News Item - June 28, 1999 07:20 AM
No update in awhile. I've been buried at the office with a huge project, which I'm still working on. Greg has been out of the loop for the last week. Who cares, right? Well, this means no development on the V3.0 forum. We had a small beta test & the actual scripts work fine. The Perl programming language libraries need some beefing up though. With a low load, it (the libraries) couldn't keep up, so we're having to upgrade the Perl & get some software acceleration for it to handle the 78+ member high side server loads. Greg has done some tests with it & says it makes it really fast due to the way it keeps the scripts compiled & in the RAM of the server, instead of executing each individual script. :-) Bad news is we have to do some revamping of the scripts to make them work cleanly with the different software. Depending on work schedules, this could take some time. As always, Greg & I have real jobs that pay the bills, this site is a hobby (an intense one), meaning we don't live & die for it. Don't get irritated when something doesn't happen when/as quickly as you think it should, I'm talking about working on new requested features, RIDES pages, stickers, T-shirts, etc..
The forum is moving WAY too fast. I know there's a lot of traffic through here, but a lot of it is idle chit-chat adding nothing to the archives. The VtD feature does pretty good, but I'm probably going to start making sweeps of the forum deleting 'noise' from the forum. I'm as guilty of it as the next person, but I see what it does to the forum. If your message disappears, deal with it. Don't start complaining about 'my message got deleted, <insert insult here>'. Sorry, if it's BS, it's out. Think about what message got deleted & why it might have gotten deleted, it'll probably be VERY apparent. Sometimes this will include Z related posts. I'm talking about the lifestyle with the Z posts. Sometimes they're fun, other times it's just a waste of space. We have to re-focus the forum, because we veer off track too often (yes, this is partially my fault), for awhile we had a nice balance, but now it's lost, so we'll do our best to get it back. We could sit on our hands like some other forums, but I've got too much time & money involved to see it go downhill now.
New members to the forum need to go thumb through the FAQ section & check out the titles there. I don't expect you to read everything, but I'd really like it if you would remember where to find that answer to 'how do I remove the shift knob'. Also Appendix Z in the FAQ section provides a fairly complete glossary to the terms we frequently fling around here. It's a bit spartan, but I think you'll be able to get the info you need to follow the conversation with out having to ask the inevitable questions. We made it for a reason, use it. Also, take a read (yes, read) the ForumFAQ in the FAQ section. This forum has a LOT of features you won't find in other forums. Please learn how to use them to make your time here better spent & not irritate other members when you continually re-post the attempt at posting a picture of a wheel.... use the [ Preview ] feature instead... See what I mean?
Written by Dallas DamonZ
News Item - May 29, 1999 04:19 PM
Our 1,000,000th site hit was from Chris B., Congrats! Here's the rundown of the hits around it:
News Item - May 28, 1999 02:24 PM
1,000,000 is looming ever closer! You've probably noticed the counter is 'hidden' now. Why? Well, the 1,000,000th hit gets prizes!!! Courtesy & SGP have donated prizes for the 1,000,000th visitor. Courtesy is giving away one of those snazzy T-shirts with the embroidered Z and 'Twin Turbo' across it you've seen in a couple posts here lately. I have one, they're very cool. :-) SGP is giving away an SGP T-shirt and the newest addition to the 'SGP stuff' line-up, the SGP tuner oil cap! We'll also throw in the last set of www.twinturbo.net stickers! We've got the counter printing out the hits once we get really close, we'll show you the results of the race for 1,000,000 once we know who the winner is. If the winner accidentally happens to be a newbie that's not yet logged in, the prizes will go to the next 'known' visitor. You'll see it in the results! Congrats in advance to the winner!!
News Item - May 25, 1999 01:24 PM
We're wrenching away on V3.0 in the background. Sometimes we don't get things quite right the first time, overloading the server or otherwise fouling things up. I apologize for the down-time, but it's the price for progress. Now we've pretty much done the stuff we wanted to do to improve on the current version of the forum. We're starting to examine the way the other areas work, For Sale, Events, etc. Here's YOUR chance to let us know what would make things easier/faster/better. We're always looking for improvements we can't think of, or hearing how you use the forum differently from the way Greg & I do. Send mail to Suggestions@TwinTurbo.NET to let us know what's on your mind. This is very important to us, so we can give you something 'customized' to your tastes. I can't promise all ideas will see the light of day. That doesn't mean they're bad, just maybe they don't fit here or are beyond the scope of what we're up to. I guarantee they will be read. I'm going to leave this account open from here on out, so any future ideas can be mailed to us and safely filed, instead of posted and overlooked.
T-Shirts: Right now, I'm in the process of getting artwork done, getting printers lined up, etc. Stay tuned for this. Also going to get more window stickers printed, along with larger rear window stickers. I promise, more carbon-fiber ones this time!
RIDES entries keep flowing in, if you're interested in submitting pics of your Z for the RIDES section, check here for details.
News Item - April 23, 1999 05:49 PM
Hadn't updated news in a bit... Greg & I are feverishly working on the second generation of Twinturbo.NET with a lot of new features to make browsing easier/faster. The new forum will look a slightly different, as we're going to try out a fully SQL based message system in the next couple weeks on our test forum. Greg's got the basic stuff operating & I think it's pretty cool! We've got some nice surprises in store, so stay tuned!
Something small but useful, the Search page is upgraded... Check it out!
