December 2021 Newsletter

[Mopar1973Man]

It's been a while since the last newsletter. I know some of you have sent me a few PM's letting me know of weird issues like posting and photo issues. I'm working on them as we speak. I'm also working on reducing the number of server errors created by the software. I know there are some posting issues some times I'm noticing that posts with photos tend to fail more. I'm not sure the cause of this as of yet but I'm looking into it still. Currently, I'm looking into an Apache server issue that is not providing information as required, and creating several log errors as the system is running.

 

Some of you have noticed the website speed is improved. Yup, I'm still aiming to be the fastest forum out there. Even compared to Cummins Forum I'm nearly a full 4 seconds faster to render a page completely. 

 

As for myself personally, I'm trying to clear my workload here in wrench work to be able to spend more time here working on the website. I've only got one more job that is outside and I've gotta keep pushing forward to finish before winter snows drop on me. Hopefully, in the next week, I'll be here more full-time again for the winter months. 

 

I've gone through the forum and started cleaning up forums and merging stuff together. Let me explain a bit. Like @MoparMomcreated a few forums for herself to interact with you all since she passed away back in 02/22/2020 I left it there, now I need to move on so I merge her forum into just the general conversation forum. Why do that you say? Because the more DOMs (Document Object Model) there are on a page which the main forum page was close to 1,600 DOMs it was slowing down the page render. After merging some of the older forums together and reducing the amount of DOM's on the forum index now down to 1,300 or so. I've managed to shave off about another 1.5 seconds of render time.

 

I've got to ask a question here..

 

Q: Would you as a member mind if we just had 1 forum per generation?

 

If NO then I would merge all the powertrain, non-powertrain, and performance forums together per generation. So it would only be 1 forum for the 5th generation, 1 forum for the 4th generation, and so forth. This would reduce a bunch of DOM's out of the layout and render speed would jump. I'm also looking into a style change that might be nice too is once down to that I might change over to the grid pattern forum. Breakaway from the standard table style that all others do. 

 

Lets here what you all got to say...

 

Oh just comparing CF to M73M for performance...

Edited December 3, 2021 by Mopar1973Man

[Mopar1973Man]

My efforts continue on the website core functions. I upgrade most of all the plugins on the website. Then upgrade the PHP compiler to version 8.0.x. Did a bit of error log cleaning and fixing software that was causing issues. Here shortly I'm going to dive in and start doing some page work next. I want to revisit some of the static pages in the articles and website documents and review over the information and update. 

 

Like for example I'm kind of getting tried of people creating support tickets because they want out of the subscription which is fine. That means going back to the subscription page and unsubscribing from the website. NOT calling your bank to complain about the renewal. I need to clarify a few things on the subscription page because I really don't want to call my bank and fix this because someone didn't know or understand to unsubscribe from the site first. So, yeah I got work ahead of me and some test work for some of the modules and then with some of the upgraded software needs to be configured for the new features. 

Edited December 7, 2021 by Mopar1973Man

[Max Tune]

Thanks for all you do for the site. I'm glad you didn't shut it down and give up. I'm strictly on mobile, so I don't know if this applies to desktop. When I view a thread, then come back at a later date because of additional posts, I scroll down and find the separation banner that say unread replies. Why can't I be taken directly to the first unread reply as opposed to having to look for it? It's not so much of an issue on single page threads, but when there are multiple pages, if I don't remember what page I was on last and I pick the wrong page, the unread reply banner disappears and I have to hunt for where I left off.

 

Sorry if this isn't the place to ask about this, but I figured if you're letting us know about the improvements you're making I'd take a chance.

Sorry, guess I should have put this in the suggestion and ideas pinned thread.

[Mopar1973Man]

1 hour ago, Max Tune said:

When I view a thread, then come back at a later date because of additional posts, I scroll down and find the separation banner that say unread replies. Why can't I be taken directly to the first unread reply as opposed to having to look for it?

 

Click on the star or dot... That will take you directly to the post. Yeah I know its not super easy on mobile design.

 

1 hour ago, Max Tune said:

I'm strictly on mobile, so I don't know if this applies to desktop.

I'm majority on mobile myself also hence the huge amount of work on making the site speed as fast as possible to keep the ranking up on Google. But sad to say it works the same way with both the desktop or mobile. A matter of fact all 3 sizes can be seen on a desktop by shrinking or expanding the window width. It auto-magically switches format as the viewport changes in real time. 

