Site Feedback & Suggestions

Your downloads, your suggestions, your site!

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 13:29:51 +0000

It's been a few months now since we upgraded, with the site having settled down nicely we're now looking over a lot of the functionality within the downloads section. We've already made a few suggestions to the developers of Invision who produce the software that our site runs on, like searching within specific categories - that function was taken out during the upgrade but we would like to see it return, search results should also contain info at a glance like the date the software was added, date it was updated and so on.

The developers are usually keen to hear suggestions and although we've made ours we want to hear your views and suggestions so we can relay these onto them. Did you use a function before and it's not there now?, can't find something else?, not happy the way something works?.

Please be as open and honest as you like, we're keen to pass on all information and suggestions to Invision who will take these opinions on board and if possible include those ideas in the next release of their software.

Cheers
Marko

New Look FreewareBB

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:19:26 +0000

Finally, and after the upgrade left us with a 'default look', we've managed to whack our unique stamp on the site again with our new look and feel. Please feel free to make any comments or suggestions below
Kind Regards
Marko

FreewareBB Newsletter - Your Say!

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 09:23:26 +0000

Now the site has settled slightly after the upgrade, we're focusing on our newsletter.

The newsletter will now be published online each fortnight instead of being sent to you via email each week, this is to give us a little more time to focus on the quality of the content and we hope include some great material for you. Publishing it online also gives us even more flexibility on what we can add and how we can present it to you. Of course, as a subscriber to the newsletter you will still receive advance notification when it's online (sign up HERE).

The question we have just now is, as a reader of the newsletter what do you want to see in there?.

It could be more reviews, more info on the latest downloads on our site, more content to make you chuckle or something completely new!. Remember, we're producing the newsletter for YOU and we really want to know your thoughts - what would make you look forward to reading it each fortnight?.

Similarly, if you are a developer of freeware we'd love to hear your news for inclusion to the newsletter and all those aspiring writers or editors out there, submit your articles or stories to us and we'll mark them for inclusion - CONTACT US HERE.

Please be as open and descriptive as possible with your thoughts and remember it's only as much fun for us to produce as it is for you to read it

Cheers
Marko

downloads

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:43:22 +0000

Just went into downloads and tried to download "Free DVD Ripper 2.25" appears to be an old setup and I cant get the site to download...No problems, but thought you might like to check it out..Thanks..

Tutorial Topic

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:18:24 +0000

I suggest to add Tutorial Topics on various items to deal with new softwares, pc knowledge and error problems encountered to promote members' interests as most of them nay not so familiar with all softwares or systems. Memebers can know more here and can learn something or share information and as a result they know friends or become friends with each other. Do you consider it is necessary? Thanks for the chance of giving my idea!

Hows Our Speed?

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:05:45 +0000

The upgrade we performed a little while back brought about many improvements to the site, one of which was a caching function. This means instead of pages being loaded as normal they should load from a fast cache instead, resulting in faster page loads for everyone. We're keen to hear your opinions on this and ask you cast your vote and leave any comments you wish to add. If you have any concerns regarding the upgrade in general, please do let us know about them, even if it's nothing to do with the speed of the site
Thanks
Marko

Errors with Saved Notifications

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 05:40:12 +0000

Hello,

I have 3 Saved Notifications here.
When I click on 2 of them (dated 10 June 2010 - 01:52 AM & 04 June 2010 - 05:09 AM), it shows me the following message:

Quote

An Error Occurred

Sorry, an error occurred. If you are unsure on how to use a feature, or don't know why you got this error message, try looking through the help files for more information.

[#10229] We could not determine which message you were attempting to view.

and for the 3rd (dated 17 June 2010 - 02:09 PM), it takes me to IPBoard admin page. The link for the same is below:

http://www.freewarebb.com/admin/index.php?adsess=12b776291961bc31ac9a1ac211971114&app=masspm&app=members&module=messaging§ion=view&do=showConversation&topicID=5408#msg5444

Appreciate your help.

Thanks, Grr

Important Notice Regarding Certain Files On FreewareBB

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 08:40:46 +0000

Unfortunately, due to a company called streamline.net, certain files on FreewareBB will be unavailable for a short time. These files were hosted on a seperate server on our sister domain, freewarebb.co.uk, using an account from this company which aparently offered unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space.

