Shaun_E

There is something wrong with the way the acknowledgement is presented but the orders are being recorded correctly on the system. I’ll look into it in more detail tomorrow. If anyone is worried they will get the wrong item then drop me a line and I’ll tell you what we have recorded for you. 

Shaun

Thanks Charles, AIM looks great but twice the price :-o I had a DL1 years ago but now use a Racekeeper who have just gone into administration. Dash 2 + GoPro seems ideal for HD video and data. Will contact Roger and see what he has to say. 

Digidash seems much improved but the GPS sampling rate is a bit low and I am looking to overlay data on video. Thanks for the pointer though. 

I’m looking for a replacement for my Stack dash, preferably with built in data logging. The Race Technology Dash 2 meets all my needs at a good price so has anyone fitted one in a Caterham? It looks like it will be a tight fit and probably the shift lights will be obscured by my 260 mm Momo. Pictures of one fitted would be great. 

Wiki functions are live on the website - we just need some volunteers :-)

If you can post on the forum then you can write a wiki article - they use exactly the same editor! Files can be uploaded as well with a link - I can help anyone willing to give it a go.

Hosting copyrighted documents is a bit more problematic for the club than maybe an individual but anything in the public domain we can host or anything we have permission to publish.

Contact me on shaun.elwell@lotus7.club if you would be willing to write something for the Wiki.

Shaun

Beta of google search of the site: https://www.lotus7.club/google-search

It currently includes adverts as the first few results because that is the price of a free search.

To embed google in the site has a cost. If we can restrict this to members then there is a possibility to do that. I'll raise it at the MT meeting at the end of this month. The risk is unexpected costs if we can't control who uses it or someone goes a bit crazy with the searching.

The search we have works as expected. For a piece of open source software it's pretty good. Obviously you've all been spoiled by google (or other web search engine of your choice) and there is nothing we can do to change that.

We're going to have a play with the free google search (advert supported!!!) and see where we get.

I've just checked this as well. the title is "DIFFERENTIAL OIL AND LESSON LEARNT" (lesson not lessons) and if you then filter on "The Pikey" as the poster then it is the first result. So sorry, the search is working.

It isn't google but then it didn't cost google money!

I also tried "differential oil" filtered by "The Pikey" and it's the only result.

I tried differential AND oil and found an issue in that "The Pikey" didn't appear in the filter list but the post was in the results. I think there were too many posters for that result and it only showed those with higher numbers of related posts.

As it is easy to use google search then use that instead - it's free. To embed google in the site is not free.

It does show as a National event and if you filter on "National Events" then it is displayed correctly. If you filter on ESV bookings then it isn't listed (there are no ESV bookings listed). Looks like breadcrumbs not working properly so will get it investigated.

Shaun

We have 2" belts with Simpson Hybrid FHR and that works really well. If I didn't have an FHR I'd prefer to have 3" belts.

If the belts are level as they go over your shoulders then that's OK - between 20 deg and 0 deg is recommended. If they sloped down that's no good.

I would definitely recommend 6 point harness.

That’s a weird one. I can’t edit the 2nd one because it has the same name as the first. I’m worried that if I delete it then it will delete both so I’ll leave it and take another look later. 

Ian:

1. It's not necessarily policy to do that but some users feel that is the way to do things - some don't. Not everyone using the system agrees on the best way to manage posts
2. Because we re-purposed the old "Motorsport" section which had very few posts in it
3. Opinions on this differ - it's like Brexit!

Dave - that's rubbish :-) As point 3 above, everyone has a different opinion on how it should work. If the people doing the work decide on something different to your opinion then that's just the way it is. Doesn't mean your idea wasn't considered just that the choice went different to yours - just like Brexit.

Merry Christmas 

rj - there are a few companies such as Boss Racing, PT Sports Cars, etc. who could provide a car for you. As they are in the South East, one of the closer circuits would probably work out most cost effective - Brands Hatch being the obvious one! The requirements to attend a club track day are that you are a member and that you will be driving a Caterham or Lotus 7 - it doesn't have to be your own Caterham :-)

All fixed now (links to my Chinese gambling sites replaced by the proper text anchors).

Actually it was a crappy copy and paste job by me when I set the Guides section up and forgot to fix the page anchor links!!

Try fitting a stiffer detent spring. We had the same issue earlier this year mainly jumping out of 5th or 6th but always under heavy braking. The spring can be changed in-situ if you have a short passenger foot-well but might be a bit trickier with a full length foot-well.

I don't have a wheeled bag and never really thought I needed one. Our E-Z Up travels in the rear of the van but I have once carried it on the trailer strapped between front and rear arches of the Caterham. If you have a tyre rack on your trailer then you could probably rig something up to carry it on that.

Hi Anthony - I don't have the original data to hand but I'm sure I could get hold of it. I'm not around for the next 2 weeks but will see what I can find when I'm back.

The original site import was fairly rudimentary and involved some pretty heavy spreadsheet manipulation in order to combine the content from the 3 different old sites and assign to user IDs - on old BC users had multiple aliases which caused the biggest headache. It was probably this process that 1) messed up the formatting and 2) lost the embedded URL links.

The migration was the single biggest expense in the move and the most fraught part of it. The sheer size of the database meant it took about 2 weeks to do the import and indexing. When the data issues were spotted we had been live for over 2 weeks and it just wasn't possible to go back and re-do the import. We couldn't do an update/fix because there was no unique key match between the old database and the new (Drupal has it's own unique key and this wasn't written back to the old DB). I'm sure with the right knowledge time and access to the system, someone could work out a way to do it but the cost to pay someone to do this would be huge.

