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Aptera forum improvements
I would like to thank the hard working people moderating the forum, it is much appreciated.
I’ve noticed that we no longer get spam posts and Very similar threads are being merged.
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40 Replies
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Aptera forum improvements
updated 1 week, 2 days ago 25 Members · 40 Replies
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You are kind…like the audience we have of knowledgeable Aptera followers and new ones too …anxious to learn together… Delta coming, which will “ cross the Ts and dot the Is”…
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This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by Len Nowak.
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Len, a personal thanks to you for your consistent enthusiasm and your regular postings urging us forward.
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Len, can something be done about the ” X” updated “Y” minutes ago” at the top of each thread? It seems that if someone posts, but then deletes their post, the update slug stays until the next time someone posts. Since the post is gone, anyone clicking on the slug is just taken to the beginning of the thread.
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This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by
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And thanks to Riley for bringing this up. I was just thinking about this yesterday, but was too lazy to post it. We used to often stumble into spam and extreme political perspectives. It has all pretty much disappeared. Thank you Len and Ray and to others who are helping out with this. Much appreciated.
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It would be very nice to see THE LINK to said “Reply” that John Doe made so we could see Main Subject posts in full context containing his Reply.
Right now, we know the Subject Name and General area (“Discussions”), and the reply.
We cannot easily find Where the Reply was made so we can see it in full context.
Just add a Link to actual Reply… Would sure make it better.
Thank You!
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Click the xx hours, xx minutes ago link.
What gets screwy is when that reply is not on the latest page of the thread, in which case you have to replace the page number in the URL until you hit the right page.
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@John Hermann – Thank you!🤩 I never looked at the URL after clicking the link and it not taking me to the post. I would sigh and manually go to each page and scroll search for the name to find the post. Now I hate this forum’s operation just a little bit less than I did. But only a little bit less.😉
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Same goes for me. Most of the time when I click on the link I get a 404 error.
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404 links are usually due to another website glitch. If you enter a link in your comment (It may also be any pasted item), a lot of the time the software will echo it for some reason and post it twice as a run on sentence, or link. If you get a 404 on a link look at the entry and you can copy 1/2 of it, and enter that into your address bar usually to make it work.
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Of course it would help if posters would LOOK at their post after it is posted, and then edit any doubled link to a single link!
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This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by
Dennis Swaney.
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This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by
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I have evolved an avoidance behavior on this forum. If any forum thread with a new post has hundreds of replies it is simply a hassle to open and scroll to the last window. I only open these types of threads if I feel the topic might have some new insights. If I feel the topic has been played out, I pass. Lately, I have been doing this more often. Are others doing the same? It does potentially lead to either limiting the exchange of ideas and/or missing a new and insightful idea. I wish Aptera would invest in a better forum platform. With their growing popularity as a company this issue is only going to get worse.
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I more than agree. I also feel the apparent “moderation” is hypocritically heavy handed. Just within the last couple of hours my comments pushing back on climate science deniers are gone yet the denier’s nonsense still viewable. Heck, this comment will likely get “moderated out”.
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True. Sometimes it’s a pain to sift through trying to find the most recent posts. But still, it was awful nice of aptera to build this thing for us. It’s a nice place to come and hear people’s thoughts on the vehicle without having to sign up on one of those other ‘social media’ sites. And personally, I’m glad they aren’t wasting a bunch of time and talent on refining this forum software, I want them to stay laser-focused on getting their vehicle finished and out on the road.
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I agree. Aptera would be foolish to use internal resources to try to improve the forum software when for a few hundred dollars they could get vBulletin which would be a much more robust solution that has already been refined over many years and millions of users. That is one example. There are many other very cost-effective options as well.
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Careful, Paul, I’ve been chastised severely on this forum for similar suggestions to use either vBulletin or phpBB. Supposedly, this website and forum are run by a outside contractor, so maybe that is who has a thin skin.
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One trick that helps (maybe you’re already aware of it) is that the top of the thread shows who last posted and when, for example “Chris Anthony updated 3 hours 25 minutes ago…” The “3 hours 25 minutes ago” is a link that takes you to that (most recent) reply. For me it doesn’t always work (for some reason), but usually it does. Of course, that gets you to the MOST recent reply which may or may not be close to other recent replies.
If Aptera were to migrate the forum over to a more robust platform (they may be limited to what the platform they’ve chosen for their whole website offers), it would be important to migrate the existing content over to that new platform, which may not be trivial. Nothing’s impossible (except lighting a match on a wet bar of soap), but I suspect they have bigger fish to fry right now. Even finding and populating an exisiting commercial alternative would suck away some resources for a while.
