• Don't overlook our Welcome Package, it contains many links to important and helpful information about functions at VHT like posting pictures and sending PMs (private messages), as well as finding the parts you need.

    AD

Did you know...

ancientdad

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
May 22, 2020
Total Posts
24,347
Total likes
2,450
Location
Nature Coast, FL
That we have over 700 members who have joined and never posted once? And of whom many have never come back since the day they joined?

I always find it interesting that people will join a forum and never even return to look around, much less dip their toe in the water to see if it's to their liking.
 
That we have over 700 members who have joined and never posted once? And of whom many have never come back since the day they joined?

I always find it interesting that people will join a forum and never even return to look around, much less dip their toe in the water to see if it's to their liking.

Bots or humans?
 
Bots or humans?

As best Jim and I can tell, they are real people. We check a number of things manually (ALL our members are manually vetted, have been since the beginning) including IP address, email address validity and many other things including checking for bot, spam and attack activity. We literally just dumped another fraud just minutes ago (very possibly a bot), the new required section in the registration form for "Bikes Owned" has revealed a lot more of them because, even if they're real people, they don't likely know anything about the models we're here for or really, any motorcycle model names. You should see some of the stuff they put in that part of the form, it makes them incredibly obvious.
 
With all that, it does seem curious that someone would join and then never come back at all. I have seen more than one forum where non-members cannot see pictures that have been posted or click on ads. I could see that somebody doing research may join just to get access to those things. But I don't think you set up that way?
 
With all that, it does seem curious that someone would join and then never come back at all. I have seen more than one forum where non-members cannot see pictures that have been posted or click on ads. I could see that somebody doing research may join just to get access to those things. But I don't think you set up that way?

Actually, we did do that because of our "differences" with HT early on. Any forum-hosted pics aren't visible until you're logged in, however pics hosted elsewhere (Imgur and others) are visible regardless. Still, one would think that once they see the entire forum available to them, they might at least come back once in a while. It doesn't mean that ALL 700+ haven't come back at some point, I didn't look that deeply into it. I was just looking for someone who only posted once the other day ad discovered there were 7+ pages of 100 members each who had 0 posts when sorted by number of posts.
 
When I was a mod for our local group forum I faced that issue myself. My solution was to send a group email from a forum admin address to ten members each day reminding them that they were forum members and we were still here for them when they got interested in bikes again. I can't help but wonder how many of those members had projects they weren't thinking about any more. My emails got a few members to pop back in now and then, but over the years most never checked in again and I eventually deleted them. The easiest to delete are always the email addresses that bounce back as undeliverable.
 
When I was a mod for our local group forum I faced that issue myself. My solution was to send a group email from a forum admin address to ten members each day reminding them that they were forum members and we were still here for them when they got interested in bikes again. I can't help but wonder how many of those members had projects they weren't thinking about any more. My emails got a few members to pop back in now and then, but over the years most never checked in again and I eventually deleted them. The easiest to delete are always the email addresses that bounce back as undeliverable.

Our luck with the one forum address we use (info@) has been mostly below average. If I had to guess I'd say 75% of what we send out goes to spam (confirmed later) and we have to email members from our own addresses to get one through. I've thought about it more than a few times but I can't imagine it reaching many where they'd usually see it. Maybe I'll give it a shot, won't hurt to try I guess. It'll take a while at 10 or so a day :rolleyes:
 
That's true. On that forum there were only a hundred or so non-posting members and 30 or 40 posting members so it didn't really matter all that much. I just started deleting them after they reached 1000 days without logging in and once in a while someone we hadn't seen in a while would pop back in with a new member name.
 
It could be your forum software. When I first started looking at this site, I could access it from my desktop pc using Win10. From my Android tablet, using chrome, I would always get this message:
-----------------------------------------------------------
NET::ERR_CERT_Authority_INVALID

The website's SSL certificate cannot be verified
-----------------------------------------------------------
Chrome would tell me that the site is not secure and I must exit immediately, or the world will end for me. This website is absolutely the only place where I have ever encountered this error message.

If I brought up this site on my phone, whenever I tried to click a link on the main menu, my phone blew out the page and said something like, "This connection aborted. This site could be harmful to your device."

Now, I suppose due to software updates, I can access VHT on my phone and on my tablet without getting those messages. However, I don't use my phone or tablet to access this site because the structure is just too funky to use. On Win10, it works pretty well. I suppose if I installed Tapatalk on my phone and tablet, it might work, but I don't need that for any other motorcycle forum that I use.
 
It could be your forum software.
:lol:

In our first week maybe (June 2020) we were getting SSL certs taken care of but you didn't come here that early (IIRC I had to poach you with lots of convincing LOL, maybe not) and we might have had a brief gap during our server host transition, but otherwise we've been SSL compliant the entire time. Some had a few little issues with Chrome a couple years ago but for the most part it works best for VHT. Can't explain what happened to you otherwise.
 
^^^I was getting that message in May, 2022, so maybe during your server transition?

I applaud you guys for what you have done here, and for the ongoing attention you provide. There are no irritating advertising popups or slow loading ads that drag down the pages from loading. Of course, that also means you are on a tight budget. It is understandable if your software is a bit dated. For the most part, it works well.
 
^^^I was getting that message in May, 2022, so maybe during your server transition?

That lines up correctly, it was early May last year.

I applaud you guys for what you have done here, and for the ongoing attention you provide. There are no irritating advertising popups or slow loading ads that drag down the pages from loading. Of course, that also means you are on a tight budget. It is understandable if your software is a bit dated. For the most part, it works well.

Thanks very much Ray, we're certainly committed to what we set out to do. We got a decent financial start, defrayed early costs with t-shirt and sticker sales and we're actually in the best shape we've been right now. Yes, software cost was part of our initial decision and despite it being older it was actually more stable, almost flawless really, before the migration. It was our host that became quite unreliable or we'd still be there and I firmly believe things would be just as stable as it was then. Our hosting contract renewal in a couple years will be the next big cost aside from upgrading software if we do. We really can't complain, it's gone as well as I could have expected when we started talking about it in early 2020 (and I, for one, had never done it before). But I always wish for more exposure and growth in our quest to take back the top spot in vintage Honda twins forums, like it was when I joined in 2016 and we were happy at our old home.
 
Back
Top Bottom