I don't know what the underlying server architecture is exactly because we host with s specialist Drupal host provider (Pantheon) who provide a flexible, scalable, demand driven architecture. I think it is UNIX underneath and possibly a My SQL DB but I'd have to check with our providers.

Shaun

Hi Sean - there is nothing in those sections - it was all moved to others. You shouldn't be able to use the old ones but you've obviously found a loophole.

Shaun

Another  for E-Z Up Speedshelter 2: http://ezup-direct.co.uk/speed

If you look around the paddock, you'll see more of these than all the others put together for good reason. They fit a Caterham perfectly and they are solidly constructed. We've had ours for a good few years now and it's had a lot of use! Not the cheapest but IMO worth the extra. We always strap ours to the trailer or some other fairly immovable object. Overnight we lower it over the car and strap to the car. You can drill extra holes in the legs to get a custom height setting.

We bought ours as part of a bulk buy and got about 10% off so if you can get some other people interested then that might be an opportunity.

Hi Stu, you need to change the “Receive comment follow up notification emails” to “no notifications”. This will turn off the check box for all future posts. You can tick the box for threads you would like to receive notifications about. 

Shaun

I'll add it to the list :-)

Hex on mine and I find it easiest with a long extension from the top and a second pair of hands. I think I'll swap to cap-heads next time though. 

It was a Drupal security update :-)

I've asked NDP to stop the mail queue until the problem is resolved but there may still be a backlog getting through.

Looks like a bug with the mail queue system - there's a whole backlog of notification emails queued and I guess these are getting sent a few at a time. I've reported it to our support team.

The latest security patches have caused a number of issues which we are working to get resolved.

OK I'll rise to the bait again.

Benefits of the new world:

1. Single sign on vs 3 different ones (Blachat, website, 7FAQ) - this is important as hardly anybody used the website or 7FAQ
2. Events calendar
3. Easy content posting for MT and ARs (news, events, member benefits)
4. On-line payment for events
5. Technical "Guides" content (now with Wiki functions ready to be launched)
6. Web pages for Track-days, Speed championship and Area Meets (including international)
7. Private messaging
8. on-line chat
9. Single search across all content

Before someone tells me yet again that search is rubbish, it works exactly as old BC did except it defaults to OR instead of AND but, lets face it, will never be google. If that's a problem then use google - it works. On the website search, you can filter the results by content type, forum, person who posted. We have over 2 million posts on the site - it's always going to be a tricky to find very old posts. On old BC you had to scroll through pages and pages of results to find what you wanted and you didn't have the filters you can use now.

I've just done a few random searches to test. I tried french AND seven and then filtered by author Wile7 - 163 posts. I tried Halfords AND voucher and filtered by author Geoff Brown - 5 posts all referencing the Halfords voucher scheme. I searched "K series" and filtered by author Peter Carmichael and got 70 posts. It's not that hard and I've posted the 3 main search tips many times.

• Use term 1 AND term 2 to get posts with both terms in e.g. oil AND filter
• Use "word1 word2" to get the exact phrase e.g. "oil filter"
• Use the sort and filter functions to narrow down the search

Having multiple platforms with a single sign on costs more time and money to implement, is unreliable and has to be tested and tweaked every time one of those platforms is updated. In IT the hardest thing to do is integrate separate platforms which is why the club made a decision to have a single platform and accept some compromises. IT is expensive - with every additional functional requirement costs go up - we can't have everything we want and have to prioritise what we believe are the best value changes. We do listen to member's requests but sometimes the cost benefit isn't there.

I know it's not perfect and it never will be but, for most members, it is good enough and for the club it is good value.

I have no problem with people suggesting changes and we have implemented  many suggested changes. In some cases though 1) we disagree or 2) there is some constraint preventing a good value result.

Let me give you an analogy - why spend 1000's developing a fundamentally flawed engine? If you want reliable big horsepower, why not choose a Duratec? if you want a high revving engine with sequential and paddleshift, why not choose a Hayabusa? Each of those solutions (including the one chosen) presents it's own unique challenges and compromises - you have to work with what you've got. By the way - an article on your car development would be fantastic for either Lowflying or the website. We have Wiki functions enabled on the website now so anyone wishing to write technical articles is most welcome.

It's the same for our website and forum - we made a good decision to move to a single content management system which brings a whole heap of advantages but of course there are some compromises, in this case some constraints on ability to implement some functions easily and cost effectively. We are working with what we have.

Ian - I wish I had thought to request that historic posts in for sale and wanted be tagged during the migration - an oversight on my part - sorry. Your second point was what I wanted but it was not a simple change.

Please don't forget that this wasn't a single isolated change - it was part of a larger package of work and consolidation of forum sections which in general has been successful. To make changes to one small element of that now has a disproportionate cost.

We can make this website and forum do exactly what we want - for a price! It is my role to balance the functionality against the cost to provide good value for money for the club and it's members - that is the difficult bit.

I am well aware that it doesn't really matter what I think or write here - some people will always believe there is some conspiracy, some hidden agenda and that we don't listen to the membership. Well those people are wrong, it's just that it's always a bit more complicated than it seems. It becomes soul destroying constantly trying to defend every decision - by all means make suggestions but if it doesn't go your way then accept it and move on. If we made every suggested change either the club would be bankrupt or membership fees would have to double - nobody wants that.