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That link only works when the post is either in a thread with a low number of posts or if the post is at the very end of the thread that has a high post count. Also, if the post is deleted, the link still remains until a NEWER post is made.
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One user here, and unfortunately, I don’t remember who to give props to told of a helpful trick when the link doesn’t take you to the latest post. Change the page number in the URL, and if the post is on that page, it will lead you to it. Another method is to click on the forum member’s name and go to their profile. Click on the “Timeline” tab and you will see their posts in reverse order, newest on top. Click the post in the timeline and it will take you to it in the discussion.
I know, not convenient, but it’s quicker than scanning each page in the thread till you find the one.
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It would also help if there were instructions available about how to post on a thread, insert pics etc
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To post a picture, click on the camera icon in the lower left in the compose window and follow the instructions.
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I’d like to see a new top banner photo.
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This site should use vBulletin or phpBB.
BTDT No T-shirt.
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It would also be nice to go to a decent forum software like the free and open source phpBB. The poor threading is so annoying that I stop reading threads that have more than 100 posts as the “updated” link at the top of large threads doesn’t take you to what it says. Also, I don’t know what they did yesterday but today the forum text is all washed out and slightly blurry while the main area of aptera.us is nice and distinct.
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phpBB would also be my suggestion. It can be customised to tie into the Aptera website’s user list, etc (no need to have a separate login just for the forum). Pick a hardened version of the distro, make sure it gets updated regularly, turn off some of the unnecessary options (to reduce the attack surface), and then just let it do it’s thing.
There’s no reason to be wasting Aptera software engineer’s time to do forum stuff, that’s just reinventing the wheel for no particular advantage.
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I’m glad to see it’s back up again. Does anyone know why it went offline for a while?
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My guess is “Something broke in the homebrew forum database, fixed on the first full working day”.
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It’s easy to forget, essentially, that Aptera is being quite generous and is doing us a big favor in even hosting a community forum on their website. I have no idea how many other car companies have done this kind of thing during development but I would guess it is few and far between. Thanks to Aptera for hosting our forum, dispite the inadequacies and glitches. I personally have found the free education from our highly knowledgeable and savvy contributers invaluable.
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They have a message board because they think it has business value not as a service to enthusiasts. Although it does serve that function as well.
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I think this episode goes to show you that Chris and Steve are nothing like Elon when it comes to message boards.
good.
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The community forum is still only visible to me when I am logged in.
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Same here. Main link only provides posts when logged in. Otherwise, need to use a different link: https://aptera.us/community/forum/general-discussions/
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The forum software seems to have gotten much worse in the last few weeks. When typing replies I find that it just stops responding for a few seconds, it’s not buffering keystrokes it’s not capturing them. I don’t see this anywhere else on the web so it’s not the browser (I;m using Firefox Linux). Has anyone else noticed this?
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I thought it was just me, i am on android using Samsung web browser. When it happens it seems to recognize everything I’ve typed just has a 3 second delay before showing it. Seems to be triggered at a certain duration of time while typing approximately 10-15 seconds after starting to type a new post.
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Ditto here. I don’t understand why Aptera can’t stabalize the perfromance of the forum sofware. Instead of improving performance and fixing long standing defects, it is getting worse. perhaps a cost cutting measure to negotiate a lower level of support from their contractor or ?????
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Yep, it now seems to randomly log me out during the day. I understand why Aptera went with this piss-poor software: it was cheap. But they could use the FREE phpBB software and have a way better forum. Of course it could also just be incompetent management, but I’d try better software first and give the forum management benefit of doubt.
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I used to be able to log in and stay logged in as long as I did NOT close my web browser. Now if I go to a different tab (leaving the Aptera Discussions tab open) when I come back later, I’m logged out and have to start from scratch again. It did it just awhile ago.
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I spent a lot of time composing a reply to a thread about options for Aptera. I hit post and that was the last I saw of it. Is there a place where drafts are located? I would like to get it back and edit it a little and try to post it again.
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I’ve been burned by that problem, here and on other forums as well. I’ve learned to write any longer posts in a text editor or word processor first, then copy and paste it into a forum post.
I agree this flakey forum behaves like no other I’m familiar with.
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Good advice!
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Try copying your text before hitting post, if it gets lost then you can do a paste and try again.
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