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  1. #16
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    Thumbs up

    Time flys when you are having fun! Great job keeping up with the times like usual!....

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  3. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Baja170 View Post
    Good luck making it all happen Greg. That list is mind boggling for me because I know exactly what it takes to accomplish and the expense involved. Good for you man. Looking better all the time, keep up the great work.


    That list is the main reason I sold HeliFreak. To much confusion and instability in the heli market due to the separation of pod and boom and "drones" to sink the kind of money it would take to update like you are and way more stress than anyone but you and a few other site owners can imagine.

    Thank you so much Will. Heli-Freak is a stellar site by any metric, and your words of encouragement and appreciation really mean a lot. Indeed, it's extremely expensive and stressful as you very well know. A lot has changed in the landscape of social media in the last ten years, and I've made every effort to adapt Scream And Fly accordingly. Nowadays, many people want their 'likes', although I feel we are also heading into 'social media overload' with so many platforms. I definitely have to adapt, and S&F's traffic is exceptional, however the message board platforms have, in large part, not kept up with expectations that people place on social websites. Uploading images on message boards is still a burdensome process on phones, and although I've made many modifications to the S&F site to streamline its interface, it is just not going to have the adaptation potential to meet the demands of the future. Our home page CMS is the other half, and I have a development site set up and running to explore my options with our future home page and its integration with the new S&F message board. I've never been pleased with the current CMS and it took us a very long time to get it running smoothly. It's not modern enough and just not streamlined. The new home page will have to be on an entirely new platform.

    I will definitely keep you up to date on everything. You've created the very best RC helicopter website there is, which I still visit every day. I completely understand your feelings in regards to multicopters. I've never really been a fan of drones, aside from their use as a photo and video platform. I fly my helis whenever I can though.

    Thank you everybody, for your tremendous support. I say this over and over and I will repeat it again: none of it would be possible without our Supporting Vendors, Supporting Members, and Team Members. None of it at all. I cannot stress enough how important Team Membership is to this site, especially now.

    Thank you everybody,
    Greg


    Facebook | YouTube | Vintage Outboard Catalogs
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  5. #18
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    Jimmy Knowles pointed me to your reply, I had not noticed it. Jimmy is one of my boating mentors and I never would have met him without your site. Thank you.

    What you are saying is exactly what I was deliberating with HeliFreak. It is so hard to make a piece of software do what it is not designed to do. I was facing the same dilemmas you are. The school of hard knocks and bad experience pouring good money after bad has taught you well. vB cannot do what you need and you ARE going to have to go to software designed for what you want. I agree 100% about social media overload and feel the same way you do. I think you are very well in the position to make better decisions than I did at this point. When you sell a site and owe your programmers 50K that is a clear sign that trying to make software do what it is not designed for and being forced to scale to your traffic load and have room for growth I made some poor decisions and wasted a lot of money. I am glad you are ahead of me, I really do enjoy the site and I have made a lot of friends that have proven time and again to be invaluable to me. Like I said, people have no idea. I have no idea how you have time to do so much photography, my site consumed me 7 days a week for at least the last 10 years. I had to be in a field at an event with no cell service to ever get away and even then, there were always things to do. Just think, how many of you members can clearly identify what your product is and who your customers are? Probably less than you would think. It is not easy and it is comforting to be a member here and know the delicate balance you have to achieve between your customers and your product to actually make it worth your time and keep up with people's expectations. The fact that you can never please everyone makes it even harder and more stressful. I have no idea how you do it but I can tell you that you are doing better than I did and I am very happy for you. The fact that you have time to fly is a testament to how much ahead of me that you are. Good for you!!


    If I can help in any way please let me know. Thanks again for the great site!!

    Thanks Jimmy for pointing me to Greg's reply. I have a hard time finding things on my phone without my reading glasses sometimes.

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  7. #19
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    Hey Greg,
    I just wanted to thank you for everything you have done for all of us who frequent your site. I noticed last night my team membership had expired so I re uped it to be what little help I could to you. A number of years ago when a friend of mine, Bob "Big Johnson" told me about this site, I was immediately hooked. At that point it was just about the boats. Soon came the attendance of an event and as Will stated, then the new friendships started. This site suddenly made our boating world small and brought many with similar interests together in a way that's not valuable, its priceless. Can't thank you enough. Keep up the great work.
    Jim
    Last edited by JamesGang; 07-06-2016 at 08:45 PM.

