Board Rats forum - ongoing updates

Site Feedback & Updates
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Hey everyone, I’m creating a new topic to outline the ongoing updates and improvements around here. As always, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, concerns, feel free to drop them in this thread, dm me, start a new topic, whatever. I appreciate all the feedback so far and will continue working to make this a cool place for everyone.

Updates as of 6/2

tl;dr thanks for being here, things are humming, we’ll keep jamming econo

Infrastructure is stabilized! I had a couple fire drills… one was my mistake, one was genuinely out of my control. Briefly:

  • my mistake: underestimating how many images we upload. I didn’t have a robust enough media storage solution in place at launch. This was fixed by moving media storage to a better platform that will scale with the site as usage increases. This was handled overnight through this morning - some noticed images on their posts disappeared or had a broken link icon. All these images have been recovered and are being served properly now.
  • out of my control: a server provider canceled and deleted my original server setup without warning on Saturday night. Still not sure why, but moving on. BR servers are now stabilized, and I have set up redundant servers and redundant backup systems to preserve and protect forum content in case anything like this happens again.

Thanks for your patience as I get the tech stuff sorted out. Launching Board Rats was a classic case of ‘ready fire aim’ but that’s been part of the fun.

Image uploads are humming along. I set up some automatic compression that happens in the background when you upload an image, and the system is set to allow any images up to 10mb. The goal here is to make image uploading dead simple - no funky dance of resizing on your phone, or uploading to an external site and linking to it… just upload in your post and be done. Simple.

Other business: a number of you have reached out to ask if you can make donations for my time/costs of hosting. As much as I appreciate this, the thought of accepting donations makes me uncomfortable. This is really a passion project to give back to a community I’ve gotten so much from. So, thank you, truly, but no thank you. If you are really itching to pull your wallet out, I’ll be launching a board rats shop that will feature some creative work from our community, so you’ll have the ability to buy cool shit while supporting the hard costs of this site AND supporting the artists here (more on this soon). In the meantime, i’ll keep the wheels on this weird bus and we’ll keep jamming econo.

Near term developments: with the tech side stabilized, i’m going to work on some front end improvements. I want to keep the look and feel we have (old? nostalgic? simple? luddite friendly?), but improve UX so things are easier to use/find/navigate. You guys have made some great suggestions on this front already and I’m working on them now. Please keep them coming!

Thanks again! Very stoked you are here, and very stoked to be building this with you. More soon!

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Great effort and accomplishments. Some of those server things happen. Lucky you were around with “spare time” to address them and have the tech chops to do it. Mahalo.

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@andrew we are lucky to have you as our head rodent. appreciate you!

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Thanks, @andrew!

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The store is a great organic idea I believe you’ve done a great job and all for the love of our community. Colorway, layout everything so far is right on @andrew

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Intentional downtime incoming… adding more reactions than just the lame ass heart icon. Forum might be down 15 mins or so, but will bounce right back.

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I’m gonna post this here too, I am in awe of your effort Andrew and I’m so happy this is happening. I’ve really valued the jam community over the years and it would have been so Sad to see it die!

Thank you so Much!!

I would definitely be up For buying a Tee or a cap to help fund this. Maybe if you do have some Merch you can use tee mill or a drop shipping thing so us international Rats can get involved easily.

May you snag every set wave you want next time you surf!!

CP

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In my head you are Splinter from the Ninja Turtles. Thank you, Splinter.

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imma steal that for my avatar

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Can you elaborate on the goal of the deals section, @andrew?

Should we close the east coast deals thread
https://boardrats.com/forum/t/east-coast-deals/49
in favor of

https://boardrats.com/forum/t/deals-east-coast/446

… for example?

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Yes that’s the plan! I’ll have a more official post on the forum updates later today, but the new Deals category is specifically for linking to deals found on CL, OfferUp, Marketplace, etc. The Deals category is ‘locked’ by default, so you have to be a registered Rat to see and add content to the Deals area. I’ll merge the existing deals threads later today!

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love this. Lurkers F off.

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they took my thread!

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Hey all, there have been some updates to the forum you may or may not have noticed yet.

First: new category called Deals. This is a place to drop links to deals you find on CL, OfferUp, Marketplace, anywhere… this is distinct from the Classified category where you list your own items for sale. The Deals category is ‘locked’ meaning only registered and logged in Rats can see the content. This means lurkers won’t be able to snipe the deals we share with the community - if you post to the Deals category, only other Board Rats will be able to see what you posted.

Next: Classifieds - I added some tags to the Classifieds section (“for sale”, “for trade”, “wanted”) and some sub tags (ie “sold”) - this gives everyone an easy and common way to indicate what type of listing it is, and its status, plus filtering options at the top of that specific forum.

A few people have asked about the option to add their location to their profile. This is an option but it is pretty buried in this platform and tricky to find. i’ll see if I can make this easier and more intuitive, but for now, you can add your location by navigating to your Profile Editor page. To get there:

Click your avatar/profile image
Click the user icon
Click “Preference”
Click “Profile”
Edit “Location” and any other info you like.

Clunky! I agree! I’ll try to make it better

Other: still working on more real/‘official’ branding for Board Rats. Once this finalizes, I’ll put up a simple web shop with some things like stickers, shirts, etc to show off what a proud rat you are. More on this soon-ish :slight_smile:

I think that’s it! … for now

As always, thank you all for your feedback and for being here. If you have other feature or UX requests please don’t hesitate to reach out to me here or via DM - always looking to improve!

More soon

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Hey everyone, just a few quick updates on the site…

It’s July 1, which means Founding Rat membership signups are closed. If you got in as a Founding Rat, you’re set - locked in with Founding Rat status for as long as your account is active. Founding Rats will never have to pay for membership, and they will not see ads on the forum.

New signups are live. 2 levels: Free, and Paid ($5/month). Free members will be served ads on the forum, Paid members will not.

Ads will be rolled out on the site and forum in the coming days. Founding Rats will not see ads on the forum, but might see ads on the other pages of the site.

I’m working on a directory component of the site that will be a place for people to add shapers, surf shops, clubs, repair shops, and supply shops. It’s pretty much built out, I just need to figure out the best way to make this a) open to public submissions and b) be maintainable. The general plan:

  • let members of the forum add/edit business info
  • members can rate/review businesses
  • Businesses can ‘claim’ their listing and manage the info there

The goal is to have a place for people to discover businesses, learn about them, maybe find your next favorite shop or shaper.

Other updates: updated BR branding is in the works, as is a web shop with BR merch. One thing I’ve been thinking about - and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on - is some comments on the forum mentioning that soft goods are the big revenue drivers for surf shops, and that shapers should take more advantage of this. I’m thinking about offering shapers the opportunity to add their own merch to the BR shop, and sending them the profits. I don’t think many would act on it, but it would be a low effort way for them to get exposure and make some extra coin. They wouldn’t have to deal with inventory, fulfillment, customer service, etc. Could be cool.

I’ve also been reflecting on how fun it’s been to surf with other rats the last couple weeks, and am wondering if we should create a meetup/event forum to organize get togethers. Thoughts?

Thanks again for being here and being cool! I’m blown away by how strong and active this community is. It’s been great getting to know you more both online and irl.

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How about adding an advertisers list? That way we could support the advertisers that in turn support this site?

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Great idea! I’ll create something so Founding Rats can see who is advertising here even though they can’t see the ads

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that would be money, Foamo.io is planning on advertising with Boardrats and will offer free membership to grandfathered rats, still working on it as well as the ad copy.

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I owe you a text with ad sizing - incoming!

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