[Chad]

I logged in just a few minutes ago. Have the two forums merged? I know the cars very similar and they also very different. I find it hard to search for info now. It will be that much more info to sort through. I was under the impression that all makes would have there own forum. Anyway I am just venting. I LOVE my cayman and loved the idea of it having its own website devoted to its very existence. I feel like someone has just kicked my dog.

[K-Man S]

No I posted about this. The overwhelming response I recevied was that for "most" things having separate Boxster and Cayman forums was duplicative, for example Boxster wheels and tires vs. Cayman wheels and tires. They are the same offsets, etc. so no real difference between the two.

Next we combed the Boxster forums to see what was duplicative and what was unique. The unique items were the Boxster Board discussion of Boxster items only, and the Boxster Pics and Videos. So those forums are only seen when you log into the BoxsterBoard.com site. Likewise the Cayman Discussion and Cayman Pics and Video are only seen when you log into the planet-9.com site.

The rest of the forums which were duplicative were merged and then shared across both forums, so on the Cayman site you see the forum "Cayman and Boxster Wheels and Tires", likewise on the Boxster site you see the same forum, a post in one shows up on both sites, etc. they are shared multi-site forums. (They do NOT show up on the Panamera site btw).

So now if you do a New Posts search on the planet-9.com site you will see all the Cayman specific items, plus all the shared Boxster items, plus the other shared Multi-Site forums (like off-topic, regional, rss feeds, etc.)

The BoxsterBoard.com site still allows those who log in there to get at Boxster specific content but also the share content coming from the planet-9.com site. This way we help keep the community together while still providing a means for having some unique items as well.

Hope that helps to explain it.

[bccars]

I'm not quite sure or convinced about the whole thing. I gave the boxsterboard a go a few time, but always when I checked I saw the "new posts" on the boxsterboard were significantly lower then on the Cayman board. So I'm left with the feeling that I would be missing out on a lot of good info when only using the boxster board, allthough i'm a box owner. So at the moment I'm back at the caymanclub, but this could be pure psychological cold water fear on my part, I admit !

[kareldeeley]

Originally Posted by K-Man S We combed the Boxster forums. The rest of the forums were merged and then shared across both forums, so on the Cayman site you see the forum "Cayman and Boxster Wheels and Tires", likewise on the Boxster site you see the same forum, a post in one shows up on both sites, etc. they are shared multi-site forums. This way we help keep the community together while still providing a means for having some unique items as well.

So Jeremy Clarkson was Prophetic - Coining the Term ' Cockster ' ?

[Nitro8472]

Originally Posted by kareldeeley So Jeremy Clarkson was Prophetic - Coining the Term ' Cockster ' ?

LOL, guess tat solves it all. Lets merge everything and call it Coxster Cord

________________________


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[eslai]

Originally Posted by bccars I'm not quite sure or convinced about the whole thing. I gave the boxsterboard a go a few time, but always when I checked I saw the "new posts" on the boxsterboard were significantly lower then on the Cayman board. So I'm left with the feeling that I would be missing out on a lot of good info when only using the boxster board, allthough i'm a box owner. So at the moment I'm back at the caymanclub, but this could be pure psychological cold water fear on my part, I admit !

Pretty much where I'm at right now. Until the Cayman Chat forum is de-emphasized, the Boxster site is going to be pretty empty. Don't know how people are going to train themselves to start using the 987 General Chat forum instead.

[K-Man S]

If you go to the BoxsterBoard.com site the Cayman Chat section doesn't show up at all.

I suppose I could ask our moderators to start moving every topic posted in Cayman Chat that is actually 987 generic, meaning it could apply to Cayman or Boxster to the 987 Discussion forum and see how long it goes on until we get complaints about moved topic threads.

What would you suggest?

[eslai]

I used to be a moderator for Club3G, a big Mitsubishi Eclipse forum. Well actually, I still retain the title but I haven't visited in a while. We had a similar problem. The General Chat forum became a "catch all" forum where most people talked about pretty much everything and thus the mods were constantly busy with moving things to the appropriate forums. This, additionally, made things really ugly in the General forum because of all the threads that began with "Moved: ". Really annoying too was the fact that vBulletin didn't provide a facility for having the thread redirects remove themselves from the forum after a set amount of time--you either were able to move the thread without a redirect, leaving people to ask "where did my thread go!?", or you could move it with the redirect and then clutter up your forum for all time.

Hopefully that's been changed in newer versions!

One thing we found was that if we moved the General Chat forum lower on the list, it served to deemphasize the forum and people were more apt to post in the appropriate forums instead.

I'd thus say that the shared forums between Cayman Club and Boxster Board should be moved above the Cayman/Boxster-specific ones in the forum display. It's your call though--not sure where exactly you'd like the traffic to go.

[K-Man S]

I'm holding off on reordering the forums for the time being to give traffic a chance to adjust.

With respect to moving topics, Vbulletin has the ability to have an "expiring" redirect which is what we normally use, we have it moved with a redirect for a couple of days and then the redirect expires so you don't get all the "moved" messages, they gradually drop off over time. You can leave a permanent redirect in the case of say a very important thread, etc.

[eslai]

Thank god. they certainly didn't have that two or three years ago! Or maybe they did--we were a little hesitant to update the software too often. Didn't want to corrupt the DB, etc.