Back running on two servers - September 20, 2006 01:23 PM
We've managed to rebuild our crashed database server and did some software upgrades at the same time. It is back live and we are no longer limping along on a single machine. Hopefully the site will be a bit quicker although we still have more things to do in the future to speed it up more.
Written by Greg (Dallas)
Search Update - August 30, 2006 02:35 AM
All forums are now indexed and searchable! See the older news post (a couple down) for details on the new searching capabilities.
Machine troubles - August 23, 2006 01:54 AM
OK, so we had some unexpected developments this evening. I was doing some routine maintenance on the database server when things started getting squirrelly. I decided to reboot and apparently it has a hard error when it restarted. At this point we haven't been able to see it directly for ourselves and will have to go onsite to the hosting facility to attempt to get it up and running again.
For the meantime, we are running a copy of the database as of yesterday (8/19) from backup. Any messages posted since that backup or changes made to profiles are gone for now, so please be aware of that. If you happened to change your password since then, it will have been reverted to your old one so you may need that to re-login.
Thanks for your patience. Hopefully we can get this sorted out quickly.
New Search Function - August 21, 2006 01:27 AM
OK, so this is basically a beta test, but have some fun with it anyway.
I've put the new search live. After many years we have scrapped what we were using as it pretty much sucked and have found a new search engine. It has a ton of new functionality, not the least of which is that the indexes are actually up to date!
Some notes:
A) The indexes currently do not update automatically when new posts are added. For the time being I have to trigger that, and will do so every day or so. The upside is that the update takes about 10 seconds to execute so no more waiting 28 hours for indexes to rebuild :)
B) The help function is incorrect and is the help for the old system. If you are a search geek and want to see how this works and what you can do with it, go here: http://support.dtsearch.com/faq/search.html and look at the right side of the page. Most of that is relevant for this search.
C) You can now search ACROSS forums, and even search user profiles. This will later be extended to search tech pages, etc. from one spot! It's controlled from the dropdown.
D) Classified is temporarily not searchable. I'm working on that and it should be fixed shortly.
E) I thought it would be cool to show the last 10 searches that have been made on the site, so you see that as well. Of course, it took about 10ms for somebody to see that you could make a great game out of that, but we'll see how it plays out.
F) Search results now actually have a score associated with them and they are displayed with highest score first by default. HOWEVER, you can change the sort order of the results by clicking the headers at the top. For instance, if you want to see results posts chronologically just click the 'Date' header and voila!
G) You can control the search algorithms from the 'advanced' pop up. Feel free to play around with that and see how things work.
H) Searching for single words is a really bad idea, i.e. if you search for 'turbo' that probably matches over a million posts so waiting for that result set to come back would take a few lifetimes. If your search times out its most likely because you are too general in the query and its matching way too much stuff. Even putting in an additional word will speed the query up greatly. While this is a great improvement, it's still a single server with a single set of hard drives, not Google, so try to be a little intelligent about what you search for.
I) If you have issues, email me at greg@twinturbo.net. I may not respond but I will read them and deal with the issues as I can.
Profile updates - June 13, 2006 12:52 PM
We've had a problem for a while with some members not being able to update their profile and getting a 'this screen name already exists' error.
Thanks to help from ZSki as my guinea pig, I think I finally got that sorted out. So, if you are one who was affected by this, please try to edit your profile and see if it works. If not, feel free to email me at greg@twinturbo.net and let me know what problem you are having.
ZCON Dinner confirmations & stickers - May 14, 2006 12:52 PM
Dinner confirmations for tickets sold so far will go out later this week. I wanted to get it done this weekend, but I have to travel for business later today which has screwed up my planning. Thanks to all that have bought in so far... I guess the numbers are what we expect for this moment, but we have a long ways to go before we've reached our goals for sales. East coast is beating west coast pretty handily right now.
Also, if you have ordered stickers in the last couple months, they are getting cut now (finally) and will ship sometime this week. Sorry for the delay, I've had the sticker cutter instead of Greg for other stuff & haven't kept up with it as well as he does.
Written by Dallas DamonZ
TwinTurbo.NET attacks Scammers! - April 29, 2006 09:47 PM
This has been quite a while in coming but we finally got it done! Due to the increase in members being scammed over the past year or so by worthless people who only come here to scam through classifieds, and because lots of people can't pass on a deal that's too good to be true even if the seller has only had an account for the last 6 minutes, we have put posting restrictions in Classfieds.
