CanadianHomeBrewers.com Server Maintenance

[XXXXX]

Hey guys and gals,

The growth of CanadianHomeBrewers.com has exhausted the current server's capabilities. Imagine that!

I will be taking the site down at midnight EST tonight (December 5, 2012) to upgrade it and resolve the growing pains we've been experiencing lately. The work shouldn't take longer than a few minutes, but let's say 1230am to be safe.

I hope you haven't noticed any reduction in service quality lately. If you have, this upgrade should solve the issue. As always, let me know if you are experiencing any problems with the site or if you have any suggestions/ideas.

Cheers,

Adam (XXXXX)

UPDATE: Upgrade completed, and maintenance complete! Thanks everyone.

[Erwin]

Thanks for this Adam,
as for suggestions/ideas, I was wondering, is there member-map function somewhere?
Just a google map where all member locations are pinned on?
That would be useful!

[Mr Frugal]

Hey, Adam;
I seem to recall a post asking for suggestions to improve the forum, but for the life of me, I can't seem to find it now.
As the forum grows, there are a couple things that may make life easier for the Admins (namely you, apparently).
Having a flagging system that allows members to mark wrongly categorised posts, spam, or other such inappropriate entries on the forum would be handy. It would require Admin approval input, but hey, what else are you doing? ;p
I haven't seen any rampant transgressions, and I think it's a very friendly, mature (albeit "loaded") community, but I have seen forums spin out of control because of this.
A second thing that would be great is asking members to pull together a "beginners guide" so to speak. I know that there is a Noobie FAQ, and there may be such guides on similar homebrew forums, but redundancy is good, and perhaps a Canadian flavour and perspective could be employed. If it could be "locked" it would prevent extremely long threads that go off topic..
Anyways, just a couple of ideas.

[XXXXX]

Thanks for this Adam,
as for suggestions/ideas, I was wondering, is there member-map function somewhere?
Just a google map where all member locations are pinned on?
That would be useful!

That's a great idea! I'll look into it

[XXXXX]

Hey, Adam;
As the forum grows, there are a couple things that may make life easier for the Admins (namely you, apparently).
Having a flagging system that allows members to mark wrongly categorised posts, spam, or other such inappropriate entries on the forum would be handy. It would require Admin approval input, but hey, what else are you doing? ;p

That's a very helpful feature that's already available with the forum, although it's a bit hidden. At the bottom of each post you should see a red exclamation point. You can click it to "report" the thread. Select the appropriate category and/or leave a quick message with what the issue is. It then gives us a notification and we can move/delete/edit/fix it as needed.

A second thing that would be great is asking members to pull together a "beginners guide" so to speak. I know that there is a Noobie FAQ, and there may be such guides on similar homebrew forums, but redundancy is good, and perhaps a Canadian flavour and perspective could be employed. If it could be "locked" it would prevent extremely long threads that go off topic..
Anyways, just a couple of ideas.

That's a really good idea, too. I can't commit a lot of time right now, but if a few of you would like to form a "newbie FAQ committee" of sorts, I'd be more than happy to put it into a locked thread for newbies to read! I know several of you are really great with this sort of thing (ihomebrewing comes immediately to mind).

I've created a newbie committee signup thread. If anyone is interested in contributing, head on over there and put your name in.

[Canuck]

Thanks for this Adam,
as for suggestions/ideas, I was wondering, is there member-map function somewhere?
Just a google map where all member locations are pinned on?
That would be useful!

I've done this before on a couple of other forums.

Adam, if you want I can take care of this for you.

[XXXXX]

Thanks for this Adam,
as for suggestions/ideas, I was wondering, is there member-map function somewhere?
Just a google map where all member locations are pinned on?
That would be useful!

I've done this before on a couple of other forums.

Adam, if you want I can take care of this for you.

Thanks! See my PM.