use a facility like this. In fact there may even be the option to open this section only to public posting so people can respond in here (& lets also see how long it takes before someone spams or attempts to hack us).

Personally, I think it would be great if we had some traction as the only way it will be beneficial is if it is used by the community, for the community - there was so much valuable information on ks.ie that it's a shame to loose it - and Facebook while good for temporary or timely posts is lacking the info repository or search capability to be able to find information after the fact.

Ok Tony, I've opened this section to general public (i.e., non-registered users)...

There's some minimal security on it (in the shape of a reCAPTCHA code) if posting when not logged into the IKSA site, but it's minimal and will allow anyone to start a topic or reply to an existing one (within this category/section only)

Let's see how it goes... or how long it takes before I need to secure it again to prevent any trouble

yo yo tony Welcome
`yea the spammers are huge problem even on Facebook groups.
facebook is so easy to use but the only probs you cant follow threads. And the same old topics come up again and again ..... Is there anywhere to kite in a west in dublin

IKSA did try as Byran has said to get info of the old forum with no joy.

Time and date of posts don't seem to be showing (on Android). It's pretty impotent imo - so people know when a rant is burning hot (and wind the ranter up!) . Seriously though - relevant for knowing what's current etc

Turn your screen to landscape.. Responsive design so doesn't jam a small/portrait screen with info on mobile device - smart wha?!

Ah Jaysus....

Also some nice features, such as icons to show new posts, replies since you were last "here", a Recent Topics tab in the forum where you can see what's been posted or replied to recently.
I've also added a "recent forum activity" view to the site's home page with a link through to the forum.

If we get more traffic/interest this can be expanded to add more features or support what people think would be beneficial