 

That is another reason I'm wanting to merge the generations together into a small list so mobile users don't have to scroll as far to get to the older generations. As seen here I shrunk up the viewport and the list converted instantly to the mobile skin and makes the list super long. 

[Octafish]

One forum per gen works just fine for me.

I'm guessing the 2nd Gen 12v & 24v would be together?

That would be the only reservation I would have.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Octafish

[Mopar1973Man]

That one needs a bit of consideration. I might leave 12V and 24V separate. I might be able to do a tag setup to tag 12V or 24V to separate from this point forward on one forum but separated 12V or 24V would be better. Better search quality.

[Mopar1973Man]

Being the majority of the users are coming to this website "Mopar1973Man.Com" with mobile devices mostly iPhones I want to make sure that is optimized the best I can. Then the only thing I can say is my website is optimized more so for Chrome but I see a lot of Safari Browsers coming to the website. All of you that have iPhones or iTablets might want to upgrade to Chrome for a browser. To verify the score of your browser your currently using go here...

 

https://html5test.com/

 

Typically Chrome is the winner for score... Even desktop browsers... My Ubuntu Linux 20.04 with Google Chrome score 528.

 

Note when I tested my Cellphone for its Google Chrome it scored 520.

 

 

Edited December 8, 2021 by Mopar1973Man

[Mopar1973Man]

Just to make gather all the new stuff to read together for mobile or desktop users. I've gone back through and configured up the Activity Streams for 365 days back. All activity show a condensed version of everything regardless if you read the content or not. Might be handy finding that thread you posted to and need to edit or go back too. Unread content will do exactly that show only things you have not read yet. Content you started will filter down on content you are the author too. Etc. you get the picture. Each mode will filter down to particular information you might be looking for.

 

[Mopar1973Man]

@jlwelding

 

The fact is that there is roughly 78% of all traffic to M73M is a mobile device. Since the mobile devices are the heaviest I've got to do what I can to make there experience better. Trying to short screen layouts, reduced the amount repeated information. No need to display all this and then soak them for the bandwidth of surfing the site. So some of the things you PM me about like 911 section got pulled apart and just tucked in the general area below. Eventually I'm going to merge all the forums together so there will be only one 1st Gen forum, two 2nd gen forums (12V and 24V), one 3rd gen forum and so on. This would reduce the main page scrolling being it was designed back in the day for mostly desktops. Time to scrap that and redo everything for mobile devices. So the other 22% is split up between tablets and desktop computers... 

[Mopar1973Man]

Well  know that December is almost over, Merry Christmas to all and have a safe and enjoyable New Years too. 

 

I finally got back to writing Articles for 4th Gen's. I'm going to keep trying to get a few pages done every day in the morning or when I'm at home and have free time. So I'm sure all you will see the activity logs and see the P0201 and P0202 code for 4th gen has been added. Like I said I'm going to keep doing this as I have time.

 

Out of 10,000 members only 4 people voted for the changes? Wow! Please look at the top for the poll and please vote for the change of layout.

Edited December 28, 2021 by Mopar1973Man

[Silverwolf2691]

I think its because its "buried" at the 2/3 or lower mark of the home page. You would probably have a lot more votes if you Put it across the top of the home page or a notification with a link to this page at the top. Just an idea. There doesn't seem to be very many people that make it this far down the home page.

 

Like one of the other topics said, it's quiet around here.. haven't seen threadzy, dripley (extenuating circumstances), me78569, ah64id, and others in a long time. But I also understand that things change and sometimes you have to put stuff on the back burner for a while. But out of 10,000 members, its the same 10-15 that seem to be regularly on the forum.. 

 

I think the single forums would work for the smaller generations, like 5th gens, and 4th gens and 1st gens. Second gens I would leave broken up because of the sheer volume of topics that are there. It dwarfs everything else by a long shot. Or break out the 12 valves into a separate single forum, but still leave the 24v stuff broken up. I don't know how many topics 97.9k posts make up 24v powertrain but that's almost triple its next competitor, 2nd gen non-powertrain (36.5k posts). 

 

What about an archive type setup? Compd has this where it saves some of the posts to a separate area that are some (seems like 10) years old and switches to a full text layout; no colors, no photos, no signatures, unless you go to "view full version" where it comes up with everything. I'm not familiar with what DOMs are, at least in a computer/website world, so that might make things worse?  

 

Something like this: http://www.competitiondiesel.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-42390.html