New Panther Chameleon forum

[spinytail]

Can you guys make it easier to find other Chameleons without scrolling through 100s of Panther Chameleons?

 

[WebSlave]

What would you suggest? A separate classifieds section for every species of chameleon? Do you think the number of such classified ads would justify such a change?

 

[Donald C]

Would it be possible to add search option to omit results with certain words or phrases?

 

[WebSlave]

Possibly. I'll run it by my programmer and see what he says. Not everything is as simple as you would hope nor expect.

 

[Donald C]

Amen to that

 

[spinytail]

...separate classifieds section for every species of chameleon? Do you think the number of such classified ads would justify such a change?

Not common in searches, but a blacklist might make sense even for other sections. Second option is just a Panther or Designer Chameleons? Either way it is tedious seaching past all the Panthers.

 

[WebSlave]

Possibly. I'll run it by my programmer and see what he says. Not everything is as simple as you would hope nor expect.

Sorry about the delay coming back to this. Had other irons in the fire that needed to be addressed. Anyway, here is the response I got back from my programmer about the suggestion to provide an exclusion option on the search function:

Hi Rich,

Its possible to add a "exclude term" section in advanced search page. But vb's search algorithm is the most complicated section of the code and IMHO, it does not worth efforts to hack this section just to meet this request.

Best,
Sinan

Based on the relative lack of traffic in the chameleons classifieds forum, I would have to agree that if this would be a complex hack (meaning expensive for time and effort involved) then I can't see that it would be justified for the expense that would be incurred.

Not common in searches, but a blacklist might make sense even for other sections. Second option is just a Panther or Designer Chameleons? Either way it is tedious seaching past all the Panthers.

I again reviewed the chameleons classifieds forum, and quite frankly, I just do not see the traffic and number of new ads there that makes it seem like an undue burden just to look through the ads for what you are looking for. If it were a fact that the forum was filled with over flowing new ads every day, and we were talking about 50 or more unique new ads every day, then yes, perhaps a change would be in order. But from what I am seeing, there are ads on the first page even dating back to 12-21-2017, and the simple fact is that many of the ads appearing to be newer than those older ones are actually just ads that have had replies that bumped them on to the first page more recently.

Sorry, but I just do not see the amount of traffic there that would warrant dividing the chameleon classifieds into two or more sections, which would then likely cause all of them to suffer from even more dismal results concerning participation and new ads PER FORUM. This, quite frankly, would just be a waste of time, effort, and resources, and likely prove to be destructive in general to the site, in my opinion.

I am sorry, but I have to be realistic about how I allocate funds for this site and entertain such suggested modifications based on what seems most prudent and cost effective to implement.

I guess I need to remind people that using the classifieds sections here is FREE for all registered members. Perhaps if paid memberships, and traffic in general, were increasing rather than diminishing, suggestions such as this could be looked at in a different light. But as always, it is what it is.

 

[spinytail]

Thanks for at least considering Rich. It has been a while since I did some PHP but I can see that area being very complex, archaic and high risk for a developer. Well it was worth a shot.

With that said, I can still foresee this feature (on all forums as you would code once) improving activity and in turn sellers increasing activity, but it is just a hunch and I would not be the one out-of-pocket testing that hunch.

Anyways, thanks again for looking into it at least.

 

[WebSlave]

Just out of curiosity, but does FaceBook, or even Google, have such an exclusion capability in searches? Heck, do any sites you frequent have this capability?

 

[Donald C]

Just out of curiosity, but does FaceBook, or even Google, have such an exclusion capability in searches? Heck, do any sites you frequent have this capability?

Yeah, you can exclude from search using the minus sign delimiter (-). This can be tie into other delimiters as well.

A search of "chameleon -panther" would return only results containing chameleon, but exclude those results containing panther as well as the search term chameleon.

 

[bcr229]

Commercial public web sites, no. Custom web apps on our work intranet, yes. The code and queries are not difficult to write but we use a totally different application development tool suite.

 

[WebSlave]

Yeah, you can exclude from search using the minus sign delimiter (-). This can be tie into other delimiters as well.

A search of "chameleon -panther" would return only results containing chameleon, but exclude those results containing panther as well as the search term chameleon.

Hmm, interesting. In all the years I have used Google, I can't recall ever feeling the need for such a function, that I can recall. At least not to the extent that I would have researched to try to find if such a function even existed. Heck even searching Ebay for stuff I have looked for, I never even considered needing such a function.

Perhaps I am just too simple minded to need such a thing.

 

[Donald C]

It's a good tool is there's a certain piece of information you need to find.
It was very helpful when I had papers due at university, or when I was looking for very specific work-related information.

 

[WebSlave]

I guess I'll have to keep this in mind when I do further searches in Google or Ebay to see if this function would be of any benefit to me. I'm trying to think of any searches I have done in the recent past where this would have been a benefit to me, and so far I'm coming up empty handed. Normally my searches will be for a specific product, manufacturer, and usually a product number or ID. Usually such searches use an "OR" function between the separate terms, and I would prefer an "AND" function more often than not. Not sure how well Boolean operators would go over with the general public, however.

 

[spinytail]

Just out of curiosity, but does FaceBook, or even Google, have such an exclusion capability in searches? Heck, do any sites you frequent have this capability?

The two mentioned sites do but it's comparing apples to oranges. Google gets extremely advanced but they have neural networks, a/b testing etc. that amount to having lots of $; closest to what we are talking about is use of negative (-) as Donald mentioned. Facebook has many search options to hide what you don't want to see, depending on what feed, groups or their shopping interface you are on. You can also prioritize so the uninteresting posts (in the users eyes) is last on the list. But, facebook is going for smart use of feeds after learning it's users through behavior and that is not a good fit in my eyes when you are actually searching for specific reptiles/amphibians.

