Breakdown by hour of day for 1st - 20th November. Click on th image for an enlarged view.

When the Blog’s web hosting was migrated to a new web hosting service a while ago the viewing statistics I receive altered so that it has become difficult to compare apples with apples.

You might recall that the Blog was getting 5,000-7,000 “unique visits” per week.  I was never sure exactly what this meant and I got other statistics which reported different figures (against a different definition or description)  so that the best I felt I could do was report the same type of figures each time, which were the ones which have now been lost.

The new figures are reported on a monthly basis and I haven’t had a complete month yet because they started part way through October.

However it’s pretty clear from comparing the other figures, which I still get, that the numbers are keeping up well, indeed there has probably been a sustained increase, even allowing for the likelihood that the recent burst of controversial articles about GWOCGB have also pushed the viewing figures up temporarily. continues………

Demoted to mere Web Designer

This will be of limited interests to most readers but I have decided to change the web hosting arrangements for this Blog so that from now on my Webmaster/Designer (and generally useful geek) Nigel Mackintosh will no longer be acting as web hosting agent.

Not that he’s fallen short in any way but Nigel has been subjected to some unpleasant and threatening earache recently in an attempt to intimidate him into pulling an Article from this Blog which I wouldn’t want him to have to face again, so I’ve made direct arrangements for web hosting, instead of doing it via him.

Nigel is a valued friend and I often consult him and not just about geeky stuff, but he has no responsibility for the editorial content of this Blog at all and no authority to make any sort of alterations to any of its content.  I’m the owner/editor, he’s the helpful geek.

Some of you may be aware that under UK Law a web hosting supplier can be held responsible for content which is deemed to be defamatory along with the author/editor once they become aware of the defamation.  As a result of this some UK web hosting companies have developed a reputation for pulling the plug on a website  just to be on the safe side – as soon as any allegation of defamation is made and without even bothering to check whether there really has been any defamation. This makes UK-hosted websites potentially vulnerable to manipulative and/or intimidatory attack.

I was once threatened with this treatment by Chris Hinds, the Chairman of GWOCGB for something I’d written, which struck me as a bit heavy-handed because I’m always willing to correct any error which is pointed out, but there you go.  I wasn’t on GWOCGB’s official Christmas card list even then so maybe a threatening approach from the outset seemed to him to be the best one to take at the time.  Happily that’s never recurred, possibly because I was able to make him look a little foolish for doing it.

This Blog’s web hosting was therefore transferred out of UK some time ago to avoid the risk of knee-jerk closure by the web hosting company.  But Nigel was still acting as my UK agent and his name was on the Blog as web hosting arranger.  He didn’t actually own the server on which the Blog lives of course, that’s not how it works but he was the fixer-upper.

An unhappy reader of this Blog recently took it upon himself to give Nigel a very hard time, threatening that an array of unpleasant things would happen unless the Blog article to which he had taken exception was pulled by a deadline which he set.  Happily no bolts of lightning descended on Nigel and nothing else has happened either since that deadline expired but it continues………

Dave and sophisticated companions in Normandy, September 2011

Dave Sharp, Good Egg of this Blog, has started writing his own blog which you can visit by clicking here.

Dave developed his writing skills by doing the Appy Wanders reports on their website and now that he’s taking a break from that role, I suppose his typing fingers were still twinkling and he’s decided to have a go at writing on his own account.

It’s not all about bikes unfortunately and it turns out that our Dave is a bit of a soft touch on the subject of cats but he’s already written one article about his Tour to Normandy and that’s well worth reading.

If he keeps it up (and I find out how to do it) I’ll put one of those feed thingies on here so that you will be able to see at a glance what his latest stuff is about – now how’s that for being welcoming to some competition for my readership!

Click on the image for an enlargement

One of the benefits for an existing GoldWing Club or Region which affiliates with the Federation of UK GoldWing Clubs is a free, ready to go club website and Elite Wings have just taken advantage of this and taken control of their new one.  It’s on the same domain name they’ve had for years, www.elite-wings.co.uk, but they are now benefitting from a new, high performance webhosting service and new, specially adapted website software has been installed.  And it hasn’t and won’t cost them a penny.  Even the webhosting charges are covered by the Federation.

