HeadWize to be partly closed

[Nanoha]

Deletion of all forums except for DIY/Marketplace forums

There isn't enough activity in the other forums to keep them active and even the archival material is starting to lose its value. There are so many audio review forums on the net that they don't really distinguish a site any more. Mega-review sites like HeadFi seem like a mega mess.

Plus, I've been considering a migration to MySQL 5 database, and taking these underachieving forums offline will give me the chance to experiment with a large and varied datasource.

I've held off upgrading MySQL b/c MySQL 5 has some incompatibilities with the MySQL 3 database now in use. However, the new blog databases were designed to around the incompatibilities, and I can apply these mods to the upgrade. With only two forums remaining, the migration should be much easier.

http://headwize.com/ubb/showpage.php?fnum=3&tid=7092

HeadWize was a comforting home back in the days when I didn't know about Head-Fi. Thank goodness the DIY community is still thriving.

[n_maher]

HeadWize was a comforting home back in the days when I didn't know about Head-Fi. Thank goodness the DIY community is still thriving.

I read that and I think it's a smart move, the other forums drew such little participation that it just didn't make sense. I do think that he should have a MISC forum for stuff outside of DIY and the Maketplace. But I have to admit, the DIY Forum there is the only one that I ever look at, and pretty infrequently these days.

[JBLoudG20]

the DIY Forum there is the only one that I ever look at, and pretty infrequently these days.

I agree, and for me, its mostly the lack of forum software features that is killing that place. Damn I just want to search within a thread.

[n_maher]

I agree, and for me, its mostly the lack of forum software features that is killing that place. Damn I just want to search within a thread.

Which ironically enough you can do, you just have to guess you way into finding the button that made perfect sense to Chu. You'll notice that next to the thread title there's a little button that looks like this: , how you're supposed to know that this is for searching a thread without a hover clue is beyond me. I took a chance based on other visual evidence on the site and guessed correctly. I'd also "guess" that most people are like my friend JB and get so frustrated they don't try. I mean it's cool and all that Chu wrote the software but holy hell it's cumbersome coming from a mainstream forum.

[mirumu]

I mean it's cool and all that Chu wrote the software but holy hell it's cumbersome coming from a mainstream forum.

I used to run some forum software which I had written about 80% of. When it started I was only going to be doing a small part of the development and maintenance but once the site went live nobody else did anything (other than complain). It just ended up being too much work to maintain. And when I lost access to hosting with PostgreSQL database support I just called it a day. These days I think the freely available forum software is good enough and developer time is better spent writing plugins for these where needed rather than re-inventing the wheel. It's also essential to listen to user feedback otherwise you end up with things that don't make sense to anything but the developer like that search functionality you described.

I do read Headwize on occasions but it's always for the DIY stuff. I don't think I've ever been in any of their other forums.

[aerius]

HeadWize has a forum?

[Nanoha]

HeadWize has a forum?

lol wah

[granodemostasa]

i guess i sorta expect something like that to come... sorry it had to happen though.

[Dusty Chalk]

Has someone crawled and archived the site? Is there a way to get archive.org to do it for us?

[Fred333]

That would be a great idea. There is a lot great info on here to keep for future reference.