Hi Guys,
Ihave to be honest I am not a facebook fan. I have recently (re) opened an account for business reasons, and due to that i have joined a few Facebook sites (right term??), one of which is the HU one. I have noticed several posts (again right term?) on there that truly belong in the HUBB but never get here. I feel that we are losing the HUBB to facebook. Am i right?

What does every one else think? Personally I find it all to easy to lose info on Face book if you dont catch it on day one(ish) it is gone for good.

Grant> is this the future of the HUBB? Do we want to support this or how to do encourage people back to the HU site?

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2000 Africa Twin
http://two-up-ona-twin.blogspot.com

I have just taken my first look at the HU Facebook page and found it interesting in the same way that the HUBB pub is but it is not a useful source of information with the catagorised sections we have here, I think the HUBB is safe.

I am glad about that because I don't use Facebook and it would be a shame if all the great info we get is split between two different sites. There only really needs to be one port of call for information

Wayne


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk while having a cold

__________________
The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

I tried posting a few questions on the Facebook page. The response was both good and bad. One user accused me of being immoral for wanting to know where I might obtain something in KTM Nepal? I've seen several troll type responses on FB page. While it has it's uses, the real good stuff and good people, are on the HUBB.

The difference in my view is as follows:

HUBB users - people who do KNOW
FB users - people who think they know.

probably get trolled now

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Regards Tim

Learning my craft for the big stuff, it won't be long now and it's not that far anyway

Good point..

I think about this a lot too.

In some ways yes.... A lot of the social aspect of the hubb has migrated onto the hubb but any content on the Facebook HU page is pretty much drivel.

And what's not drivel is pure advertising. It's just people selling books, dvds etc. It's throw away.

The HU website is still a great source of information and when you need REAL quality information, it's where I come.

And you can't search Facebook for info etc.

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

As a newbie planning for a first big adventure trip the HUBB has been invaluable.

I subscribe to the HU facebook page too but to me that is essentially 'shared interest' reading. I like that too but the HUBB and facebook seem to me to meet different needs (and for me HUBB is way more important).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I concur with the above sentiments.

Fb hu is purely for hot air, the occasional good picture and is full of people flogging their wares. Although, due to the sheer volume of traffic, there's the occasional useful snippet of information.

When I was recently trying to source a new shocker for my KLR in Bolivia I did get a good lead via fb hu (after I managed to persuade the other bloke who wanted to discuss striking Bolivian miners to stop spamming my thread...) , rather than from the hubb that seems to only have a small number of (the same) visitors, of whom only very few have up to date local knowledge.

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Brighty's website: TheBrightStuffDotCom

CURRENT RR WITH REGULAR UPDATES: The Wife Takes on Chlamydia: A South American Retrospective

Our thinking is that FB is generally entertainment, with as noted some snippets of good info here and there, BUT "you can't search FB" so it's very transitory. And if you actually wanted to read it all - even just our HU group - you'd do nothing else forever.

The HUBB is all about shared interest and INFORMATION - with some entertainment in the HUBB Pub!

We are "okay" with FB, and realize that for us it really doesn't matter HOW we connect with people, it just matters that we do, and keep doing so by whatever means. Of course we want to drive people to the HUBB and the website generally so they can benefit form the huge pool of information, so anything we - or you - can do to send people is good, but nothing wrong with sending people to the group from the HUBB also.

Remember for us it's ALWAYS been about travellers sharing information with other travellers!

__________________
Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
------------------------
Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

The wealth of information and inspiration accumulated on HUBB by Grant and every single traveller is just immense.

When we came on our africa trip this time, I decided not to take the laptop with me and getting most of the things done on the mobile and tablet. I guess this is more and more how it is going to be.

Grant has done incredibly building and customising this forum and I think we should try and help him move all this information onto a modern platform, which works nicely on mobile - links with facebook and google better. There is probably a huge leap in user experience from upgrading to the latest version of vBulletin. I'm sure there are customisations that won't work out of the box, but they can be rebuilt and usually the second iteration is better than the first. Think there are native apps too.

I was thinking we should set up a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign for the site upgrade - of course if Grant is interested in this. I think $10k would buy 10 freelancer weeks, which should be a great start if not enough to finish an upgrade. Collecting $100 each from 100 members shouldn't be too hard - that's way less than I have already saved using the information here.

We'll end up with the same information, but faster and more accessible. More powerful inspiration for the next generation of travellers. And finally, Grant will find it easier to sell a bit of advertising to the site to maintain it.

