Please Read This

The core of this website is a product from JelSoft known as vBulletin. Most of you are probably familiar with it, as it has been the #1 forum software for years and runs on many, many web sites. In the past they only had Discussion Forum software and the previous IHMSA website here used other products to build the front page with the news articles, etc. JelSoft now includes what they call a CMS (Content Management System), which is the front page with the blocks on the sides and news articles. They are include Blog software so each approved user can be assigned rights to create a blog. All sounds great, right? Everything can be managed with one system so it is easier and cleaner...in theory.

One minor issue - it is BRAND NEW software. The code was not just slightly upgraded, it was almost entirely re-written. It was also rushed out the door probably sooner than it should have been. (In the software industry you always fight half the users complaining that the new version isn't out soon enough versus the other half of the users saying that it wasn't bug tested enough before it was released.) It has bugs. On the company's web site there are thousands of posted bugs. Many are just someone that clicked the wrong thing, many have nothing to do with us (like Chinese characters do not space correctly) but some will cause us issues. For those that are curious, here is the support site:

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...45-vBulletin-4

JelSoft has a release schedule of about every 2 weeks. On these dates they will release patches to fix as many bugs as they could in that time period. Some of these patches run the risk of adding new bugs. To compound the issue, this site is also newly re-built - and vBulletin has something like 2,500 options/settings to configure on the back end - so I certainly could have clicked the wrong thing somewhere.

My point is that each of us WILL experience issues with the site - not a maybe, but practically a guarantee. I need your help in posting here what problems you have experienced. Once I feel that enough of the issues are ironed out I can start to add the software from third parties - like the Classified section. And yes, then work through the bugs in that system. At this point I just feel that there are too many issues with the main package to add additional code. Hopefully the next vBulletin patch fixes many of these.

Stay Tuned, and I appreciate your feedback regarding the functioning of the site...