SuperDutyDiesel.com Giveaway contest!

[Shaggy]

I got the email also, and it obviously worked, as I logged in for the first time in 6 months. Curiosity took hold, not to try and win a prize as much as to try and figure out what the "catch" is.

Jaded by the days of the Reader's Digest Sweepstakes sweeping up millions from retirees subscribing to stacks of unread books and magazines in the hopes of being eligible to claim the tens of thousands of dollars that they've already supposedly already won, but somehow never see... I was curious what clever trick got cooked up on the internet this time.

Please don't misunderstand... this isn't an accusation against this contest! This is simply an admission of how skeptical one can become about "prizes."

Now that I've logged in to see what is going on with this site (whoa...looks very different... didn't this site used to have a red SDD logo? now it is blue?), it occurred to me that the more important question regarding forum sustainability is not the number of future promised prizes that pull people in, it is the content and culture that makes people stay put.

And the natural microcosm to that question evolved to: Why did I leave?

That's the tough question. Especially when I still visited TDS, FTE, PSN, & PSO.

I'll have to give that question some thought. In the meantime, the names I recall very well from my earlier participation on this site include WD40 (Doug), DaveBen, Big Joe, Powerboatr, and Royboy. Lo and behold, I see that these guys are still keeping the torch lit over here. I hope these loyal members get the prizes, but I bet they will keep the flame lit anyway, with or without inducements.

I hope you decide to make this another forum you add to that list of regular visited forums you go to now. The prizes are real. They will cost me a pretty penny, but to me its worth it if this contest brings back the activity that SDD had. I could have gone and spent the same amount of money on advertising the forum, but thats always a hit and miss. This contest is another hit and miss, but it seems to be working so far. I think alot of the reasons that many people left was when the forum skin(look) was changed to a very dark color and it was very hard on the eyes and to read. I love the dark look, but even for me the SDD skin was hard to view. I believe it was because of the blue text that went with the black background. Also, the SDD logo was never there, just the default vbulletin logo, so the personality of the site I believe was lost as well. These recent forum changes are not the last, and there will always something I will be adding to the forum. Thanks for making your way back and I hope to see you here at a regular basis.

Shaggy has bought this site from 97_stroker (Mike). He has been trying to figure out how to get the traffic back for some weeks. I think he has finally figured out what has been missing. Mike introduced this new vBulletin format but never incorcorated many things like the SDD header and logo. Without these, nobody would stick around very long. The prizes are more attraction. I feel Shaggy has done a wonderful job fixin up this place.

Dave

Dave, thanks for the compliments. We will make this forum active again. I am sure of it!

 

[DaveBen]

I would not bet against that.

Dave

 

[KHP022]

Great!

 

[gmcretz]

You can count me in as well. I love the forums and hope that this one takes off like a shot. I've been here before and hope that this resurrection brings in new ideas, projects and builds. Sharing of information (aka bragging) is always fun too.

Ron "Gunner" Retzlaff

 

[DaveBen]

Gunner! Nice trucks you have there. We ALL are hoping for this forum to be as strong as it was.

Dave

 

[gmcretz]

Thanks Dave, that picture is "Old Truck - New Truck". My dealer thought it was cool and she asked me to shoot it to her so she could show her clients.

Gunner

 

[Y2KW57]

I think alot of the reasons that many people left was when the forum skin(look) was changed to a very dark color and it was very hard on the eyes and to read. I love the dark look, but even for me the SDD skin was hard to view. I believe it was because of the blue text that went with the black background. Also, the SDD logo was never there, just the default vbulletin logo, so the personality of the site I believe was lost as well.

Hmmm. Well, it seems that I missed out on the entire "black and blue" era, as the last I remember, this site was white with a red logo. So the skin is probably not the reason I stopped visiting, but if the skin were still black with blue letters, that would virtually guarantee that I'd stop visiting. These eyes are too old for that nonsense. There are three GM truck forums that have all black backgrounds that always come up in my google searches for answers, and I just have to keep googling until I hopefully find another website that has the information I'm looking for.

I started using computers in the 1970's, staring at the blank black screens of VAX terminals, but somehow, those screens with simple ASCII text were much easier to read than the black background HTML wonder graphics of today's forum websites. Could be just age though. 20 year old eyes have some advantages.

Your current skin looks good now, but I can barely make out your logo. I like that the logo is small, and doesn't take up half the page. That's a real plus. But I can't really make out what it says, unless I really stare at it for a while. Not sure if that is important for you to know or not, but I'm just being candid in the spirit of helpfulness, not criticism.

One thing I think that is really cool about your logo header is how the truck pictures change with every page refresh or new page logo. I really like that. It is always a mystery to see what pictures will show up in the header next. It looks like pictures of member's vehicles, which is even better.

