The long overdue update to Vdubber is finally here. The new look site is now live and not only does it have a new appearance but the whole site has been rewritten from the ground up. There's heaps more features and its far easier to use than the old site. The reason for this is that the software platform that the site runs from has been replaced with a more streamlined version. But rather than bore you with techno-mumbo-jumbo, the best way to tell you about the new features is to give you a bit of a tour.

We've mentioned in the past that there is an update to the site in progress. The update is a pretty major process and involves a complete rewrite of the code, in fact we are moving away from the current platform to a more stable and better supported platform from a different vendor.

Whilst there will be quite a few improvements in the operation of the site, one of the things we hope to acheive is to shift the focus of the site a little. In the past we have had forums, and then we disabled then, followed by re-enabling them and the bottom line is simply that they do not work. My guess is that there are simply too many other VW sites that people are used to using (VZI, TheSamba, Shoptalkforums etc) and getting people to use a forum that is low in traffic and interest is an impossible task at best. We originally tried to pique peoples interest by having a monthly competition and offering prizes to the biggest contributors in the hope that we could get half a dozen regulars to contribute, this would have hopefully kick started the site into action, but it was not to be.

So, for the update, several areas of the site will simply cease to exist, these include the forums, the directory, classifieds and groups sections. The focus will be shifted to blogs and the site focus will change.

As the site seems pretty slow at the moment, it is a perfect time to make the change. So if you see things dissappearing, or not working, it will no doubt be because of the update.

Fingers crossed.

Another new year is with us, and it's once again time to make resolutions and see if we can stick with them. This March will see the second birthday for Vdubber, and it's good to see that we are still here. We are still chipping away at increasing our member base and site activity, but as usual with any new venture, these things take time to gain momentum.

A recent conversation with a new site user alerted me to the fact that the perception of the site was that of just another Volkswagen forum, which surprised me a little, as I had always considered that the site was geared more towards everything other than being a forum. Much though i would like to discount his observation. It's probably a valid one.

Promoting a site like this is difficult. There is no other site that provides the same feature-set as Vdubber. Which is largely aimed at being a social network, rather than being simply another forum. There is really no point in trying to compete with the established giants like VZI, TheSamba, Aussieveedubbers etc. These are long established forums, and there would be little success in trying to persuade anyone that Vdubber's forum offers anything better then they already get at their favourite site.

This is why the idea behind Vdubber was to provide the social networking features that the established forums did not. Things like Blogs, Photo and Video hosting, Groups and other social networking tools. We saw that there was a niche to make a site to provide these things. But whilst the niche is there, it is not really clearly defined.

So far Vdubber has been promoted as a 'community' site, an 'aircooled social network'. But both of these descriptions are too subtle. Neither really explain what Vdubber 'is', or what Vdubber is about. What we would really like to say is that Vdubber is 'Facebook for Volkswagens', but until now I have not wanted to make such blatant a statement.

The Holiday season is nearly here again, and to celebrate this we are offering a fantastic prize of a six months subscription to Volksworld magazine. The winner will be the member with the greatest amount of points amassed for December on our leaderboard.

Points can be earned from all site activities, but posting premium content, such as blogs, photos, videos and forum posts will get you the greatest number.

To check how many points each different site activity will earn you, you can view the Points Home Page. You can also check your points history there too, this will tell you where you have earned the points you already have.

Good luck with the competition, and happy posting. :)

vdubber

Just added a great new feature to the photos section - Photo tagging.

Photo tagging allows you to highlight areas in a photo, and associate a tag with it. The tags are visible when you hover over the photo, and also when you hover over the tag description at the bottom of the photo.

The tag can comprise of either a short text description, or you can pick someone from your friends list. If you are tagged in a photo, or have a photo tagged by someone else, you will automatically get an email letting you know.

Tags can be removed by the person who placed the tag, the photo owner, or in the case of being tagged by someone else, you can also remove the tag yourself.

We have also made an update to the groups photos capabilities. We've now added the ability, for each group to add dedicated photo albums, and also added the ability to include a title and description for each image. This is a massive improvement compared to the previous way of managing photos within groups, and one we feel will make the groups section a lot more useable.

