Official Luthiers Forum!

A place to share your building tips and tricks using Video or Pictures.

Find it in the "Board Index"

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Cool! Destined to become a popular feature, I know. The list of improvements to the new site just keeps growing! Thanks!

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Wes McMillian
Santo, TX
http://www.wesmcmillian.com

Yes, I would like to dump every "tutorial" onto this section. I am still trying to figure out how to "move" threads.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

For me is, the more forums, the less likely I am to see things. It's nice to have everything in one place. If people would title their threads with the relevent info, it's easy to read what you want and let the rest go.

There are times when I would be interested in tutorials or CNC etc, but I doubt I will check those forums very often because it's just one more thing to do. Just my 2 cents.

Having them archived by catagory may be helpful but with the new search parameters, I'm not sure how helpful that is either.

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http://www.chassonguitars.com

I'm with Kent. It was months before I realized there was more than one section to the old forum....

Why bury stuff('cept the off-topic crap which should be in its own corner) in other sections?

I like the idea.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

In all seriousness though,
It will actually be more visible, and less buried.

My thoughts were to make all of the tutorials, video or pictorial easily accessible,
not mixed in with everything else and eventually buried in the archives.

Example, Hesh has done a bunch of terrific tutorials, unless you knew what to search on, you may never find them.
Let alone all of them.

This way we can keep all the tutorial type stuff in an to easy to access place.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

This is just a wandering thought, but what if the Tutorials, Jigs, Designs, Tools, thread starts in the Main forum, and then get transfered to the Tutorial/Jigs forum, after they have been thoroughly vetted by the OLF Establishment, i.e. other suggestions, different approaches, etc. This is one of the things that makes a Tutorial thread great, IMO. Maybe it will happen if they are posted in the Tutoral thread first, but I wonder if it will reduce interaction, because of the "Forumism" (The conscious ignoring of threads in other than the Main Discussion Forum). My idea may be Admin. activity heavy, though, and that's a good enough reason not to do it.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Yes you can search all the forums at one time, by

Post subjects and message text
Message text only
Topic titles only
First post of topics only

You just highlight them all in the "Search in forums:" box.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Oh oh! And if your concerned about missing something in a forum that you don't regularly visit, Subscribe to it!
You will get an email message when ever something is posted to it.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

I really like Waddy's idea of initially posting toots in the main forum and then moving them to a designated forum (Lance's idea) so that they are all in one place.

Part of what makes anyone's tutorials great in my way of thinking is that it spawns discussion and for better or worse when others weigh-in we eventually, collectively, have a superior result.

For people with limited time or who are in the habit of just visiting the main forum toots may be missed, good info does not get shared, errant info does not get corrected etc. I agree with Kent and Mario here.

Lance you can move entire threads with this software with ease. It is just as if you are archiving them only the drop down will let you choose which forum you want to deposit the threads into.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Something that I really like about this software is that it will show me anything new in ALL forums if I log in, go to "main index" and click "view active topics." This returns anything new in any forum since my last session. Pretty cool.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

The thing for me is that even after I 'discovered' the other sections, I quickly realized there was nothing there I had to see, anyhow, so I link to the main forum directly and just quickly scan its contents. Saves a step. It might seem petty, but many of us don't have much time, and we do visit many forums, and have tons of e-mail to look into and answer, as well as calls to make, etc.... Running the business of building guitars takes nearly as much time and effort as building the crazy things.

Go ahead and make all the sections y'all wish, but many of the members will miss them or even forget altogether that they exist, I suspect.

As for subscribing to a section or thread, not no, but hell no! <g> Last thing I need is more mail....

Waddy's response was really more along the lines of what I was thinking. One of the best things about this forum vs. others has always been the lack of all those sub-forums. I'd rather just skim over what I don't want to read. I HATE jumping around a bunch of forums. Like Mario, my bookmark is set to the main forum page and I only occasionally glance at the others.

BUT...to have the separate forum as an archive of tutorial threads after they've expired in an EXCELLENT idea.

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Wes McMillian
Santo, TX
http://www.wesmcmillian.com

I understand that most people don't visit (all) the other forums,
i.e. CNC, Reso, OLF FOLK guitar, MGL, etc, as they may be of no interest.
BUT I can easily see most people stopping in at a Video rich section.

I know I sure would!

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

I think this is a great addition to the forum.
SKIN

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James W Bolan
Nashville Tennessee

Does the videos needs to be uploaded to YouTube first?
If yes, what garantee do we have that they will remain there and that the link to them will work for a long time?

Lance

The way we deal with this on the Downunder forum is to post it in the main section, let it run it's course and then move it to the Tutorials section, where the thread is still active and can still be added to, as new information and suggested improvements come to hand.

That way most people will see it when they browse the main discussion area but it is easily found at a later date or by new members.

Finding the old toots is no trivial matter. I'm about a third of the way through updating the toot page and will mail you all the links when completed so you can move them easily.

Moving threads with this software is so trivial even Hesh can do it. (ducks and hides waiting for the inevitable onslaught)

Bob

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Bob Connor
Geelong, Australia

Geeze Bob and I thought that I was a genius........... Even though I have your picture I do understand that you own the server..... I am dumb but I am not stupid - there is a difference.....

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I really thought dumb and stupid were the same thing. Crazy and stupid, now, they are different. Some of us are just a little crazy!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Waddy I always thought that dumb was when one makes a mistake. Stupid is when one makes the same mistake twice.......

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I think stupid is making the same mistake twice. So I know I fall in that category. Dumb is forgetting that you made a mistake or realizing that you did, but can't tell what it was.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Hesh is not stupid, he's borderline insane! He has all the stability of a bag of rats in a meth lab! If Hesh ever told you about the time he married that tranny in Vegas, you would be convinced of this!

This means he's really, really quite loony, but as long as you avoid pop'n'drops on golf trips you should be fine!

BTW I want to put in a vote for posting tuts in the main and moving them live to the tut forum! That is, if were voting!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

There's one feature I think most of us are missing out on, at least I was until just now. In the main board index, you can tell which forum has messages that are unread without ever opening that forum section.

On the main Board Index page, if there are any new messages in a particular forum, the symbol next to that forum turns yellow, and once you've read everything new in that forum (or just marked it as read), it turns back to tan or wheat or whatever color that is. In the pic below, see that there's a new message I haven't read in the Main Discussion area.



Most of us will never notice that unless you click "Mark forums read" at the upper right on the main index page! It'll show each forum as having unread messages so they all look the same. At any time you can mark the whole forum as read or one individual section as read.

Using this feature, it actually makes the board quicker to navigate if the forum is split up into a few different sections for various subjects. That way one lesser discussed topic doesn't quickly slide into oblivion like it does in the main section. So this way, you'd have your separate Video and Picture Tutorials section, and everyone would know when there's a new post in it, even if they hadn't been to the forum in a week, without scrolling through a 100 messages in the main forum or on Active Topics.

Once you start using this feature, the old way of having one giant main forum for everything starts to make less sense. You can have separate sections for tools and jigs, tutorials, wood selection and processing, electrics. Once you get used to looking at that main index page, navigating the forum becomes much quicker than scanning through hundreds of messages in the main forum. Old posts don't get lost as easily, and new posts in the lesser used sections get noticed right away.

That said, I think some pruning of some of the main board topics might be helpful, several of them could just be sticky topics in another forum (OLF builds, Montreal guitar show, etc). The sections of more general interest ought to be near the top, and the more specific sections like the Michigan Guild could be towards the bottom. (all IMHO, of course)

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Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR