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I find that it drastically affects the site performance, and here are specifics:

1. The site STARTS loading quickly, as usual, but then the ebay box shows up and everything just about stalls. It will load in "spurts", but the ebay box just keeps getting bigger and bigger--, and everything slows down even more

2. the 'edit' button doesn't go edit anymore, it just puts the 'working' screen in the top right corner as always, but then it never finishes loading the editable page

3. the ebay box itself--when I have clicked on a couple of the items, it didn't actually go to the item--instead, it went to a rover-type of page. From there, it went to another page that finally ended up at the actual ebay item, but I don't like to sign in to ebay after going through all those type of intermediate pages, so I didn't.

4. the ebay box shows up at random spots throughout the site and throughout a page

5. ALL of the above were the same, whether on my home computer or on my iphone---it stalled/froze/skipped/stuttered the same way, so I can't blame it on my dial-up........it also did the same thing on high-speed wifi with my windows 8.1 tablet-----

Now, yes, I think that there IS a use for it somehow...could it possibly be it's own 'forum' that could be accessed IF someone wants to see what's scrolling through, rather than being in front all the time? The catch there might be to make sure that if someone leaves that page, that the 'loading' stops also.

That all being said, I don't have a problem just going to ebay and doing searches for specific items........but it COULD be more convenient if there's a link here.

The old forum had two different ebay things: one would go right to items that were up, the other one would just send you through rovers, too---again, I never liked that and didn't use those links. I just wrote the item title or number down and then went to ebay and typed it in.

Another option might be to make the ebay stuff an 'option' to either turn on or not, in a Preferences setting?

I hope that gives some insight into whats happening out here. I know you're doing a lot of stuff, and its coming around.......I applaud the time and effort. Thank you!

Dave Fox

 

Firefox on my desktop, Safari on my iphone, and Internet explorer on my Surface RT

 

Glad to help. I'll go try editing one of my posts, too, and see if I can now.

dave

 

does implementing this feature somehow benefit the forum? for members that have limited bandwidth, this will be a huge detractor for them and they may limit their interaction as a result.

CN

 

Was able to edit the post almost instantly

Seems the ebay stuff/settings were interfering somehow-- I know others had indicated in various comments that they couldn't edit either, so they should find they can edit again, too. I"ll mention that in the 'shout box' area.

 

Sno - it is important that you get paid for all that you do.
I have to admit, I didn't care for the Ebay stuff and also am not a huge proponent for using them when we have Chacal.

Would it be wrong/ difficult to actually charge members a small nominal fee once a year?

Everyone chips in a little should add up to alot - however it might discourage new XJ owners from visiting/ joining.
Unless it could be set up that your first 10 posts are free (at which time most everyone would agree that a newbie would realize the true value of this site).

With over 16,000 members (not sure how many active ones there are) it could be a rather small fee to keep you and this site in the black.

Another option is to have a 'fund drive' - somehow create awareness of the DONATE button in the upper left and encourage members to help out. I believe last year someone started a thread to that effect and it made me a believer.

Someone also mentioned selling XJ Bikes logo stickers and having some of the earnings go to the Adminsitrator here . . . this sounds good but once everyone gets theirs, sales would probably drop off and along with it so would your maintenance payments . . . .

 

Ads are necessary but this eBay trick is ridiculous. I click on new posts and it's just pages of crap. Half of it isn't even for our era of XJ.

 

All of the Ebay posts end up being mirrored in the New Posts section of the forum. For a lot of us that section is the first thing we look at. It has gone to a page of new posts by members to 5 or 6 pages of Ebay postings. This makes it a bit more difficult to keep up on what is new to the forum. I like the Ebay feed, but is there a way to prevent those posts from being mirrored in the New Posts section?

 

The Ebay feed has been a part of this forum for ages. It went away temporarily during the transtition to the new forum software. Keep in mind that there are many XJ parts that are used on all models, regardless of year.

 

That should work. I'll give it a try and see how functional it is. If that is going to be the best workaround it might be helpful to remove the "New Posts" button from sight if that is possible, or to relabel it to reflect that most of what a person will see by clicking it is the Ebay posts.