What do you think? I'd be happy to set up and seed a campaign as I'm bored in Lagos and waiting for our bikes to clear customs.

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London to Bamako, Oct-Nov 2009, KTM 640 Adventure + DR650SE
Lagos to Libreville, Dec 2015, KTM 640 + DR650

The site worked well enough for me on mobile and tablet during my USA trip a few months back but I'm always willing to embrace the future - or consider it at least. So what would this "modern platform" look like and how would it differ from the HUBB we know and love at the moment?

Can you point me at a site that's currently using it so I can get a feel for how the changes would manifest themselves. If it's all behind the scenes stuff then how would I, as an occasional user /poster, benefit (or even notice)? I'm sure that if it was a substantial improvement Grant would be happy to put it on his wish list. Genuine questions even if (on re-reading what I've written) it comes across slightly Luddite.

Sorry, you're right - the "modern platform" wasn't helpful. What I meant was mostly a responsive user experience, which changes according to the screen size and device it's being used from. The interaction model on both desktop and mobile web has changed quite a bit over the last 10 years to the benefit of the occasional user. Many engineers have spent time figuring out the best structure and navigation for forums, so that users effortlessly end up being fed information that's relevant for them and ignoring data that's not.

I am sure it can be argued that vbulletin is not the worlds best forum platform, but I'm sure the newest versions are at least 80% there and it would be 10x easier for Grant to just upgrade and add a fresh skin, rather than migrate to a new forum engine.

Just browsed around and found a couple of examples where the latest vbulletin had been used. like this http://www.minutesmatterstudio.com/forum/ - from a totally different walk of life.

Don't get me wrong - HUBB is awesome and it works everywhere. Just thinking how it could be even more awesome.

Sent from my Nexus 9 using Tapatalk

__________________
London to Bamako, Oct-Nov 2009, KTM 640 Adventure + DR650SE
Lagos to Libreville, Dec 2015, KTM 640 + DR650

Are you a savvy Drupal developer or tester? Read on for an opportunity with HU.

BTW, we’re intrigued by the idea of a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign. Would a system upgrade qualify? Hypothetically, let’s say we launch a campaign… what would HU community members be open to contributing? What kinds of things would you want in return? What’s a reasonable minimum and maximum contribution? If it’s workable for us, then HU would be the one to initiate it.


Next…

WHAT’S THE FUTURE FOR HU… SOFTWARE-WISE?

Currently we are on vBulletin 3.8, and Drupal 6, and Movable Type 1.4
ALL are “old” and definitely in need of replacement. So it’s a major upgrade to everything – and it won’t be cheap.

vBulletin – The HUBB
vB is NOT worth upgrading. The sad history is that the British developers sold it to an American company, Internet Brands, a few years ago – and the developers didn’t go with it to America, so the American company went their own way with it. The reason they bought it was that they had a large number of “enthusiasts” websites (read Mustang, Corvette etc) and wanted to own the software so they could make it do what they wanted to. Sadly they did a bad job. vB 4 was released, and all the website owners hate it as it’s totally unreliable and causes a lot of grief. Yes there are some sites running it and they’ve had a hard struggle to make it work. And rather than fix it, IB brought out vB 5, which is worse. The general consensus among webmasters is that vB is dead; it just doesn’t know it yet. Security patches etc have theoretically come to an end for 3.x, it’s ancient code, it’s clumsy and doesn’t do phones/tablets WELL – it works ok, but not well, and of course the lack of support and a good upgrade path is the death knell.

Movable Type – HU Blogs /stories
That’s easy, it’s gotta go, it’s ancient and causing trouble with php versions.

Drupal
This runs the bulk of the site, member management, the store, the shipping database and more. We’re on Drupal 6, which in March is dead, as Drupal 8 has just been released and Drupal.org only maintains two versions. Until we move to Drupal 8, we will be paying for software – especially security – updates to ensure the site remains secure.
Drupal is a major Content Management System that is Open Source, so free to use. It’s used by over 100,000 websites, including Gatwick airport, University of Minnesota, Greenpeace, RedHat, Timex, The Economist, BBC store, Fox, Weather.com, Oxfam, El Jazeera, Johnson & Johnson (we like that one ) and many more. Lots of smaller sites run it too, it’s very scalable from small to large, and can grow with the site.

So where does that leave us? We’ve been thinking about it for several years now!