Managed to get a spare 5 minutes this weekend to get out in the garage and finish off assembling the shelving that I bought. The shelves are similar to the ones you see in warehouses that are used to hold pallets, except, they are a little smaller. Each upright section is about 2 metres tall, and the self spans are 1800mm wide. The shelves themselves are 600mm wide, 15mm thick MDF, plenty big enough to fit lots of stuff. I bought 3 sections, which takes up a little over half of the length of the garage. Might add another section on, but not too sure yet, will see how I go.

So far I've managed to fill a couple up with the parts from the Ghia and the Oval, but still have plenty of room left.

My current aim is to move all of the stuff from the old work bench in the existing garage, on to the new shelves. Then I can dismantle the bench, and finish knocking the back wall out, which will allow me to move the splitty into the rear part of the garage, followed by the Jag, and the oval.

Need to get this done in the next couple of weeks as we've got a new swing arriving for Locke's xmas prezzie, this is due to go where the Oval currently sits, so need to get it moved out of the way, plus it will be nice to clear the garden out of old bits of car, not to mention that I'm dead keen to see the garage kitted out too.

Still got some other stuff to get done too, but slowly getting there.

Welcome to the new vdubber site blog.

We've set the blog up to provide a dedicated channel of communication for site related news, events, shows, and any other stuff related to vdubber, and the website in general. This is mostly as we are having a bit of a rethink about how the site works. Some changes have already been made, such as the addition of the Wall, and the opening up of permissions to promote more site activity, which so far seems to be working quite well, but there is still quite a way to go before we get the site to where we would like to be.

We feel that a segregation between the stuff that happens for the site, and the stuff that happens elsewhere, is better, so we have chopped around the old automatic male and female friend accounts created on joining, and merged them into one account, (This one). And we will now post all site related, and administrative stuff via this account. If you do not have vdubber in your friends list, we will get around to adding it to all accounts, this means that you will always have a direct line of communication to an admin, should you need it, and we will always be able to keep in touch with you to let you know about critical issues should they arise.

There's still plenty of stuff planned with the site including another major update, which will be started over the coming weeks. Most of the changes will be under the decklid, but there will also be some more noticeable changes too.

We will be having a major rethink about the ads section, as this is very much underused. Compared to most classifieds systems, it's quite well featured, but something is causing it to be overlooked, and we will also look at better promotion of other areas of the site too.

The new site update is nearing completion. Just a few more bugs to iron out and we will be permanently migrating to the new platform. The new site has a whole bunch of new features and is much more user freindly.

The biggest changes are to the way things work. The features are mostly the same but the new site will be a lot smoother. There are of course some great new features such as twitter and facebook integration. This means that posts you make here can also be posted to your facebook page and twitter feed. They will also appear on the vdubber facbook and twitter pages too.

The estimated time until launch is about a month, so please start preparing for something great.

vdubber.

The main part of the latest site update is mostly finished. The new update has added a Wall to the main page where all content is aggregated. Anything you post to your profile wall will also appear there as well, likewise, anything you post to the main wall will also appear on your profile wall too.

(To reach the main page, click on the vdubber logo at the top of the page.)

You can now also comment on any post to the main wall, there is no need to be friends with a member to leave a comment, however, you will still need to be a friend to make a direct comment on another users profile wall. (Wall to wall message)

The main reason for these changes, is to encourage more use of the site. Many users were happy to post comments into the shoutbox, but only a few regularly posted to blogs or other parts of the site. So we decided to improve things, by extending the Wall on the front page and removing te shoutbox altogether. Now all major actions can be carried out on the main page wall, including leaving shoubox type messages, hopefully this will entice users to post more. Additionally, the ability to comment on another users post without having to first befriend them will also hopefully encourage more interaction between users. After all, this is what the site is about.

Points

Many of you may know me from the other web sites that I run or help manage, these are invariably specialist sites that focus on one model, make or marque. I've had the idea of a broad based VW social network type site for the past few years, but have done nothing about it until now. With the success of sites such as facebook and myspace it was hard to ignore the effect that the social networks phenomonon has had on the web and so I decided it was about time to do something about it.