The reason why it was worth Elite Wings going to the trouble of switching to a new website is that as well as being free of charge, the Federation’s club websites are user-controlled and easy to operate, so that the Wingers who run Elite Wings can add and modify stuff themselves, including adding pictures to a sophisticated (i.e. easy to load) photo gallery.

They will now be able to enter their own information about forthcoming or past events, add images if they wish and update the information any time they wish.  All their Members can also comment on anything which appears, for example to say “count us in for that one” and suchlike, so it works as well as having a club forum for most purposes, without having any of the risks or responsibilities of having a club forum.  Elite Wings like many clubs these days, also has a Facebook Page on which real-time chat can take place so the combination of the two works well.

If you visit the recently launched GoldWings North Midlands website, which the Federation provided from scratch in less than three weeks, you will notice similarities but also differences.  If you know what to look for you could also recognise that the GoldWings North West website has similarities too – and since that one is more established and has a lot more stuff on it, you will also see how much scope Elite Wings will now have to develop the content of their new website.

All this comes with a friendly support package of training and troubleshooting as the operators of these websites learn the ropes.  “Driving” one of these websites is a lot less complicated than operating the switches on an average GoldWing and it is completely unnecessary to be a geek to be the Club’s website operator.  Or one of the operators because there is no reason why several Club Members can’t have access to put stuff on the website if that’s the way Elite Wings wants it.  Parts of the website can be (and in this case already are) restricted access, for Elite Wings Members only, protected by a password which the Club itself can update anytime it wishes.

The Federation can provide this service to GoldWing clubs, free of charge, because the underlying development work to construct the website system is shared across all of them, so that although they look different and will look more different as their varying content builds up, they use the same website “engine and chassis”.  So there is economy of scale and there are advantages of commonality for purposes of training, troubleshooting and so on.

In what must be a record time, the Federation of UK GoldWing Clubs has provided a group of Wingers in the Midlands with a fully functional Club Website well before their new Club has even been launched.  It comes with a package of advice and training to help make a solid, perhaps even a flying start with their venture – and the same service is available, free of charge, to any group of UK Wingers who want to do something similar.

As you can see from the screen capture which heads this article the new GoldWings North Midlands website has an eye-catching design.  On closer inspection, if you click on the link to pay a visit, you will see that it comes pre-filled with a starter set of photos and even one or two articles, including one about their local riding attractions.  The aim is to equip Steve Corbishley and his colleagues with the wherewithal to capture interest in their planned Club ahead of its inaugural meeting in February, so that Wingers who might want to join can make contact and get involved from the beginning.

The Federation can do this, and could do it again tomorrow for another group of Wingers on request, because they have gathered both the skills and the experience to do this sort of continues………

New Look for the GWOCGB Forum - click on the image for an enlarged view

There have been some changes on the UK Forum scene recently, hence this brief update.

You may recall that the GWOCGB Forum was pulled altogether a few weeks ago and an announcement was made that it would not go live again until the moderators became available.  When it came back on line it was initially in “read only” mode, so no one could post anything at all.  Since then it has come back on line properly and there have been substantial changes.

The general discussion forum in the public  area has now gone and has been replaced by a new Technical forum, where any registered user can ask questions of make technical comment – but that’s it, any other sort of posting is strictly not allowed.  The GoldWings For Sale forum has survived the cull but that’s it for public consumption, only these two narrowly focused sub-forums are in the public area and everything else, including the other technical stuff, is in the private Members Only area.

The thinking behind the changes hasn’t been explained beyond a mention that a few Forum users had been spoiling things for everyone.  This probably referred to a Thread (in the private Members Only area) which included attacks on another GoldWing organisation and a lot of name-calling and eventually worse.  This Thread has now quietly disappeared and maybe this time there really will be an end to what this Forum became infamous for – so a very welcome fresh start!

 The value of closing the public discussion forum, which had been going smoothly, because of problems in the members-only area is a bit obscure because it has the effect of closing what had seemed to be serving as quite a useful shop window for the Club.  The new public Technical forum is clearly a positive step and could help to restore the Forum’s (and maybe even the Club’s) fortunes if it takes off.  Transferring the existing (i.e. still members only) technical stuff into the public area to decorate the shop window would have been an even more positive step but maybe they are still plucking up the courage to do anything quite as positive as that.  Sadly, as far as general discussion among UK Wingers is concerned, GWOCGB’s Forum is now a dead duck.