HERE’S THE PLAN FOR THE FUTURE:

ALL of HU on one piece of software, Drupal.
Drupal can do great things for us. The base software is solid, robust, well managed and fully “responsive” meaning it can work on any platform; tablet, phone etc “perfectly” out of the box. It’s also HTML 5, meaning we can do lots of nice stuff with that, lightening the user download thus improving speed. There are over 7,000 modules for it, meaning if someone had a great idea and wanted something, they built it and released it to the Drupal Community – and we can have it for free. If we need something special, there is always a developer that will build anything you want – for a fee of course!

HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET THERE?
1: Drupal 8 isn’t completely ready for prime time – not enough modules are updated to D8 yet that we can use it, especially the forum modules. A simple site can be done and work, but we’re too complex.

2: Migration of over 110,000 pages is a nightmare, and will take a LOT of planning and testing and preparing by a data migration expert. That’s not us. So $$.

We plan to develop a complete Drupal 8 site on our development server (we have two dedicated servers all ours). As modules become available and funds allow, we will move stuff over to it, testing the migration as we go in chunks. The HUBB will be last; it’s by far the biggest and most complicated to reproduce. This gradual movement and testing is relatively safe, and stretches out the costs. A “big bang” upgrade now is way beyond our means. And, Drupal 8 isn’t ready anyway.

This will also enable us to learn D8, and do more of it ourselves, which is important as we can’t afford too much developer time, especially when it comes to the daily maintenance and tweaks and fixes that are a part of running a large website. We will always need a developer for the tricky bits, theming (the “look” including advanced .css) php, apache, mysql etc. but the less the better.

SO, WHEN??
Currently the plan is to start with a dev site in D8 in the next few weeks. We’ll see what we can and can’t do, work out what we need, push the module developers to get a move on with modules we need, and get familiar with it generally. At the same time we will be talking to local developers and planning the migration and strategizing just how we’re going to work through the technical bits.

If we’re lucky and the required modules are ready and we have the funds, it will be 6 months. Our silly busy time starts in June, so anything not done by then won’t be touched by us until end November, although devs can be working on it along the way.

We expect, realistically, that at the worst it will be 12-14 months from now.

So, WHAT WOULD HELP US MOST AT THIS TIME?

1) CALLING SAVVY DRUPAL DEVELOPERS in the HU Community who would like to work on a really exciting and interesting Drupal 8 site that would look great on your CV. Please contact us!

2) CALLING TESTERS! Yes, we’ll need a test team. We had a great one for the last redesign and we’ll be contacting them again, but we can always use more. Again, let me know.

3) Funding – ah yes the hard part.
Do we have enough to do it? Well we hope so – but it’s going to be very difficult, and slow if we have to do most of it ourselves. More would be better! ? But it will still take 6 months minimum to see anything. But it will be very cool! ?

Grant and Susan

__________________
Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
------------------------
Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

Personally I like the HUBB as it is and if I am travelling, like I am now ( on my way back to BKK), I use tapatalk and can do a lot on there. But as long as links like FB and Google don't take over it might be worth a shot

Wayne


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk while having a cold

__________________
The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

HI folks
I left FB and other stuff of this kind for business/ethical/philosophical reasons first.
ANd some other fora too, more specialized ones .
Two ways for looking at this
1) wrong-or-whatever goals for new internet bla bla ( thos was part of my topic, before
2) As a living , a forum, a blog, a whatever has periods and fall .

best wishes to all

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"In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV." R. Pirsig

I’m also a non-Facebook user; I don’t care less what your kid had for tea, what your dog did this morning (unless I’m looking for that today) or it I was at school with you last century. Sorry if that offends.

I mostly look at Hubb stuff via tablet but not the tappatalk thingy (only because it works fine without). I also like HUBB as it is and would hate to have to relearn where everything is.

Pardon my presumption as a non-IT person but may I set a goal for the new version? I don’t care less if you use Popsickle 9.4 or Bingledows Gold 69 or the stuff above, but I do want it to work on a five year old tablet with a Walmart memory card full of photographs and an internet signal received via string and bean cans. Please; no animations or whatever else upsets old/slow machinery. I know the IT chap will buy a new Gooseberry every morning on his way to the office, so won’t suffer from this stuff, but as someone who deals with this every day (workshop laptops are the MD’s cast offs, so diagnostic software needs to work on Windows 98 etc.), I know it can get forgotten.

And Thanks for a great site.

Andy