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jeff

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Over in THIS THREAD we had some discussions on changes to the forum layout that would be beneficial. I've come up with what I think will be a positive change for the forum layout. I've made a few small changes already, but I'm planning to make all the changes below this weekend. The goal was to group things more logically, eliminate/combine where appropriate, and make the location of things more obvious, especially to newcomers. We had three categories (major groupings of forums); "Welcome to Penturners.org", "Community Forums", and "IAP Marketplace", the first two have been unchanged for over 10 years. We added the Marketplace about 7 years ago.

Below is the list/description of the new & reorganized categories and forums.

IAP Central (formerly "Welcome to the IAP")

Announcements & Information (policies, rules, & "a new member guide" (to be developed))
Introductions (no changes)
Show Off Your Pens (no changes)
Casual Conversation (no changes)
Site Support (test posting, help, tips and how to's, suggestions, feedback)
The Library (the Library Managers discussion forum with a link to the library)
The IAP Collection (the Curator's discussion forum with a link to the collection album)

Pen Making Forums (formerly "Community Forums")

Pen Making (formerly Penturning, name change only)
Advanced Pen Making (no changes)
Blank Making (with Segmenting subforum, open to suggestions for others)
Finishing (no changes)
Pen Photography (no changes)
Pen Stands, Boxes, & Storage (added "Storage" to the title)
Shops, Tools, & Equipment (formerly Shops, Jigs, Fixtures & Tools - subforums below)
  • Wood Lathes (new subforum)
  • Metal Lathes (moved from current forum)
  • Other Machinery & Power Tools (new subforum)
  • Hand Tools and Accessories (new subforum)
Product Testing & Review (forum will be overhauled - may be replaced)
Tips & Tricks (forum will be overhauled - may be moved to a Resources Catagory)

Other Community Forums (New Category)

IAP Management Team (will be overhauled - eliminating some subforums)
PITH (Pen In The Hat) (very low traffic... keep?)
Marketing & Shows (no changes)
Other Things We Make (no changes)
Polls, Surveys, & Votes (could occur in Casual Conversation? Eliminate?)
Group Purchases (subforum "Group Purchase Research" to be rolled into parent forum)
Local Chapters (sort of a mess -- listing format will be improved)
Past Event Archive (new forum, e.g. Bash & Summer Extravaganza Forums)

IAP Marketplace

Rules (replaced with link, will be incorporated into Announcement & Information forum)
Vendor Forums (no change other than to delete inactive forums)
Trades, Gifts, & Wants (no changes)
For Sale (no changes)
Market Research (no changes)
Vendor Cheers & Jeers (may close or overhaul)
 
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jeff

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I'd be very grateful to get your feedback on this. I've noted areas where there's some more thinking needed about what to do. Very interested in opinions for those.
 

jttheclockman

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My thoughts are as follow. I believe the SOYP should be grouped with Pen making forums. This is the end result of the following pen making forums. I do not believe they should be part of the welcoming forum. You can give a taste of what is available by scrolling past photos as you are doing and also featuring the Featured pen.

I also think the casual conversation should be included in the Other Community Forums. Again Newbies do not need to see conversations that have nothing to do with joining the site. This should be for members to share their stories.

Blank making forum needs a Casting sub forum as well.

These are my initial thoughts.
 

Dalecamino

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Jeff, I like it. I noticed you changed Pen Turning to Pen Making. In my opinion, there is a difference between the two descriptions. But you can change it if you wish, of course!
 

BRobbins629

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I've really liked everything about the new forum so far so will defer to your good judgment. Only pet peeve I have is the Wiki. Never saw any good in there. I think you could ditch it.
 

CREID

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I'm just a lowly penmaker that knows nothing about how all this works so i'll just let you sort it all out.
 

1080Wayne

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I would move Casual conversation down to Other forums . Within Pen making , I would move Advanced pen making and Blank making below Photography . But I could also argue that Photography should be moved above Marketing in Other forums , and just to confuse you more , that Marketing should be moved up below Photography in Pen making .

Thank you for all of your very hard work . I will be around , regardless of what changes you make .
 

jeff

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Jeff, I like it. I noticed you changed Pen Turning to Pen Making. In my opinion, there is a difference between the two descriptions. But you can change it if you wish, of course!

I think of pen making as the entire spectrum of activities involved in making a pen, and I thought that word more encompasses the activity than penturning. I'm open to leaving it as-is. I'm just trying to move forward and appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Looking at search terms coming into our site, I can tell you that pen making is vastly more searched for than penturning.
 

jeff

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My thoughts are as follow. I believe the SOYP should be grouped with Pen making forums. This is the end result of the following pen making forums. I do not believe they should be part of the welcoming forum. You can give a taste of what is available by scrolling past photos as you are doing and also featuring the Featured pen.

