Signatures

[Paul mabbott]

I think that everyone is happy again but I also think that a lot of aggravation could have been avoided if this mattered had been discussed or at least notified in advance?

I see the problems &c but was mildly annoyed that I lost my link - if I'd know what was happening beforehand then no problem. I'm sure that applies to most people. I think there's a lot to be said for consultation on such matters ...

Originally Posted by StuartDH

It's common throughout the Internet to share reciprocal links. We've displayed hundreds of them to other sites, but less than a quarter take the time to link back to WAB.

That said, I put back the signatures for everyone a couple of days ago, but we'll still keep the 'link for a link' as WAB needs links the same as everyone else. I'm sure everyone who posts a link on WAB is only too happy to link back us so it shouldn't be a problem.

I don't quite see how we're forcing anyone to volunteer, but we will obviously reward volunteers for their efforts. Carrots not sticks.

Stuart

P.S. I've added your site to link pages so your link will now show in your signature again

[StuartDH]

Originally Posted by mh68

First of all, like the others, whatever rules are decided on I`m happy to abide by them.But I fail to see the harm in allowing members to have links in their signatures, provided theyre not links to sites in direct competition with this one or commercial links which may prove a problem with the sites sponsors.
Correct me if i`m wrong Stu, but if I signed up as a volunteer and did a little work on the database etc, I would be allowed a linked signature?
What about the many hours members spend on the forum, keeping it busy, reporting spam posts, submitting images to the galleries etc? These are all valuable contributions too, but apparently don`t warrant being allowed something simple like a link in their signature. It doesnt seem logical to reward work directed towards one area of the site and not the effort everyone puts into keeping the forums busy,making it a friendly community as a whole and continually expanding the already excellent gallery.Although the other site features such as the database etc are valuable additions, the forum and gallery are to my mind, the main hub of the site, so efforts in this direction should be rewarded too?

If you see post #14 from a few days ago, everyone can post a signature, but only links can be posted by members who link to WAB.

Originally Posted by mh68

Please dont take this as a criticism, its merely an observation,and something you may not have considered.
If I may offer a small suggestion which may help increase site hits, maybe when work is being carried out on the site and there`s a risk of timeouts or the site going offline for a short while, a default message page outlining such ,would possibly help. Anyone who happened to click onto WaB from google or whatever may think its a dead link if the site happened to be down and would likely not bother again. At least with a simple message page they would know its only temporary while work was being carried out,and would likely try visiting the site again at a later time.May be worth a try?I know it`s worked on other site`s i`ve been involved with in the past.

We can only do this if it's the server that goes down. It's only happened for less than 3 hours over the last 18 months and it's a manual process, so it would need someone (me ) to be around when it goes down to change the redirect page with the domain host. This can often take longer than getting the server up again, but if we think it's going to be a long time (more than an hour) then we've put up a message temporary page in the past.

If it's the server or network hosting the domain that goes down then unfortunately we can't do much but wait.

Stu

[StuartDH]

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

I think that everyone is happy again but I also think that a lot of aggravation could have been avoided if this mattered had been discussed or at least notified in advance?

I see the problems &c but was mildly annoyed that I lost my link - if I'd know what was happening beforehand then no problem. I'm sure that applies to most people. I think there's a lot to be said for consultation on such matters ...

I started this thread a few months ago:

WAB Link Exchange

[mh68]

No worries Stu, i`m not savvy with the ins and outs of servers etc, I see what you mean.

Mark H