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  9. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Baja170 View Post
    Jimmy Knowles pointed me to your reply, I had not noticed it. Jimmy is one of my boating mentors and I never would have met him without your site. Thank you.

    What you are saying is exactly what I was deliberating with HeliFreak. It is so hard to make a piece of software do what it is not designed to do. I was facing the same dilemmas you are. The school of hard knocks and bad experience pouring good money after bad has taught you well. vB cannot do what you need and you ARE going to have to go to software designed for what you want. I agree 100% about social media overload and feel the same way you do. I think you are very well in the position to make better decisions than I did at this point. When you sell a site and owe your programmers 50K that is a clear sign that trying to make software do what it is not designed for and being forced to scale to your traffic load and have room for growth I made some poor decisions and wasted a lot of money. I am glad you are ahead of me, I really do enjoy the site and I have made a lot of friends that have proven time and again to be invaluable to me. Like I said, people have no idea. I have no idea how you have time to do so much photography, my site consumed me 7 days a week for at least the last 10 years. I had to be in a field at an event with no cell service to ever get away and even then, there were always things to do. Just think, how many of you members can clearly identify what your product is and who your customers are? Probably less than you would think. It is not easy and it is comforting to be a member here and know the delicate balance you have to achieve between your customers and your product to actually make it worth your time and keep up with people's expectations. The fact that you can never please everyone makes it even harder and more stressful. I have no idea how you do it but I can tell you that you are doing better than I did and I am very happy for you. The fact that you have time to fly is a testament to how much ahead of me that you are. Good for you!!


    If I can help in any way please let me know. Thanks again for the great site!!

    Thanks Jimmy for pointing me to Greg's reply. I have a hard time finding things on my phone without my reading glasses sometimes.
    Thank you so much Will. Reading your reply definitely reassured me about not being alone. It's very tough as you know. Heli-Freak is a massive site, and I fully feel what you must have dealt with. It's a spectacular achievement though, and your effort really shows. I visit it every day. It's the best.

    You might recall that many years ago, Scream And Fly's home page was a separate affair. Back around 2007 I began to explore options to integrate the home page with the forums, but that is where I began to encounter the major nightmares. The original plan was to use a highly-modified Wordpress-based site, then custom code the bridge to VBulletin. But that in itself was a hugely expensive proposition and it also presented many potential issues down the road with security and committing to such a complicated marriage of platforms. We even went so far as to have the Scream And Fly Wordpress-based site finished, which cost us over $5000 for the custom theme. Then, VBulletin released its beta for VBulletin 4 Publishing Suite. That combined the CMS with the VBulletin forums software, and it held a lot of promise. That is what made us change course, and I decided we would use the VBulletin CMS Publishing Suite as our base platform.

    Well, as you and many people know, the VB CMS never materialized even close to what many people hoped for in terms of its reliability and overall level of polish in the interface. But once we committed to that platform, too much money had already been spent and we had to move forward with it. It took several years to get the CMS working well enough to use, which is why to this day so many of our old articles were never ported over to it. Then, a year after we committed to VBulletin 4, suddenly VBulletin 5 Connect is introduced, and that alienated many users. So we were suddenly on an outdated platform and VBulletin was labeling it as "End Of Life". That move caused a big shakeup among many of the owners of large message forums, and of course played a role in the development of Xenforo (which was a split of old VBulletin devs). Interestingly, most of the Internet-Brands (who owns VBulletin now) sites are based on VBulletin 3. So it's odd that they're pushing VBulletin 5 when their own sites are running VB 3. It makes me really wonder. Quite honestly, I've often felt that Scream And Fly's forums were at their very best when we were running VB3. VB3 is very fast and certainly much, much less buggy than VB4.

    We've taken VBulletin 4 platform pretty far, and I also have a lot more changes and updates for it in our pipeline, but in parallel the big plans are for the next Scream And Fly platform, and that will be extremely expensive. I have fully resigned myself to the fact that I will likely be selling my boat to offset the development costs. Many people really have no idea how expensive it is to run a site this large, but I wouldn't expect them to unless they did it, as you have. There is really no way for most people to know what's involved unless they themselves were doing it. I know you certainly understand, and I am so thankful that you have given us so much support.

    This is why I have to repeat over and over how grateful I am to our Team Members, Supporting Members, and Supporting Vendors. There is no way this site would exist without them. No way at all. Not even for a month. The costs involved in just keeping our data lines are extraordinary. I think it would shock most people. I know you wouldn't be shocked though

    I would like to actually contact you with some of my ideas on the plans we're making.