I also think the casual conversation should be included in the Other Community Forums. Again Newbies do not need to see conversations that have nothing to do with joining the site. This should be for members to share their stories.

Blank making forum needs a Casting sub forum as well.

These are my initial thoughts.

A very large number of visitors arrive here following a link to a photo. My thinking was to give people an easy way to get to seeing what we do by putting SOYP right in front of them.

I debated on where to put Casual Conversation and I see your point clearly.

I think casting is a good suggestion too.
 

jeff

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I've really liked everything about the new forum so far so will defer to your good judgment. Only pet peeve I have is the Wiki. Never saw any good in there. I think you could ditch it.

I think the wiki interface is not very friendly, and that discourages contributions. @randyrls worked hard to get it to a usable point, but I'm not sure that it's suitable for a small community like ours. Randy and I have not decided whether or not to bring it back, but I expect that he and I will consult with Wayne on the feasibility of incorporating the content into the library.
 

MartinPens

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Jeff, I like it. I noticed you changed Pen Turning to Pen Making. In my opinion, there is a difference between the two descriptions. But you can change it if you wish, of course!
I think I'll agree with this. International Association of Penturners - and the web address is penturners.com Pen makers just sounds too generic and open. Thanks for all of your hard work on this Jeff. i like the new look and I'm starting to get used to the new layout a bit when I'm on.
 

jttheclockman

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A very large number of visitors arrive here following a link to a photo. My thinking was to give people an easy way to get to seeing what we do by putting SOYP right in front of them.

I debated on where to put Casual Conversation and I see your point clearly.

I think casting is a good suggestion too.

Understood Jeff and it is up to you what to do but as I said if those photos brought them here than they would see the other penturning forums grouped together showing how we got to that photo. As I also said you post the streamer photos as you are doing now plus the Featured pen should be enough to whet their appetite. But again just my thoughts.
 

leehljp

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I tend to see this in the same light as what John T. said in # 3 and #13 above. I like pictures from the skilled and professional. (Returning to my childhood!) AND it is a big boost when a person has struggled and struggled over a couple of years and suddenly hits a home run! And then to see the sudden jump into the highly skilled. Oh the confidence that oozes from that one pen! . . . and this happens often here, thanks to this forum, you and the people here!
 

walshjp17

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There used to be a subforum in Shops, Jigs, Fixtures and Tools for the Pen Wizard. I realize there are but a few of us, but having the tips and experiences of others is very helpful to those of us who use the PW. Could we have a subform in the new Shops, Tools, & Equipment forum. TIA.
 

jeff

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The forum reordering is done. I've tried to incorporate all the suggestions in this thread. Please have a look and see what you think.

Additional suggestions welcome.

Question: Is "Casting and Stabilization" ok, or do they need to be separate subforums.
 

jeff

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There used to be a subforum in Shops, Jigs, Fixtures and Tools for the Pen Wizard. I realize there are but a few of us, but having the tips and experiences of others is very helpful to those of us who use the PW. Could we have a subform in the new Shops, Tools, & Equipment forum. TIA.

It's under the new Shops Forum

Along the same lines of a rotary tool to embellish pens, perhaps we need a laser engraver forum too. Maybe 3D printer too.
 

1080Wayne

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Re Casting and stabilization . As one who does one or the other or both , depending on what I`m dealing with , it is fine the way it is . I will read every post whether combined or separated . I think combined also works best for someone asking ` Do i need to stabilize this piece before casting` . Conflicting advice will probably follow .
 

jttheclockman

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I was looking at the forum Past Event archives and was looking at last years Bash threads. I noticed many of the photos are not there from the entries to the winners. Can this be corrected?? I like the way you listed all these and make it so easy to find past events. Great idea. Last site we had to do some hard searching. Thanks Jeff.
 

jeff

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I was looking at the forum Past Event archives and was looking at last years Bash threads. I noticed many of the photos are not there from the entries to the winners. Can this be corrected?? I like the way you listed all these and make it so easy to find past events. Great idea. Last site we had to do some hard searching. Thanks Jeff.

To save me digging, can you post or send me a couple URLs of threads that have photo problems?

Just to emphasize, no photos were lost or left behind. Everything is somewhere, it just may be an issue of how they were inserted into the post that needs to be adjusted.
 

jeff

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John

The photos aren't showing up on the old forum either (I can still access it.)

It appears that the issue is with the last Bash. The winner threads from the individual forums were moved to a winners forum at the old site, and something happened with that move. A number of the threads I checked are working ok.

Are there threads in prior Bash forums that this is happening to?
 

jeff

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Check the first of those links. I fixed the first set of photos.

The GOOD NEWS is that all of those photos are here in the attachment directory. The FURTHER GOOD NEWS is that they can be fixed.

The BAD NEWS is that fixing them requires hand editing of the post. The FURTHER BAD NEWS is that there are hundreds if not thousands of those situations.