Anyone who wants to post in classifieds must have an active account for at least 30 days and have 500 hits. These restrictions are fully configurable by us but this seems like a reasonable starting point. While this does exclude well meaning new members that have valid things for sale, as they say, one rotten apple spoils the whole bunch.
Hopefully this will put a stop to the blatant scams going on in Classifieds. As always if you think something looks to good to be true, stop, pull your head out of your butt, and move on.
tt.NET ZCCA Associate Membership Program - February 23, 2006 11:11 PM
At the Syracuse ZCCA Convention last year, ZCCA Chairman Paul Gasparola, Greg & Myself had a little sit down to discuss an opportunity. ZCCA is looking for ways to encourage more participation in the National Convention. With TwinTurbo.NET bringing in quite a few people that would probably not attend a ZCCA Convention through our now annual convention dinners, he thought it would be a good idea to try to expand on that.
What came of it was making tt.NET an Associate Member of the ZCCA. An amendment to the by-laws was voted on and passed a few weeks ago that allows us to get some benefits member clubs have even though we are a very loosely structured and non centralized club (regular ZCCA clubs are generally local/regional clubs). The primary advantage is we get a discount on registration for the convention... I'm told if you tally up all the events in a typical convention, it could save over $100 off the registration cost. I know it makes the (TwinTurbo.NET sponsored) track day a lot more affordable. There are also some other things your membership gets you if you read through the amendment below.
I'm not 100% sure how this will work out for us since we're getting started a little late. But we are the pilot for this and we'll give it our best shot. In short the plan is we collect $2 from everyone that wants to be an Associate Member through TwinTurbo.NET. We turn over a list of members 60 days before the convention begins that have paid their dues to get the discount on events when they register. I know a few of you have already ponied up the cash and registered ensuring your space at the convention (ZCCA thanks you)... Paul and I are working out how to make adjustments to registration fees if you become a member after the fact. We have added a membership dues item in the Store so you can join the ZCCA through tt.NET and get your discount on convention registration once the roster is passed to ZCCA.
Here's the actual amendment to the by-laws:
ARTICLE V: MEMBERSHIP
F. Associate Membership to ZCCA. An Associate Member Club is defined as an association of individuals that have no formal club structure, i.e., an internet forum. The Associate Membership Program is defined as:
The Associate ZCCA Membership will be open to groups based on approval by the ZCCA Executive Committee. There will be one Central Representative of the association for all communications There will be only one payment to ZCCA for the Associate Membership for the current year. The cost of the Associate Membership will be $2.00 per individual per year. The Associate Membership Central Representative will collect the dues of those wishing to participate and send the dues and a list of those paid individuals to the ZCCA Treasurer. The provided list cannot be updated until the next enrollment period. The specific enrollment period will be set forth by the ZCCA Treasurer. Sixty (60) days prior to the next ZCCA Convention the ZCCA Executive Director will send to the Convention Host Club a list of the Associate Membership individuals to be eligible for registration discounts, if any.
G. Associate Membership rights and restrictions: 1. WILL BE able to: a. Attend ZCCA Board meetings (the main contact per group can sit at the main table during business meetings) b. Eligible for ZCCA Discount Program c. Eligible for ZCCA Convention Discounts d. ZCCA Roadside Assistance Information e. Listed as a partner group on the ZCCA Website
2. WILL NOT BE able to:
a. Vote at ZCCA Convention Board Meetings b. Eligible for ZCCA Insurance c. ZCCA distributed materials d. ZCCA Rep Forum list e. Host a ZCCA Convention f. Listed as a "Member Club" on ZCCA Website
Just so you know, we will be holding our annual dinner on Wednesday, May 31st - the evening of the car show and before the track day... stay tuned for more details!
Nominations for new moderators. - October 22, 2005 12:33 PM
Since our last round of selections & acceptances, attrition has slimmed the staff down to a point where we need to bulk up again.
If you or you know another member that you think has the level headedness to continue to keep our community on top, send your nomination to suggestions@TwinTurbo.NET. Histories will be reviewed. Depending on the number and quality of nominations, some candidates will be decided in the Polls forum by the membership.
Thank you for helping keep TwinTurbo.NET focused!
Searching Issues II - March 06, 2005 10:56 AM
As of now, the Technical forum has been completely re-indexed and is current. Searching appears to be a bit slow, so be aware that a search may take a bit to get results. The General forum has now started indexing and should be done within 48 hours.
