Saturnalia Renovation Underway

[Charlie]

Spring-cleaning has begun in earnest here at Saturnalia. The entire site will be renovated over the course of the next few weeks. Some of the changes include an improved user interface that will be phased in site-wide. The changes are the result of visitor feedback, and come after nearly nine months of planning and testing. My goal is to make it easier for visitors to find information that is buried deep within the SaturnFans domain.

New improvements included as part of the first phase are a 5-star links rating system, a list of “cool” sites updated daily, and a “top rated” links page based on visitor votes.

Be on the lookout for new web site categories and sections, some of them temporary, as I reorganize the site and construct new community areas. For instance, one temporary change will be the “site news” section in the message board. In the past, that area of the forum had been used exclusively for forum news, but during renovation I will be posting frequent site updates.

I will do my best to make sure that there is no disruption in service during the renovation process. If you find any dead links during the month, please report them to me and I will try to fix them as soon as possible. This is a work-in-progress; even some of the initial changes will evolve as other improvements are added to the site. Work will complete in May after the site moves to an all-new – and much faster – web server.

Please continue to send me your feedback as the changes unfold. As always, your comments are greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Charlie

[L300Boy]

The site looks great so far! Keep up the good work!

[mikthehickNC]

Nice Charlie! The new layout looks great. :yes:

[GR898SL2]

The icon says it all, Charlie.:grnjump: :grnjump: Keep up the good work!!

--Nick
:flag:

[Klutz_33]

Wow Charlie now how did you make a good thing even better. The site just keeps getting better. Your the best.

:grnjump: :redjump:

[Qmarker]

Well Charlie, I have been using the WEB and newsgroups since the mid 80's and BBS forums prior to that. I'd like to say "kudu's" to you for the great job here. IMO this is one heck of a well run forum(s). I wasn't here prior to any upgrades but I sure like the entire layout and the way things work.

:yes:

[RustyJCNC]

I remember dial-up BBS(s). When people who had more then one "node" were capable of multiple users and it was the greatest thing back when. It also was an era of 2400bps modems.

talk about old school.

-j

[woowoo]

Please consider allowing the editing of posts more than 15 min. old.

Thanks

[teal95sl1]

yes, I agree we need editing of old posts allowed...otherwise we just have to keep posting new messages to threads we already did to change something we need corrected,or if we need to add a bit of new info..and so and so on..so yeah please consider that change to the new site ;)

[Charlie]

Originally posted by teal95sl1
yes, I agree we need editing of old posts allowed...otherwise we just have to keep posting new messages to threads we already did to change something we need corrected,or if we need to add a bit of new info..and so and so on..so yeah please consider that change to the new site ;) Let me think about this for a little while... the problem is that if I let people change they posts after the 15 minute timer expires, it can make for a very confusing thread. You could be modifying your post while someone else is responding to it. However, the way it is now, you can always post a correction later on down the thread. That way visitors won't get confused if the meaning of your post changes.

Thanks for the idea though. I will consider it as one of the changes.

TTYL,
Charlie

[Alan eh?]

Just in case no one else does, which I see they have, let me say thank yoiu for all your efforts!

I am quite new here, having just recently joined the Saturn family, with a Vue we got two weeks ago. The information I have gotten here has proven invaluable.

Adding things that you have to administer are nice, but I think the life blood of the place has to be the forums. You can't add information nearly as fast as the users can via their messages, anything you can do to encourage this would be the best thing you can do in my humble opinion.

I would like to see an area devoted strictly to the Vue, but then that is what interests me the most.

Thanks again
=Alan=

[Charlie]

Originally posted by Alan eh?
Just in case no one else does, which I see they have, let me say thank yoiu for all your efforts!

I am quite new here, having just recently joined the Saturn family, with a Vue we got two weeks ago. The information I have gotten here has proven invaluable.

Adding things that you have to administer are nice, but I think the life blood of the place has to be the forums. You can't add information nearly as fast as the users can via their messages, anything you can do to encourage this would be the best thing you can do in my humble opinion.

I would like to see an area devoted strictly to the Vue, but then that is what interests me the most.Whoa! :o: Did you happen to log into the beta site last weekend? If not, wait a couple more days... I think you'll like the changes.

Thanks for the feedback, and welcome aboard!

Charlie

[JanCan]

Charlie - My compliments on running a fine site.
Normally I'm on from my home computer, but yesterday I wanted to check my thread from work (only during lunch, of course!). I typed in saturnfans.com ... not found. I searched on msn.com using "saturn fans", " saturnfans", "saturnalia" (got some kinda old dead site, and a bunch of wacky saturn (the planet) worshippers). Never could find your site.
Back at home, I noticed my bookmark is just a bunch of numbers.
Are you trying to keep your great site a secret?

[Galileo]

Charlie..... I've become quite addicted to this forum and think you are doing a top notch job of keeping it interesting, thank you!

I was wondering if you thought of adding a "Lifestyles" or "Culture" area for subjects that have nothing to do with cars at all. It would be for topics like polotics, religion, dating, sexuality, sports, etc. so that members not interested in discussing these subjects would have a better opportunity of not being offended.

Thanks again :grnjump: !

[Heartbeat - '95 SL2]

Originally posted by Galileo
I was wondering if you thought of adding a "Lifestyles" or "Culture" area for subjects that have nothing to do with cars at all. It would be for topics like polotics, religion, dating, sexuality, sports, etc.

You mean like this (http://www.saturnfans.com/forums/forumdisplay.php3?s=&forumid=13)?

[woowoo]

Originally posted by Galileo


I was wondering if you thought of adding a "Lifestyles" or "Culture" area for subjects that have nothing to do with cars at all. It would be for topics like polotics, religion, dating, sexuality, sports, etc. so that members not interested in discussing these subjects would have a better opportunity of not being offended.

Thanks again :grnjump: !


The "Net" has lots of dark corners were those boys can go and play........
In fact sexuality is consuming the net.

There are not many safe places left

Please consider keeping those topics off your site.

[Galileo]

Heartbeat...... I knew someone would bring that up :D . the Off Topic thread has a broader scope than I what I am suggesting.

It's fun to have conversations with most of the members here about Saturn and the automobile industry in general. As we learn about each other's personalities, it's interesting to get into more personal subjects since some of us may not belong to any other common site.

That's all I'm suggesting....... but I'll stay here even without the proposed thread ;) .

[Charlie]

Originally posted by JanCan
Charlie - My compliments on running a fine site.
Normally I'm on from my home computer, but yesterday I wanted to check my thread from work (only during lunch, of course!). I typed in saturnfans.com ... not found. I searched on msn.com using "saturn fans", " saturnfans", "saturnalia" (got some kinda old dead site, and a bunch of wacky saturn (the planet) worshippers). Never could find your site.
Back at home, I noticed my bookmark is just a bunch of numbers.
Are you trying to keep your great site a secret? A few weeks ago there were some periodic DNS problems with the saturnfans.com domain. However, that problem has been fixed now. You should be able to access the site at http://www.saturnfans.com/ on a daily basis... if not, email me and let me know.

Thanks,
Charlie

[Charlie]

Originally posted by Galileo
Heartbeat...... I knew someone would bring that up :D . the Off Topic thread has a broader scope than I what I am suggesting.

It's fun to have conversations with most of the members here about Saturn and the automobile industry in general. As we learn about each other's personalities, it's interesting to get into more personal subjects since some of us may not belong to any other common site.

That's all I'm suggesting....... but I'll stay here even without the proposed thread ;) . I'll keep that in mind for future versions of the SaturnFans Forums, but for now I only have plans for one general Off Topic forum.

Charlie