    Quote Originally Posted by JamesGang View Post
    Hey Greg,
    I just wanted to thank you for everything you have done for all of us who frequent your site. I noticed last night my team membership had expired so I re uped it to be what little help I could to you. A number of years ago when a friend of mine, Bob "Big Johnson" told me about this site, I was immediately hooked. At that point it was just about the boats. Soon came the attendance of an event and as Will stated, then the new friendships started. This site suddenly made our boating world small and brought many with similar interests together in a way that's not valuable, its priceless. Can't thank you enough. Keep up the great work.
    Jim
    Thank you so much Jim. I really appreciate that very much! I am always here if you or anybody has suggestions or if you need help with anything.

    Greg


    Facebook | YouTube | Vintage Outboard Catalogs
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  11. #21
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    I was still running vB 3.x.x super highly modified when I sold. I know exactly what you are saying, we tried vB 4 and it just never worked out. Keeping vB 3.x.x security patched was a nightmare in itself. When it cost thousands to manually very tediously apply what for stock sites takes 4 minutes and the running of an automated patch, you know you are way past the point of diminishing returns. Things got so complex that there was no way I could do it myself anymore because when you break the site to patch a hole that automated scripts that the script kiddies can readily exploit you know you are in over your head. (To the non programmer, crappy hackers that just download scripts that all they have to do is run them and type in www.sitename.com as a target. AKA, NOT a real hacker or even a programmer, just a punks that is trying to prove he/she is L33t.) vB 3.x.x is not nearly as fast as you think. I am not even sure what it is running on now as I believe the RCG guys run a highly modified version of 4.x but not 100% sure. I still have vB 4/5 licenses for 3 other domains but I never plan to run the software again after the rollercoaster it has been. If every security upgrade does not cost you thousands now and you can still do it yourself you are way ahead of me complexity wise. I stopped working on my own site back in 2007 and had paid programmers working on it until I sold.

    Sure, I'll PM you my phone number and would be a lot happier to talk to you confidentially now that I am not embroiled in the struggle to keep my site going anymore. Before I sold, that would have been the last thing I wanted to talk about with the owner of a cool performance boat site. It would be fun to talk to someone who is doing a lot better job than I did and I would be happy to detail to you the biggest mistakes I made that compounded the costs a good bit and my stress exponentially over the years.

    I definitely know what I would not do again. Sad thing is the HF programmers were working on a completely custom coded mobile version of the site (style) that is client platform independent and it looks like the buyers chose not to do anything with it at least so far. It looked very cool and was very fast. They were working on adding ads and upload functionality the rest was done and I was really excited about it. (No admin or moderation) We were also going to migrate to a lot faster more secure WWW daemon I can't remember which one to keep things fast. The RCG guys employ full time programmers on their staff and I am very surprised how fast the site is under their watch, they do an EXCELLENT job. I am sure when they bought the site their programmers had something to prove and they delivered 110%, they definitely rock with vB and mySQL. The owner does not like me at all but they if they would talk about it which I doubt they will to anyone, they would be the best people on earth to talk to. Good luck with that.

    The whole thing is like when you take your boat to the ramp and short out your battery trying to help someone at the ramp every time you try to take out your boat for say, a year or two or more and never get your boat in the water, for those who are not programmers. You always get the guys you help going but at your own personal sacrifice of doing yourself in each time you try to go out. Well not quite that bad but I definitely know where the sayings "one step forward, two steps back" and "wisdom" or "good experience is learned from "bad experience" or "bad decisions" "unwise decisions" etc came from.

    You have a PM Greg.

  12. #22
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    Thank again for your help and insight Will. I really consider it an honor to have you here. When you first mentioned that you were the creator of HeliFreak, I couldn't believe it. You will easily see a "Scream And Fly" registered there.

    One of the main requirements for the new Scream And Fly site is increased interactivity with the members. For example, we will have a section on the home page for articles by site members. If any member has an idea for an article that might be a product review, event coverage, or historical experiences, they would be able to submit it for editing, and it will be published on the home page. RCG does something very similar to this.

    We are also adding a buyer and seller rating system. This is long overdue. There will also be measures to prevent it being abused in any way. Only buyers and sellers directly involved in any transaction will be able to leave and receive feedback. I will only implement this once I am 100% pleased that there is an absolute minimum of potential for abuse.

