AE86 Dedicated portal - Would you be interested?

[Alex]

One idea sprung in this thread - http://www.aeu86.org/forum/showthread.ph...#pid163177 - so I wanted to ask the community for feedback

General idea is to build an index of running AE86 corollas - Dedicated portal where users can submit their car and provide as much information as they want - description, gallery, location (country)

Additional ideas for portal:

1. index of manuals, useful websites, forum threads
2. index of all AE86 custom parts manufacturers (AJPS, T3, etc.) and replacement parts dealers (country based)
3. classifieds section
4. reviews of parts dealers/manufaturers and services surrounding AE86 community
5. videos, magazines, historic documents
6. news, featured rides, meetings and trackdays section

This would be mostly user created content, so there would be a great need for volunteers that would like to help with gathering useful data and content creation.

Whole development would be done by me, so there wouldn't be any expenses, except for the time that would go in it.

So, what do you think?

[banpei]

Maybe I'm a bit biased on this topic, but:
1. check: http://www.aeu86.org/technical/
2. scattered over the forum
3. check: http://www.aeu86.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=23
4. Good idea. Could be arranged.
5. check: http://www.aeu86.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=3
6. News: http://www.aeu86.org/
trackdays: http://www.aeu86.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=32
I still need to revive the garage as the phpbb mod did not get transferred to mybb, but this would solve the owner's input with description/gallery.
Featured rides and a calendar can be arranged as well.

My question: why do you want to go through all the trouble to build something new if there is already 80% of it available right here?

The problem is that so far I have been pulling the cart with just a few very enthusiastic people willing to use their spare time and apparently there isn't that much interest from others to help us out to make things more available or give a better overview of things.
I'm not trying to defend our community here, but what I'm seeking is more input from people like you: great ideas that would improve our site and great content/news to feature on our front page. And you are, of course, welcome to help us out!

Just my 50 cents.

[Bean]

Currently out drinking ng so no links, but I actually had a similar very tech oriented idea but it never came to fruit unless I would do everything myself.
I also launched a test forum (copy of aue86) to help out with developing the design further but even there any interactions died after a few weeks.
Honestly I can't and won't blame anyone as most if not all have a full time job, family and projects eating their precious free time away.
If you do have some IT background you're welcome to contact me and I'll set you up with an account to the test environment. There we could do all the implementing work and test necessary to be able to transfer any results directly to this board with minimal downtime.

[pack]

Banpei! We should start the AEu86 homepage asap! News! Specs! DIY! Many things we can share....

Let's do it

[d3nso]

Yea bring some life in the community, the site lacks in news and other regular updatet stuff

[banpei]

Great to hear people are still willing to help.
@Pack: I've added you as an editor, so you should be able to add new posts/pages/etc.

For the others: if you wish to contribute to news and other things on the front page drop me a pm.

[pack]

Yeahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Let's start!

[Alex]

I came back from vacation, and great news: there are responses in the thread - community is alive

Just to get clear - this idea wasn't only about AEU86, but the whole online AE86 community, including Irish (ae86irl), Australian (hachiroku.com.au) and US (Club4AG), hachiroku.net.

There is a lot of great information scattered around different forums and there is a good chance it will get lost with time.

Biggest problem with forum threads (projects, guides etc) are images - some are attached (and can be saved, like in AEU86 case) but most of it are uploaded to third party image hosters which delete/lose images over time or fail to survive in general.

So maybe a AE86 dedicated (private) image upload script that is hosted AEU86 server would also be a good idea?

@banpei

1. Well known and valuable info, but it could be better if there where also links to forum threads (not just AEU, but all others) with various solutions (for example; rear brake upgrades/replacement with VW Golf calipers and Primera discs) and numerous sites that have great articles (for example; hachiroku.com.au blog had great guides last year I think)

2. Most of the forums have separated sections for commercial sellers so one part of them could be covered quickly

3. Not really easy to browse or filter - I meant real classifieds system integrated into website. And also scattered around different forums

4. It can be simple and fairly quickly built - Short info about manufacturer and user comments with ratings below

5. Again, it would be better if it's categorized and filtered

6. Categories, unified layout, thumbnails with short info for easier and quicker browsing, etc.

Quote:My question: why do you want to go through all the trouble to build something new if there is already 80% of it available right here?

It's not all on AEU86, there are lots of good sources like other AE86 forums

You (and many others) have done a great contribution to the community over the years, and I believe that there are many more people on the forum who would gladly help if there is an initiative and interesting ideas. BTW - great article on front page by Luis

We all have work and families, so it's not expected of anyone to devote them self to hobby projects, but even an hour of "work" per month would be a good contribution

AEU86 website - I would gladly help, drop me an email: alexATTintraweb.hr

@Bean Bandit

Sure, please contact me on email.

[oldeskewltoy]

From my own perspective.... the most comprehensive threads on Surreptitious are in HR.net. Not saying a lot isn't in other forums... but HR has every detail... more or less when it happened. It would be a real shame to lose that when/if HR crashes.

I HATE some of the photo hosts!!! EVERYTIME I go on photobucket these days... my system locks up and the only way to fix it is dump the modem!!! Bean has recently set up a none advert photo hosting site... so I can continue to post my work (Thanks again Arieh)

As discussed with him, the real challenge is to collect it all. For example... I have over 17 gigs of information... but not all of it is Corolla(AE86 based). To ween through it would be a task unto itself. On the other hand... it would be GREAT to be able to host it all - somehow.

[banpei]

From my side it is not an issue of hosting stuff, but similarly to what oldskewltoy points out: if HR.net or Club4AG is gone a lot of info will be lost. Similarly we have seen with the disappearance of Hachilife where there was a great deal of info and manuals lost. If we would host a site that keeps all information at one place it naturally would also become a single point of failure.

Hosting isn't that expensive anymore. What is the most expensive part is the storage of stuff on disk (gets cheaper every year), the bandwidth used and making backups somewhere safely.
Bandwidth can be cheaper if we use a CDN provider like Cloudflare which I already use for my own blog (still need to set it up for AEU86, so a good reminder).