Another thing I like about this site is that the lack of INTRUSIVE advertising. The banner ad on top is great. Once the ads start creeping down the vertical sides of the screen, or cropping up in member's pics that they are posting to illustrate a problem they are trying to fix, or start ballooning out of the text that people type (completely out of context too), or when I hit the back button, nothing happens, because there are over 100 single pixel doubleclick dot net or google ad sense pages that silently loaded whilst I was reading the topic, and I have to literally close the current window and relog into the website just to go back to the page where I was, then I'm gone. I don't visit those types of forums unless someone posted some information that I feel in desperate need for to solve a problem.

This site looks pretty clean of all the foregoing nonsense, and that is a great thing.

 

[Shaggy]

Hmmm. Well, it seems that I missed out on the entire "black and blue" era, as the last I remember, this site was white with a red logo. So the skin is probably not the reason I stopped visiting, but if the skin were still black with blue letters, that would virtually guarantee that I'd stop visiting. These eyes are too old for that nonsense. There are three GM truck forums that have all black backgrounds that always come up in my google searches for answers, and I just have to keep googling until I hopefully find another website that has the information I'm looking for.

I started using computers in the 1970's, staring at the blank black screens of VAX terminals, but somehow, those screens with simple ASCII text were much easier to read than the black background HTML wonder graphics of today's forum websites. Could be just age though. 20 year old eyes have some advantages.

Your current skin looks good now, but I can barely make out your logo. I like that the logo is small, and doesn't take up half the page. That's a real plus. But I can't really make out what it says, unless I really stare at it for a while. Not sure if that is important for you to know or not, but I'm just being candid in the spirit of helpfulness, not criticism.

One thing I think that is really cool about your logo header is how the truck pictures change with every page refresh or new page logo. I really like that. It is always a mystery to see what pictures will show up in the header next. It looks like pictures of member's vehicles, which is even better.

Another thing I like about this site is that the lack of INTRUSIVE advertising. The banner ad on top is great. Once the ads start creeping down the vertical sides of the screen, or cropping up in member's pics that they are posting to illustrate a problem they are trying to fix, or start ballooning out of the text that people type (completely out of context too), or when I hit the back button, nothing happens, because there are over 100 single pixel doubleclick dot net or google ad sense pages that silently loaded whilst I was reading the topic, and I have to literally close the current window and relog into the website just to go back to the page where I was, then I'm gone. I don't visit those types of forums unless someone posted some information that I feel in desperate need for to solve a problem.

This site looks pretty clean of all the foregoing nonsense, and that is a great thing.

Which 3 gm forums are you talking about?

I am having the header logo changed as I to noticed its hard to see.

 

[Y2KW57]

Which 3 gm forums are you talking about?

TahoeYukonForum.com

Note there is no "s" at the end of "forum". A cybersquatter is holding on to the pluralized spelling. TYF is one of the worst of the black background forums to try and read, both visually and from an intrusive advertising point of view, with top bars, side bars that interfere with log in function, pop up balloons in the user posted photos, and hot links in the user posted text. The culture there is younger as well, but I could live with that, if it weren't so difficult to log in, see the content, and go back a page without having to abort the browser session altogether due to 200 links of unseen doubleclick.net to have to backspace through.

Another administrative issue with TYF is their allowance of huge signature pics. These huge signature pics take up 75% of my latop screen, and if that same poster comments repeatedly in the thread, then the thread goes on for pages on end with a very inefficient reading value, due to having to see that same silly signature pic over and over again each time that member comments on the thread. This egoistic silliness is compounded by the administrator not invoking the bulletin board software feature of showing only one signature per poster per thread, so that if that poster repeats, the signature does not repeat.

GMFS (GM Full Size) .com

Another black background sight, with some, but not all, of the same sludge to have to trudge through as the site above.


********.com

A Canadian website with a black background, that while hard to read, for some reason is not as difficult for me to see as the previous two. However, as with the first site, the repeat signatures with giant photos get in the way of any hope of efficiently and quickly absorbing, and hence contributing to, the site content.


I think Pirate 4x4 is hard to read as well.

And here's my signature pic:

(picture an image of a crotchety cranky old man with tri-focals slipping down the slope of his pointy, crooked, wrinkled, hairy nose. Eeewww)

 

[Y2KW57]

While I'm on the rampage , I'd like to point out that I had to relog in 3 times during my 40 minute session this evening on this site. I was logged off automatically, presumably for inactivity, during each of the two posts that I made. The post above, and the post helping out another member here understand the difference in 7.3L engine covers. While writing both posts, I was logged out. I go to post, and bam, the entire post is lost, because I have to refresh the page and log back in.

Whatever the timing of the automatic log out setting is, works well for one liner posts (the kind your email said you wanted to avoid), but it does not allow enough time for a member to author thorough or thoughtful responses. For internet surfing security, the computers I use do not have auto log in. I found that some forums are set such that I am not kicked off in the time it takes me to write a post. This forum kicks me off before I can hit the reply button.