However, recently we noticed issues regarding this host and the inability to download files from them and after contacting them they claimed it was because we didn't have an index page on the server. Huh?! OK, let's try that one again ... contacting them again I explained we merely used the account to host files and although we do HAVE an index page it wasn't as important to us as the downloads themselves.

So, never mind the fact their server was no longer "serving" our files, the next reply we get is this ...

Quote

Thank you for your query

"Our package is used for the downloading of files, not for hosting a website"

This is against our terms of service and strictly not allowed. The web hosting and contents on the server must be used for we hosting and not file sharing.

It has been nessesary to notify a manager of this abuse and therefore you may be contacted by them soon.

Pleas close this enquiry as resolved as we are not able to provide support with the use of your account.

Kind Regards,
StreamlineNet
Streamline.Net - The home of good value web hosting

Now I don't know about you, but there are 2 words here that offend me immediately, one of which is "file sharing" and the other is "abuse".

I would not consider hosting files and linking to them from ONE website file sharing, but instead file hosting and as for "abusing" their system well, they will have to explain that one themselves. However, they will no doubt use this and the fact we're probably driving a whole load of traffic their way which is the reality of the issue if we're honest as most "unlimited" host's don't take well to having more than 1mb of bandwidth used each month. In hindsight, it was very naive of us to use a host such as this in the first place.

However, we are currently formulating a plan with the fantastic host of FreewareBB, Michael from MDD Hosting and will hopefully soon have a solution to knock the socks off future downloads hosting by us. It's called a Content Delivery Network and means the file's we host will be located at various locations across the world and as such you would be downloading them from your closest point resulting in much faster downloads!.

For the moment, please bear with us while we work our way through the files on the site and change their download location to the new location once it is set up, and if you do run across a file which is still pointing to the old download location feel free to reply here and we'll have it changed asap!.

Regards
Marko

streamlinenet, streamline, ukhost, webhost streamline, streamlinenet review

New upgrade - bug reports

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 11:59:10 +0000

Please use this new thread to report any bugs, issues or abnormalities you find with the new updated site
Thanks
Marko

So far ...
1. URLs - We note that all URL's have changed on the site causing some threads and external links to FreewareBB to be broken. We are working with the relevant provider of the SEO IPB (CSEO) modification which is responsible for controlling our URL's and hope to have a resolution at some point during 5th June 2010.
FIXED - URL's should now be working as normal - home page redirection will be fixed very shortly

2. RSS Feeds - some people may be experiencing issue's with our RSS Feeds, the reason for this is somewhat unknown but our RSS Feeds page contains the newest versions of our feeds and we would recommend re-applying these latest feeds to your RSS readers
FIXED - we have updated all RSS Feeds throughout the site, if you are still experiencing any issues with our RSS feeds please visit the RSS Feeds page for the correct feeds.

3. Author Field In Downloads - currently the author field in the download listings is malformed, we have a ticket raised with InvisionPower (creators of the type of forum we use) for this and are awaiting their resolution.
PENDING - we hope to have this problem resolved today/tomorrow

Another upgrade?

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 20:30:52 +0000

OK, I can guarantee that this is the last update in a long long while for us at FreewareBB.

This time round we honestly had no choice but to perform this action as our database was ready to fail. The situation was this:

1. We were previously running v2.3.6 of Invision software up until 2nd June 2010 - on that date we upgraded and noticed some issues which caused us concern. We took the decision on 6th June 2010 to rollback the site using a previous backup. Unfortunately this meant restoring the site back to 1st June 2010 which meant we lost data between 1st June - 6th June.

2. Since restoring the site back, we've noticed other issues with the site, therefore decided to ask the developers of Invision to take a look at our databases. They did, and the reply was scary - basically through the restore process our database managed to retain both the old and new tables which meant the database was just about unusable and could crash and burn at any minute. Our only option was to upgrade again.

3. Invision developers told us we couldn't upgrade because of the state of our database, therefore we had no choice but to restore the site back to 5th June which was after the previous upgrade but before we rolled back!.

So here we are again!. It's been a rollercoaster for us all, but we're back for good this time and as we speak we have Invision on the site checking everything is OK and we'll be working through those niggles which we had last time so do please bear with us over the next couple of days. Anyone who wants to shout at us, please feel free, we've already gave ourselves a major ticking off for this ordeal

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please be aware that our URL's are still not completely fixed therefore it's possible some links on the site may not work as expected such as those hard coded into topics or RSS Feeds. This should be resolved just shortly.

Kind Regards
Marko and The FreewareBB Team