The reason this is an issue has to do with somewhat buggy behavior of the former photo attachment code. There were a couple situations where the post code (the BB Code) for the attachment would not get formatted correctly. It worked OK as long as the post was never moved to a different forum, but if it was moved, the image would no longer display. This happened mostly when a "winner's thread" was moved from a contest or voting forum into a "winners forum". (Or some combination of those).

I am in the process of formulating a fix for this that does not involve the mind-numbing process of hand-editing old posts. I'll keep you posted.
 

jttheclockman

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Thanks Jeff. It is not a high priority but it would be nice to have those archived photos and threads being the Bash is a huge part of what we do here. I know I would always look back on past events to get some inspiration. And maybe others do also. You are doing a great job getting things up and running.
 

randyrls

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Jeff; at one time, the place I worked had to do a MAJOR conversion on our network. I wrote down a process to dump all the information to a file (SQL Export) and then wrote a script that ran in a text editor (UltraEdit) to go thru the data and make the changes automatically. We then reloaded the data back into the system. We had to do extensive testing to make sure everything worked properly, but it saved a lot of time working in the SQL Manager. It often happens that bouncing a problem off someone else suggests solutions.

Hmmm. I looked at the links and they appear to be formatted differently. I don't see a way to view the BBcode directly. If it is BBcode.

I keep editing this msg, sorry. It looks like the two links at the top of the message are "corrected" and the next two broken links are the same image(s) with incorrect links. I think the incorrect links contain direct links to the file system, but the working links are going thru an attachment manager. The "f422" string is directly followed by the "Image Number" followed by "d".

Ultraedit can do RegEx searches although I have difficulty with that. Never really "GROKKED" it.
 
Last edited:

jeff

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Randy, I've done similar things. I really want to avoid dumping the database. SQL is extremely powerful, it just takes a little time to come up with the right query. I might write a little PHP script to do it.

Here is an example of the incorrectly formatted link:

Code:
[IMG]https://www.penturners.org/forum/attachments/f422/185099d1550535759-2019-pretty-resin-pen-contest-voting-round-1-imagej1.jpg[/IMG]

Here's what it needs to be:

Code:
[IMG]https://www.penturners.org/forum/attachments/185099[/IMG]

The important part of the link is the attachment number, in this case 185099. In the first link. The bad link is in the format of the preview editor, the buggy behavior being that it didn't get correctly formatted when it got posted. It worked as long as it was in the original forum ("f422" in this case), but as soon as it was moved, it broke. In the correct format, it worked anywhere.

So any of you SQL experts out there, have at it. I have the attachment number isolated, with the following, but I need a reliable, multi-instance replace for the dynamic content between the IMG tags.

SQL:
SELECT substring_index(substring_index(substring_index(message, '[IMG]https://www.penturners.org/forum/attachments/f', -1), 'd', 1), '/', -1) FROM `xf_post`
WHERE message like '%[IMG]https://www.penturners.org/forum/attachments/f%'

In this case, it gives me a nice neat result of 185099.
 

mark james

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For those that may have not noticed it yet, the old IAP site photos that were in "Gallery" format and did not transfer have been restored by Jeff.

Thank You! It sure is a blessing to have someone as dedicated as you at the helm.
 

jeff

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Well, I've started fixing these type of image issues. These particular threads are done. Unfortunately, there are enough differences in the problem links to make it very difficult to automate the process. It's one of those things that takes a human eye to fix. There are about 375 posts with problem links, and I can do about 25 before my eyes cross and my click finger cramps up. So, give me another week.

On a related note, there are hundreds if not over a thousand posts with broken hotlinked images from ImageShack, Flickr, TinyPic, etc. There's nothing I can do to fix those, but there are measures in place to keep that from happening in the future.
 

jttheclockman

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Much appreciated Jeff. As I said the Bash thing is a big part of what we do here so it would be nice to look back at past events and enjoy the progress and some of the work from past members and members who have passed on and this is one way to preserve them. It is an easy look up too. Thanks again.

Jeff I just checked and the first link is now fixed but the next 2 are still not there.
 

jeff

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Much appreciated Jeff. As I said the Bash thing is a big part of what we do here so it would be nice to look back at past events and enjoy the progress and some of the work from past members and members who have passed on and this is one way to preserve them. It is an easy look up too. Thanks again.

Jeff I just checked and the first link is now fixed but the next 2 are still not there.

Those second two links are fixed now (at least on my screen, let me know otherwise).

I'm about back to 2016 in the link repair project. Have a look around and please let me know what other image links seem to be broken. You and @mark james are my photo validators!
 

jttheclockman

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Those second two links are fixed now (at least on my screen, let me know otherwise).

I'm about back to 2016 in the link repair project. Have a look around and please let me know what other image links seem to be broken. You and @mark james are my photo validators!

You DA Man Jeff. Looks good.
 
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