** Info - Downtime on 1st November **

[tommundy]

Hi all,

I will need to have the forum offline for several hours whilst I update the software to the latest version and also implement stronger anti-spam protection.

Once the forum is back online, we will be inviting people, that haven't already, to upgrade to full membership status. I will provide full instructions in doing this.

Tommy and myself have been through the membership list and compared it against the membership on the forum and have found that a lot of people have been getting full access for some time now for free. We appreciate that this was a fault of previous administration errors on the website, but we would like to rectify the situation. The new membership structure means that there is one price of just £10 per year, which gives you full access to the forum including the ability to sell items and post in all areas, plus it gives you priority access to club events etc. We will allow a time frame for people to join up before amending the access rights. There will also be an offline payment option if you don't have a Paypal account.

Further details of the different levels of access can be found on the home page of the forum:

http://www.mr2mk1club.com/content.php

The minutes from the AGM and the new copy of the club magazine will be made live tomorrow as well.

Thanks in advance for your patience.

Regards,
Tom Mundy

[tommundy]

All upgraded and back up and running.

As with previous upgrades, please point out anything that doesn't seem right.

Thanks again for your patience.

Cheers,
Tom

[The Silver Fox]

Well done Tom.

All seems well using Tapatalk on my Samsung Galaxy SII.

Regards
Douglas


Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

[coverco]

Great work Tom, everything works fine for me.

[jimi]

Good job, everything seems to work fine.
2 things I'd like to mention, I'm not keen on the new "What's New / Activity Stream"format preferred the previous "Latest Posts" format.
The other thing is much more important.

Validity periods marked with a * indicate that this subscription is recurring.
After the initial subscription period is complete, the subscription will automatically be renewed with a new charge.


I don't like that at all, in fact I'm seriously considering not resubscribing because of it. Why can't we have the option to have a manual renewal each year for those who would prefer it ? I'm quite sure I won't be the only one who objects to an automatic renewal :(

Jimi

[tommundy]

Hi Jimi,

Thanks for the feedback. Please see my comments below:


I'm not keen on the new "What's New / Activity Stream"format preferred the previous "Latest Posts" format.

I've changed the tabs so that when you click on "What's New?", you get the new/latest posts. However, the activity stream is still available for users that want to use it.



"Validity periods marked with a * indicate that this subscription is recurring. After the initial subscription period is complete, the subscription will automatically be renewed with a new charge."
I don't like that at all, in fact I'm seriously considering not resubscribing because of it. Why can't we have the option to have a manual renewal each year for those who would prefer it ? I'm quite sure I won't be the only one who objects to an automatic renewal :(
Jimi
We've had a few discussions over best how to handle this and it's a tricky one to handle from a personal point of view and also a technical one. The automatic renewals will work for some people, but not for others. They are a bit of a pain as they maintain the same price from when you joined, regardless of whether this amount goes up or down in reality. One bugbear with manual subscriptions is that once a subscription comes to an end, there is no grace period for you to re-subscribe. This would mean that people could potentially lose PM's etc. when their account is downgraded. Going the other way, we don't really want people to have to be effectively paying twice for the time close to the end of their subscription (The system can't 'add' time to a subscription length).

I've been doing some thinking and playing about with ideas over the last hour and have come up with the below solution.


We won't have automatic renewals of membership unless people specifically ask for them. (This can be added as an option quite easily, so you can either join for 1 year or for 1 year with automatic renewal)
The membership period will be 400 days, which will give you a 1 month grace period to renew.
This, I think, accomodates for all eventualities.

Obviously, any offline payment methods will remain as before.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Cheers,
Tom

[jimi]

Tom
Thanks for getting back to me, software changes/upgrades are always a busy time and the fine tuning can drag on :D



I've changed the tabs so that when you click on "What's New?", you get the new/latest posts. However, the activity stream is still available for users that want to use it.

:thumbup: much prefer that



I've been doing some thinking and playing about with ideas over the last hour and have come up with the below solution.


We won't have automatic renewals of membership unless people specifically ask for them. (This can be added as an option quite easily, so you can either join for 1 year or for 1 year with automatic renewal)
The membership period will be 400 days, which will give you a 1 month grace period to renew.
This, I think, accomodates for all eventualities.

Obviously, any offline payment methods will remain as before.

Offering the option seems very sensible, the grace period should work. I'm not sure it even needs to be as long as a month, 2 weeks seems reasonable. Does your software have the facility to warn members when their subscription is due to expire ? the software we use on the OC sends out 3 mails, 1 month, 1 week and 3 days before the membership expires, gives people plenty of warning.
Been down this road before with the OC and got the T shirt, it's not easy I know and no matter what you do, someone won't be happy. You can only do the best for the club as you see it :thumbup:

[tommundy]

Thanks Jimi.

Yes, it has some basic in-built notifications setup. However, I'll work on some extra ones, plus will modify it to display the expiration date at the top of the forum so that it's easy to see when you're up for renewal.

Cheers,
Tom

PS: Just installed the anti-spam user registration plug-in. Hopefully it makes my life a lot easier! :)

[jimi]

Just renewed my membership, seemed to go very smoothly :thumbup: :clap:

[mr2mk1mad]

Any sign of the AGM minutes and the club magazine

[tommundy]

Sorry, been battling the minor outage that happened yesterday and managing some training courses at work. Got another course today and then won't be home until about 9-10pm, so will try and get it done tonight. If not, tomorrow. I'll reply to your PM now though! :)

Cheers,
Tom

[Master-B]

Keep plugging away mate, youve done brilliantly to rebuild the site on your own :-)