If you're interested in a Twinturbo.NET T-shirt, just let me know you want one & what size. Shirts@Twinturbo.NET If you've already set me mail on this, I've still got it. I'm looking for people that might have missed the posts last week.
News Item - March 23, 1999 01:31 PM
All my news stuff has been aimed at the Z Concept Action letter writing campaign. Here's the skinny: We started sending e-mails to Corporate Nissan about 3 weeks ago and collecting written letters to be bundled along with pictures of prowd owners and their Zs. I want to take a sec and mention a LOT of them were from 240-280Z owners and Z31 owners as well, it wasn't JUST a Z32 effort. I thank each of you that came over from other sites to participate. I sent off the last batch of e-mails yesterday. 103 total. This morning I got a reply: "You don't know how helpful these have been. but you will soon" Jason Vines, VP Corporate Communications, Nissan USA. I'm mailing out the 26 written letters today. It appears as though we really HAVE made some sort of impact over there. :-)
Now, to help with getting folks motivated to write, we scored some prizes from our sponsors. Here's the list of winners:
For snail mail, $50 SGP gift certificate:
Mark West "WeST" west@cyberrealm.net
For snail mail, Z valve-stem caps from SGP:
Ryan Davis "ryand" davisryan@worldnet.att.net
For snail mail, Nick + Roxanne T-Shirts from Courtesy Nissan:
Arthur Golebiowski "Arthur" zzzzmydust@aol.com Jonathan Howlett "YellowTT" jonathan.r.howlett@jci.com Phuong Tao "got rice?" gotrice10@yahoo.com Chris Ham "JCH" jimham@ixlmemphis.com Jennifer Bowden "Jen" JBowden21@aol.com
For e-mail, $25 SGP gift certificate:
Red3ooZX@aol.com
For e-mail, Nick + Roxanne T-Shirts from Courtesy Nissan:
billw@connect.ab.ca Good2Zya@aol.com money@collector.org MVANMETER@aol.com schoemf@mtco.com acapsouto@earthlink.net stevez32@yahoo.com KSchenholm@aol.com mag_bag@istar.ca
I want to thank JoshZ & TomB for gettin things rolling. I also want to thank everyone who participated. Courtesy & SGP want to thank everyone who participated as well. I want to thank Courtesy & SGP for helping out. This really was rather successful! You're welcome! It looks like we might have really done something here!!!! =)
As far as the site goes... um, Greg and I have been cleaning up a few things and working out some bugs. Please be patient, some of these things are just hard to track down to crack them. Arthur sent me a pile of stats on the Z32 from Motor Trend and Automobile magazines. I've compiled them into Z32 Stats in the Z32 FAQ. I left in the comparisons to the other cars in the tests to show how the Z stacks up. The one with the Viper, NSX & Vette is interesting from a cost standpoint.
Nothing else to report right now...
News Item - February 26, 1999 11:09 AM
OK, couple of bug fixes are done up now. The problem with editing your profile causing your initial login date to be reset has been fixed. For everybody who was a member before 1/30/99 your ORIGINAL login has been restored.
Member Search has been repaired for the time being. You should get accurate results when searching any field EXCEPT mods. There's still a problem there and you will have erroneous results when looking for mods. We'll get that fixed as soon as we can.
Written by Greg (Dallas)
News Item - February 23, 1999 09:36 AM
Finally, a new modification to the search "engine" to make it a little easier to find things. Now, when you search for something, all the results are returned in reverse chronological order, such that the most recent posts with the search words in it show up first (page 1) and then progresses to the oldest posts (last page). I hope this helps a lot of people out. I often found myself searching for something and then immediately jumping to the last page to find the most recent entry. There were some problems where things would appear to be in kind of a random order and where the same post would show up multiple times, artificially inflating the hit count. This is now fixed as well.
Enjoy!
News Item - February 22, 1999 01:31 PM
WOW! Half a million hits since June... Wouldn't have imagined it! The average 'current online' is just below 30 now. We're averaging 20,000+ accesses a day. This means a LOT of traffic through here daily. The forum stays right under 24 hours on the main page. In an effort to allow members to retrieve messages by date, I've created the Twinturbo.NET Timeline. It's a chronological record of almost every post made since the beginning (minus deleteds & a few others) of the orginal Z32 forum. It's backwards from the regular forum, meaning it reads like a book... top to bottom, so the oldest post is at the top. The link will be in the navigation tools top center on the main forum... looks like this:
[ View Older Messages ]
We're still working on a few SQL issues. There have been some roll-backs in the access counters. Rather random, we're trying to track that down. If you edit your profile, the date you edit the profile becomes your first login date. We're working on re-compiling the data to accurately reflect what's true from a back-up.
I'm working on a 'Stats' section on the FAQ page. Arthur sent me a pile of photocopies from Motor Trend & Automobile magazine with all the listed stats and comparisons from several different issues. I wanted to get the widest range of published stats from the respected automobile magazines.
JaimeZX & I are working on FAQ'ed messages. We've added quite a few new ones lately. I've gotten 2 new TECH articles posted in the last couple weeks. I'm working on one for 555 injector install. Just trying to keep up with all the stuff members send me! :-) I know it's slow, but it will happen. Remember, this is a hobby for us, Greg and I have to do real work from time to time too! :-D
News Item - January 31, 1999 03:14 PM
OK, well I thought the SQL thing was going better than expected and sure enough a speed bump or two cropped up.
Sorry for the inconvenience.. Hopefully you're all noticing the forum to be a bit faster when moving around.