Oriiginally I had the idea of expanding on the more traditional community VW sites - ie the forum with more social networking type tools, but the main problem I found is that none of them really integrate with the core - it is always a forum with some hacks to add parts on to it. I ran a lot of test sites where galleries / video servers and blogs were 'integrated' into the forum, but all of these lacked the overall functionality offered by sites such as myspace and facebook - invariably, whilst the hacks intagrate with the core, they rarely integrated with each other.

This site is my answer to that problem. The philosophy of the forum as the main portal has been replaced by a central community core focus on users. All of the other aspects are integrated into this central core and function with each other. The traditional forums still exist, but you will also find group forums, profile commenting, chat, video, and other modes of communication. A high value is placed on user participation and content rating, it is these aspects which will promote user content and increase content visibility to other users.

The site is currently in beta release, which means that it may have a few bugs, it also means that the member base is also small, but as time progresses this will expand as more people join.

Please feel free to create your own groups, invite friends participate and get involved. If there is anything that you think would make the site better, don't hesitate to suggest it.

I've been spending some time updating a few aspects of the site. Fixing a few small issues and looking at ways of improving how the site works - and hopefully encouraging more users to post.

One thing that I've been working on is adding a wall to the home page so that all posts made to users profile wall's are aggregated in one place. This means that it's easy to see what's happening in everyones profile without actually having to go and view them. Just check out the Wall on the front page - it will display all posts from all users.

Currently, the Wall only shows posts from people that are your friends, which means that you will still miss out on stuff that non-friends are talking about, but this is something that we are working towards changing.

Another change that we are going to make is to allow any member to be able to post to your profile wall. Currently only friends are allowed to do this, which means that to leave just a simple message / reply / comment, you first have to ask them to be your friend, and then they have to accept your request, before you are allowed to post. We feel that this makes the site too hard to use, and is one of the reasons that the site is not used more.

We will still retain the Friends function as we will use it to allow you to filter how you view the posts on both the profile wall, and the wall on the main page.

Guess most of the regular visitors would have noticed that things seems little different round here - that's because we have now updated the site to use a new and improved version of the software. The update has meant transferring all of the data from the old site, and converting it to work with the new software - it's practically a brand new website!

The transfer is mostly finished, but there are still a few things to transfer over - namely the photo and video view counts as these have currently been reset to zero, the points competition, the events map and some of the tags.

There are a bunch of new features including a new navigation system, a brand new user menu, new user photo and video galleries and a brand new layout.

All of the original features are still here, but each one has been improved and updated with a new layout, some have also been given additional features - for example, each new event in the events section now gets it's very own forum, photo and video galleries , and the ability to send out broadcasts to the events attendeed - allowing you to arrange and discuss the event and even post up pics and videos of it afterwards - pretty cool huh!

We've also addded a facebook style wall to everyone's profiles - this allows you post links, images, videos and messages to each others profiles,

I was remeniscing with MelleMel the other day, about my early career plans, and how I wanted to become a graphic designer when I left school, but ended up a controls engineer instead. Ironically, I now do a fair bit of web design, but having missed out on a formal design background, everything I do design-wise probably takes me twice as long as it should, and perhaps lacks a certain flair. MelleMel on the other hand has just spent the past 12 years or so working in the print industry, and so has more of an eye for the way things look. She regularly keeps me in check by pointing out my errors with passing comments like "Roll up, roll up, for the Wheeeeeeel of fonts" (her description of the hidden page ear advert in the top righ hand corner).

Differences aside, somehow I've managed to rope MelleMel into helping put together the Ezine, for which fortunately she has lots of patience. The first issue has been a bit of a steep learning curve for me, as 've never done anything like this before. Sure I've written plently of articles, and published articles from others on web sites, but I've never dealt with more than one source before, and that's the crux of getting a magazine together - getting all of the articles in by a deadline to allow the magazine to hit the publishing date.

