As the owners seem to have completely screwed up what was arguably the most useful Range Rover site available, we suddenly seem to be getting a few new members appearing on here. So first of all, welcome one and all. You may find this forum a little different. You won't constantly get told to do a search or read RAVE, you'll get help from people who have been there and done it. There is no profanity filter either so unless you join and immediately start posting crap in Cyrillic with links to dodgy download sites, your posts won't get deleted and that is about the only reason anyone will be banned too. If a thread wanders off topic, who cares? We don't, if the original question has been answered, then so what if the topic wanders? If it hasn't, somebody will drag it back on topic sooner or later.

You may also find quite a few familiar names too. There's a number that were banned for one reason or another from RR.net, I used to use this username there until I got a lifetime ban for a reason I never did find out (so re-registered as Richard_G instead) and others have been spending time on both sites.

The clue is in the URL, this is a virtual pub. You wander in, sit down and have a natter with a bunch of mates.

+1

Indeed, I'm one of the banned ones.
Oops

Shame you got banned without knowing why, GD/RG, I was looking fwd to hearing that story

The full story is here https://rangerovers.pub/topic/189-looks-like-rrtoadhall-doesn-t-like-competition, complete with responses, and not, to emails asking for an explanation.

Yeah I’ve been “straddling” the two forums here for a few months now, but I think I will be frequenting ‘The Pub’ more often now!

What a shame...

Off to drown my sorrows with a glass of Glendronach.

That'll get you on the right side of Gordon, our admin, he's a Scot......

Scot, eh?
Well that would certainly explain why he cannot resist the temptation to fiddle and fettle the site!
What was the famous quote? "All Scots are engineers and the best engineers are Scots"..... Can't argue the point!
Good on ya Gordon!

Well, here's a bombshell: Leftlanetrucking had no idea they were about to screw rr.net to the wall.
As Gilbert replied, I have to admit I am agog that a forum Moderator with his experience had no idea a change was coming.
I do believe Toadie may have been caught flat footed as well??
Let's invite LLtrucking over to the pub! He's a grouch, but has earned it! I wonder if I would be able to get banned for life if I invited a moderator to jump ship? WCPGW?

So, sent LLtrucking an invite over here......See if I can score a Banned for life trophy!

He certainly knows his engineering! Isn't he the guy that stuck a 6 litre lump under the bonnet of a P38?

What the hell did they do... another forum that has gone fugly. I rarely ever visit anymore so no great loss to me, but still.

LLT is indeed the guy with the LS in his P38. It isn't anything that hasn't been done with various engines by various people over here too. Isuzu 2.8s, M57s etc.

If my engine does go pop... I have the M57 from my late E39 ready to go.

Bolt wrote:

Scot, eh?
Well that would certainly explain why he cannot resist the temptation to fiddle and fettle the site!
What was the famous quote? "All Scots are engineers and the best engineers are Scots"..... Can't argue the point!
Good on ya Gordon!

Well it was Gilbertd's idea, and we were in a pub in Glasgow - the Bon Accord if I recall correctly - when he said "I mean How Hard Can It Be?"

Not all that hard, as it turns out. There are bits of the forum that are a bit flaky and I work on it as and when I get time. It's not run for profit, it's not run for marketing, I stuck some Google ads on for not-logged-in users to try and capitalise on the Russian spammers and maybe offset some of the hosting costs. However, like our beloved Range Rovers (and other cool old cars) there are a few odd little faults that crop up.

Just noticed the copyright message at the bottom, yikes, I'm using a well out-of-date copy of the forum software. That's another thing though, the forum and the systems it runs on are all Open Source so if you don't like how something works you can open it up and have a poke at it!

Ahh yes, I remember it well. Actually I don't and couldn't have told you which of the many pubs we visited that night but I do remember some of it. I've also just realised how time flies. That was when I was in Glasgow working at the Commonwealth Games and the Indian followed by a pub crawl was to celebrate my 59th birthday. As I've just had my 64th, it was 5 years ago now......

Just seen the thread about the 'new improvements'. The banner picture, the intro... I mean... the whole thing has clearly been thrown together by someone that doesn't have a clue.

Genuinely quite a shame, despite the annoying mods, rr.net has always been a useful source of information... but I can't see it staying that way or continuing to be in the future.

The whole thing is utterly crap. As is every response from the "Admins". I can't stand multiple people hiding behind one account either.

Sloth wrote:

The banner picture, the intro... I mean... the whole thing has clearly been thrown together by someone that doesn't have a clue.

Oi, I resemble that remark :-D

I saw one of the responses from the Admin team (to some of Richard's points IIRC) saying that the info that has been lost was lost because of the limitations of the new software (Xenforo).

This is a really weak excuse IMO. It means that someone, somewhere either has an incredible lack of understanding about where the value of the site was to those that used it OR they simply didn't care about what the users valued and pushed through the new system for their own reasons (attempting to increase profitability somehow?).

If the new system is incapable of retaining the old information then surely that means the new system was the wrong choice?

There's no reason at all that the old information "couldn't" be retained through the use of a suitable replacement software. There's even less excuse for it if their new system is CUSTOM. They can make it do whatever they want it to.

IMO, if the info isn't there then it's because someone made a decision to not include it.

Perhaps they thought that if they "lost" all the information then the users would sit back and say "Oh well, I guess we need to re-populate it", making lots and lots of new posts, inflating site usage figures, page visits, page interactions etc. All the things that paying advertisers like to see when spending their advertising money.

This would go hand in hand with massive number of adverts I now see interspersed with actual forum responses that are making it hard to actually read and follow a thread.

What legacy stuff has actually been eradicated ? Can we list it/them ?
Can't find all those handy John Brabyn Technical pages for a start .....

Absolutely everything except for the forum and even that is currently unsearchable. So all the stuff John Brabyn created and all of the subsequent common issues how to guides have gone. It would be a very long list......

OK but that's not just wasteful and disrespectful but downright diaboloical.....

Do we know yet if they just (irresponsibly) wiped it all from their servers then ?
(ie. Is it still there somewhere but not being 'presented' ?)