This site is due for an update

CB is well worth my time and my $20 each year, keep up the good work. CB is one of two websites I visit each day, and that won't change. I visit other amusement park sites who give the news and such, but Jeff does a great job of breaking it down to the stories that are actually interesting, and mean something to the enthusiast community.

There are so many sites out there, I get tired of ones that are so hard-up for stories that they start talking about zoos and full poscasts about county fairs in Florida. Sorry, doesn't mean much to me personally folks!

And I can understand that broadband is slow to get to users. Comcast broadband is advertised, promoted, etc. add nauseum everywhere. I figured living in the Chicago suburbs and having Comcast as my cable provider, I would be able to get Comcast broadband but to my surprise, it's not available here.

Thank god I have been on DSL for about 4 years

Even if 80% of the visitors have broadband, you're going to make life miserable for the other 20%? I really get annoyed when various forums I'm on forget that. If I want to view images, I'll click on links for images, but I don't want them shoveled down my throat when I AM connected via dial-up (I have broadband at home, but that's not always available on the road...)

Chi-twon: Consider it a blessing. One less service from Com-crap is one less headache to have. Though if your DSL is through Verizon, it's not much better. I'm so glad I have Cox here in NoVa.
lata, jeremy

--who totally forgot about the color change 'benefit' of being a paid member.

I understand your opposition to images in posts, and you are right, it is commonly abused - but wouldn't it be easy to have a feature where individual users could turn on or off "automatic viewing of image URLs" and also have the ablility to block images from specific users ?

I would think that would be the way to go with ANY feature - add them all - as you have to stay competitive with other forum softs - but have the ones you don't like turned off by default, and let specific users turn on or off features, as they need/want them.

This would also make it easy to have features that are only available to club members and/or purchasers of "deluxe" versions of the software.

Customablity is your friend. Overall I like these forums, but they are definitely lacking in features compared to what else is out there now. Of course, you make up for it with a simple, clean interface - but that doesn't mean you can't have the best of both worlds and add tons of features that are off by default & let the users choose what they need or want.

Either way, keep up the good work...and yes, someday I'll join the club.

But the thing is, all of the "features" on existing forum apps do little to add to the original purpose... to facilitate discussion. Does anyone remember discussion? I think vBulletin, for example, is an awesome product, but the way it's used in most places, I can't stand to look at it.

I am adding quite a bit to v8, but a lot of it also won't see the light of day on CoasterBuzz.

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Chitown said:
And I can understand that broadband is slow to get to users. Comcast broadband is advertised, promoted, etc. add nauseum everywhere. I figured living in the Chicago suburbs and having Comcast as my cable provider, I would be able to get Comcast broadband but to my surprise, it's not available here.

Thank god I have been on DSL for about 4 years

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What about WideOpenWest? I had them at my old house (1 mile from you) before we moved...

If it ain't broke, why fix it?

What I always love is when this type of person says, "This could be so much better if you did this, that and the other thing..."

If they think they know the answer, why don't THEY build the better version? Oh, that's right...they can't and wouldn't even know where to start.

I'm not entirely sure if that's true. I mean, I know what songs I like, but I can't play an instrument or sing.

But generally speaking, with most media production (and software development), there's a cost associated with everything. If you can do something that has obvious return on investment (like offering online purchases of club memberships), then you go after those things first. Better club features are certainly something I'll spend more time on next version, because those are the people that contribute the most to the site's income.

I was just going to say that. I can code pretty well (albeit in PHP) but the thing is that even if you opened a site with all the features in the world, you will never amount to what is already here, with or without those features.

I don't need any bells and whistles. The site is great the way it is. It's design is simple and helps to push discussions forward.

Less is more.

Ok... so the photo/picture thing is dead.

But how about a few more formatting options? Yes, simple is best... but how about a couple more emoticons... nothing absurd, but maybe a mean face, a roll-eyes face, and a couple other basics.

...Also, how about an underline option? bold & italics are fine... but underlining can sometimes help with a point as well.
...I've noticed that the popular Invision forums have an option where all caps is automatically turned into lower-case. I haven't noticed many posts in caps here recently, but an interesting auto-feature would be to turn any all-caps text (4+ letter words) into small case.
...What about 2 other text sizes... a slightly smaller point font & a slightly larger point font? Some peeps here might abuse it, but it could be good for news stories & such.

I'd join the Club membership if there were a couple of club-benefits for us out on the East-coast more-so than the mid-east like Holiday World, PKI, & such.

I guess this is where I mention that events were never really the primary point of the club as much as supporting the site was.

One more comment on inline images (not that it's a concern here :) ), is it's even one more thing that the staff needs to monitor then. If someone posts a porn image (for example), it'd be Coasterbuzz that's liable for any reprecussions (ie minors seeing the images), not the poster...

EDIT -- Re: last comment on page 1

There's a difference between offering ideas for improvements or suggestions (regardless of the tone of those suggestions) and having the technical prowess and temporal (and financial) freedom to actually execute it.

Besides, when did it become unacceptable for customers to offer opinions on how to improve one's services? Doesn't necessarily mean they'll be implemented -- and even if Jeff doesn't use any of the ideas he hears, at least he's evaluated them. That at least shows planning and foresight for the next version of the site.

Since when has constructive criticism been a bad thing? *** Edited 2/15/2006 2:28:54 AM UTC by Nitro Dave***

Ever since people have become overly sensitive to that criticism. Maybe it is because they cannot distinguish between criticism and complaining.

^^Not only that, but it seems entirely appropriate for someone to offer these 'suggestions' on a forum entitled "Suggestions for CoasterBuzz". The only thing that I'd caution is that they are just that "SUGGESTIONS", that may or may not be implemented. As long as one remembers that, why *not* treat it like a brainstorming session and see what sticks?

If you're taking votes (and I know you aren't) I vote for "less is more". Heck, if you could get rid of the few emoticons you have, I'd be even happier. There's nothing wrong with good old fashioned text!

:-)

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Nitro Dave said:
EDIT -- Re: last comment on page 1

There's a difference between offering ideas for improvements or suggestions (regardless of the tone of those suggestions) and having the technical prowess and temporal (and financial) freedom to actually execute it.

Besides, when did it become unacceptable for customers to offer opinions on how to improve one's services?

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Perhaps I worded my response a little harsh, but in my opinion, there is a difference between, "Hey I had these ideas to improve the site" and "This site is due for an update. In this day and age you should be able to...."