Outside of these two, I test and develop for an application that does have the ability to add blacklist, whitelist and all areas in-between but it is built on Angular / nodejs so implementing is much easier with the new technologies, along with lots of $ to justify the added work.

 

[spinytail]

Hmm, interesting. In all the years I have used Google, I can't recall ever feeling the need for such a function, that I can recall. At least not to the extent that I would have researched to try to find if such a function even existed. Heck even searching Ebay for stuff I have looked for, I never even considered needing such a function.

Perhaps I am just too simple minded to need such a thing.

This is why a/b testing and user testing (in rooms with cameras) is so popular, because the technical people never need as much bells n whistles to get what they want and being so invested in the site, you know it like the back of your hand.

Btw, my interest in this feature was because I wanted to find dwarf chameleons and they have so many names, figured it was easier to blacklist what I know I did not want to see. AND because I am a feature whore and like to come up with better ways of doing things all the time, sometimes it just turns out to be if not a dumb idea, a waste of everyone's time

 

[WebSlave]

Heck, I wish I could just wave a magic wand and get this site to be just perfect for everyone. Hasn't worked yet, so I'm doubtful I'll ever be able to accomplish that goal. Back in the earlier days of this site, believe me, I tried a lot of different things to try to do that, and was rather headstrong about accepting the fact that it just wasn't going to happen. So I had to accept a lot of compromises, and chose those that seemed most reasonable to me.

And yeah, having a programming background myself, I used to love the bells and whistles and the challenges of trying to program them. But when I got busy with my reptile business, I had no more time for programming tedium, and turned it all over to a VERY good vBulletin specialist. Heck, been so long since I have coded, I couldn't program my way out of a paper bag any longer. And honestly, I got real tired of implementing things and finding that only 20 percent of the people here even noticed them. And of them, half loved the changes and the other half hated them and wanted to burn me at the stake too. The other 80 percent didn't even notice or didn't care.

So over time, I discovered that there will always be a percentage of people who will hate that new changes aren't made here very often. And that is balanced out by an equal percentage of people who will hate any change, no matter how minor, and complain incessantly about it that I couldn't keep things the "good old way" they were used to.

These facts, more than anything else, have gotten me to be VERY circumspect about the wiseness of implementing any changes on this site. Most people won't really care, and if I'm going to get bitched out by one faction or the other, no matter what I do or don't do, it just seemed logical that there was a whole lot less effort, headache, and expense involved in getting bitched out for doing nothing than it was for being bitched out for doing something.

Needles to say, it has to be a REALLY good idea that I would think would be universally approved and appreciated before I even get to the step with my programmer to ask him "how much and how long" to implement something. That's assuming he doesn't just shoot the idea down himself because of the practical negative implications and drawbacks of implementing what I want. Believe me, that has happened a BUNCH of times over the years.

And as for the archaic nature of this vBulletin software that runs this site, well sorry, but there really isn't anything else out there that I could migrate to that wouldn't have me slitting my throat for having had such a dumb idea of even trying to do that. Migrating to a new server is enough headache as it is, thank you very much. Even the newer versions of vBulletin are, from what I understand, being real problems for some of those people who have migrated to them. I ask my programmer constantly if that has changed any, and he regretfully informs me that there has been no improvement that he has seen.

So anyway, sorry about the long winded explanation, but every now and again I feel that it behooves me to explain to everyone my thought processes about what goes on behind the scenes here.

 

[spinytail]

All good points Rich, sad but it all makes sense. I can imagine just based on the enormous amount of data how hard it is dealing with such a beast to even consider migration as every step probably reaches limits on data and timeouts even with tools designed for vBulletin. I can also see the nightmare with older patrons not wanting anything changed.

I feel your pain brotha! When it comes down to it, this is a great website and the dedication to it shows. I believe sites like this are what keeps every transaction from going through petstore/wholesale shops and in my experience that is why so many diseases are spreading and the BOI has saved so many from the corruption that this hobby attracts.

 

[WebSlave]

Yeah, that last server migration that took place rather recently was apparently a real headache for the server techs. They had to do this site manually, since the native Cpanel function wouldn't work for it. I noticed that they have since changed their migration policy to where if a migration won't work automatically via Cpanel, then the customer is responsible for the migration. So that likely means I won't be migrating this site anytime real soon, if ever again. At least not to a different server hosting company unless they would be willing to tackle a manual migration.

These new guys I am with seem to be top notch, so hopefully that won't be an issue I have to address anytime soon. And thankfully they appear to be REAL BIG on security.

I try to do local backups of all the sites I have on my server periodically, but honestly it's a pain in the butt, so I don't do it as often as I really should. Takes me all day to download the sites to one of my local backup hard drives. The server tech guys really hardened off my server, but heck, you never know. So having a local copy of my sites might be the only thing standing between continuing on with some losses, or being completely kaput some day. I also make local backups of the MySQL database files every night too, that I download from the server. So regardless of being a pain in the butt, it's something that I feel I have to do if I want to try as best I can to make sure this site doesn't just vanish in a puff of smoke one day.

There is a backup drive in the server, of course, but a particularly malicious and knowledgeable hacker would certainly destroy the internal backups as well as the main sites while he or she was in there, particularly if their intent was simple destruction.

Heck, if I FULLY retired, I wonder what I would do with all of my free time?