With the Ezine, the first issue has afforded us a bit of room to manouver, as we did not commit to a specific date, well we kinda had a date in mind, but this has long passed. With subsequent issues, we have a strict 3 month turnaround. Unfortunately we were let down with a few articles, which means that there is some coverage missing that we would like to have included, but we've decided to press ahead and publish, otherwise by the time we get the thing together, the articles we do have will be so far out of date, people will not want to read about them.

So, hopefully, some time this week, the Ezine will hit the web, and work on the next issue can commence.

Site Modifications

The site is slowly getting moulded into the community that we are aiming for. The competition is proving a great hit and has hopefully encouraged a bit more posting. We now have added Google maps functionality to our events section, which means that not only can we display a map of your local events on the front page, but we can also offer you turn by turn directions of how to get there. Simply type you starting address into the box on the events page and hit enter to open a new page up. We still have some more features to add to the events pages, such as events galleries and messages.

We have plenty more plans for improvements around the site, the next area to get a bit of a working over is the groups section, which will be receiving some added functionality in the way of it's own events section, comments and bulletins, allowing better communication between members. After that we will take a look at the profiles section and the blogs, adding further customisation features that users can incorporate. The idea is to try and provide everything that people want and need in the way of a VW community.

As usual, comments, ideas, suggestions - all welcomed.

Decided to get rid of the annoying flash banner for logged in members. The pics are great, and really help sell the site, but once you've joined up, you probably don't want to have to keep looking at them.

You might have also noticed a new logo as well. This is not the final version but just a draft version I have uploaded to check out how it looks.

I need to update the logo with 'beta' or 'pre-launch' (as that's currently where the site stands). Once teh logo is finalised I can get the stickers printed up and sent out to those members who requested them. Hopefully this shouldn't be too soon.

In a bid to drum up some traffic here I've decided that i need to take some action. Starting a website, especially one that's community driven such as this, is a BIG task as gettign people interested is very hard, especially if they already have some kind of online routine with other sites.  It's not polite to simply go to other forums and spam them with a post saying come see my site... etc... - most moderators take very dimly to this and delete such posts. So I need a different tact.

The best way i can think of is to actively contribute to as many forums as I can find and hope that people take an interest in what I am doing. A bit like advertising without actualy advertising.

Maybe most people will take a dislike to me and avoid vdubbers like the plague but hopefully some will find value in my posts.

So on this basis I have made a pact with myself to put a post a day on all of those other sites (and there is a LOT of them).

So, If you see me on another site, talking drivel, now you know why - and don't forget to put a good word in about vdubbers .

I've decided that running two lots of forums on the same thing is probably a bit of a waste of my time so I intend to close down the forums on my personal site (www.t-34.co.uk). There's probably not much of value (not in the public forums at any rate) but there is a pretty good thread on the 915 gearbox conversion that I will try to bring across. To do this i will probably have to migrate all of the members across as well.

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Will keep you posted

Well, This week I've been continuing with getting the site up and running. The basics are all there so I'm now concentrating on fixing up the niceties.

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One of the things that I've been sorting out is removing the software branding from the site - this basically involves paying a fee and installing an 'ad-free' version of the software. After trialling the software for a few weeks now I've decided that it's good enough as a base and is worth investing some money in. Removing the branding is good for a number of reasons - Firstly, the Vdubber branding should be prominent - it's our site after all - why should we have other logo's stuck all over the place - The second is the removal of the ad banners from the bottom of the chat window, shoutbox and music players (and anywhere else it appears). The banners are on some kind of affiliates exchange program which means potentially that banners could pop up for all kinds of sites. This could be a right PITA when you consider that there are a LOT of adult 'dating' sites that use this software, and who knows what they might have in thier adverts :O

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You will probably have noticed the merchandise store is now up and running as well. I have created a number of tees / tops with the 'Von Dubber' logo. Currently I'm not sure if I will adopt the logo as the logo for the site, It's obviously quite a catchy logo - but then only to those who are familiar with Von Duffer or the spin-off clothing label. The prices are pretty much set by zazzle - the people who host the store and do the printing and distribution - the markup can be changed, but the darker coloured garments and some of the 'non-basic' products are pretty expensive to start with. This is the reason that some garments appear to be a LOT more than others. I've ordered myself aplain white basic tee to check out the quality.