There are also lots of other places on the internet for Wingers to ask technical questions, including the Federation Website which has for some time been running a Technical continues………

A friendly and safe forum to visit

Regular visitors to this Blog may have seen an early version of this article  which was published recently.  It was withdrawn for re-writing after concerns arose about whether one of the new forums which were described in it could safely be recommended.

I wrote an Article about Forums for UK Wingers not all that long ago, at which time I was singing the praises of a new one (to me) the GoldWing Riders Forum which I was finding quite useful.  This was because it was non-aligned (so no club or other politics) and conspicuously friendly in its tone.  And I’ve also recently mentioned that the GWOCGB Forum is cleaning up its moderating act too, thereby becoming a friendlier, if somewhat quieter, place to browse.

In a surprising, and for me a very disappointing development, the owner of the GoldWing Riders Forum, David Williams, announced that he will be closing it down soon. He seems to have felt that it was continues………

Click on the image for an enlargement

There’s an interesting and very well illustrated account of the restoration of a GL1200 Aspencade running on the GoldWing Riders Forum which you might want to follow, even if you don’t have a GL1200 yourself.

It reveals what happens under the skin to ageing GoldWings (and could be happening to your GoldWing if you’re not looking after it) and also shows what can be done to recover the situation in your own garage if you make use of the help and advice which is available from other Wingers on a good GoldWing forum like this one.

The Winger who’s doing this restoration is called Liam who, fairly obviously from the Thread, has well above average DIY skills.  He’s based in Ireland, but he’s drawing on resources abroad for parts, including America.  It’s an interesting read.

As with everything on the GoldWing Riders Forum you don’t need to sign up to read what’s available on there, although since it’s free to join you might as well do so because then you can ask questions to seek information and advice about your own GoldWing problems.

Related Articles

John Gratton’s GL1100 Restoration Part One

John Gratton’s GL1100 Project Part Two

http://www.goldwing-riders.com/ukwings/

CLICK ON ANY IMAGE FOR AN ENLARGEMENT

I’ve mentioned the GoldWing Riders Forum on this Blog before; it’s an independent (of any club) and entirely politics-free, UK GoldWing forum which I’ve been using for a couple of months now.

And having gained a bit more experience of using it and learned quite a bit more about forums generally,  I decided I should offer a few tips to Wingers who have not yet tried a forum or who have been turned off by a bad experience of them in the past.

The GoldWing Riders Forum seems to me to be a safe bet and it has the considerable advantage of being very much UK-oriented, so it’s well worth trying, but there are lots of others on the internet and I’ll mention some of those too.

I haven’t used forums much myself until recently and it certainly wasn’t an entirely pleasant ride when I first tried one a few years ago.  So I will sound a cautionary note or two because forums, or rather some of the people who use them,  can be unpleasant or worse.

But forums aren’t all bad, even the bad ones, so if I can demystify them a little bit and provide some explanation of why and how you should be a bit selective about what you let yourself in for, I can perhaps encourage a few more Wingers to enjoy a new, biking-related pastime this winter while their bike is laid up. continues………

There are plenty of GoldWing forums on the internet and they very considerably in their content and the way they are moderated.  For this reason I haven’t found many of them very appealing.

But I came across one recently which seems to tick all the boxes for me because it’s aim is to provide the wherewithal for free exchange of  predominantly technical information and practical hints and ideas between Wingers – and good-humoured chat too – but without any of the soap-box stuff which other forums seem to feature or even to be dominated by.  Mischievous (and entertaining) leg-pulling crops up but I’ve seen nothing remotely resembling the personalised criticism you see on some sites; this one seems to be genuinely and consistently friendly.

It’s pretty easy to use too.  I found my way around the GoldWing Riders Forum without too much difficulty – and as this Blog’s Webmaster will testify I’ve got fairly superficial computer skills and poor retention, especially of new tricks, including internet jargon.  Thankfully this Forum has a very clear continues………