    The sections on the new home page will be as follows:


    • Features
    • Event Coverage
    • Feature Boats - articles about member's boats (remember the "Flying Machine of the Month"? Similar to that, but much more comprehensive
    • Evaluations
    • Speed 101 (a return of this section from many years back, for basic performance tech articles)
    • Image Galleries - both by users and event coverage from us
    • Feature Articles by Members
    • History - in-depth features on classic boats, engines, and anything relating to history
    • Buy and Sell Marketplace - for both members and Supporting Vendors: The new site will retain the current forums-based classifieds, but will also add a dedicated classifieds system with buyer and seller ratings, full galleries, and other information. It will be entirely free for all members. This feature was originally going to be added to the current S&F site, but I decided it was best to just add it to the forthcoming, new site.
    • Live Video - live video feeds from events as they happen. This is something I'm really excited about.


    And relating to the current site, we now have auto-saving enabled. If you're typing a post and your computer locks up or there is any other interruption, you will be able to go back to the site and press a button to restore previously-typed content.

    Thanks again everybody!
    Greg


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  14. #23
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    Greg These upgrades sound great! Really lookin forward to some "live video streaming". Thanks again for a GREAT site!!!!!! Gary
    "12" Super Lite Tunnel (11') "88" 25 Yammy twin carb "BANANA SPLIT"
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    "Too much is never enough" Keith Richards " Dreams become reality via hard work and perseverance" G.A.Carbonneau

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  16. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by olboatman View Post
    Greg These upgrades sound great! Really lookin forward to some "live video streaming". Thanks again for a GREAT site!!!!!! Gary
    Thank you Gary. I'm very excited. A lot has changed with how socially-driven sites operate and what their users want so I want to make sure the S&F site is always fun and easy to use. We broke a lot of new ground back in 1998 when it all started, and back again in 2001 with the launch of these message forums. The current S&F site is dated now though, and we can only take it so far with upgrades.

    The new site is in active development now, and after discussions with our main developer, it is looking like we could plan for a launch before spring. The live video idea is something that I've been investigating for years. When we upgraded our server in April, that was really the final barrier to making that a reality.

    Here is how the live video will work: we will have several live broadcast video cameras, and during the season I will send some of those to people that will be at events, so there will be multiple feeds happening at once. Additionally, members that want to participate in streaming live to the S&F site will be given a camera that they will take along for rides on boats, or to events. It will really be a lot of fun.

    It's going to really be a lot of fun

    I'm grateful for all of your support for S&F. I must mention that because everything is entirely possible because of it. Thank you.

    Greg


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  18. #25
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    Greg,

    Come up to the run on Aug. 5th at Crystal Cove and I will assist you with some fund raising efforts. Wallets seem to loosen up in the parking lot after midnight LOL...

    Joe

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  20. #26
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    I wanted to update you all.

    The new Scream And Fly home page layout is ready to go. You will all absolutely love it. There will be many more sections, and it will be designed to be easily read on a computer, phone, or tablet. It will just be everything that this site needs to be to make it as good as it can be. I'm very excited about it.

    The decisions are now being made on our new forums. The basic layout you are all familiar with will stay the same. I don't want members coming in here and thinking they are in a completely different site. Everything will be intuitive, and MUCH easier to do. Adding photos to posts will be as easy as drag-and-drop, right into the post. Copy and past images right in, the same way with text. As many images as you want into one post. And it will be this easy from a tablet or phone too.

    I'm very excited, and I think we will be on schedule to launch during this summer.

    I am so thankful for the support you've all given me and Scream And Fly. Without your support, this would just be impossible. The development of such a large site costs a lot of money and I am so grateful for this community for keeping Scream And Fly moving forward.

    Thank you so much everybody.
    Greg


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  21. #27
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    Thank You Greg.

    Dave
    1980 Cougar 19 tunnel,90 2.4L Bridgeport EFI in middle of restoration.
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    RIP Stu
    "So many idiots, so few bullets"

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  23. #28
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    Will we retain our threads, post and picture logs etc

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  25. #29
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    Thanks for all your hard work Greg!
    I've been in the boat with you guys since '08 and have ALWAYS considered this site as THE PLACE TO GO.....Great Folks and Great Info!!!!
    Count me in for joining every year till the end!!!
    WillySteve Hendricks



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  27. #30
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    All together including paying, non paying, vendors, etc. Just curious to about how many members are there on this site?
    If I don't ask any questions, I'll never learn anything.

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