Colt Case Ingersoll Garden Tractors

I have added extensions to the stock forum to add the following features:

1. Display recent threads on the main page
2. Thank you for the post button, sort of like a Like button (see upper right hand side of each post, next to the Quote button)
3. National flags; every user can choose a flag which will be displayed next to their avatar
4. Tapatalk functionality so you can add our forum to your tapatalk app
5. Auto-resize images on the server. This is a time saver. You don't have to resize images before uploading them, they will be resized to 1280 pixels width and proportional height
6. Preview thumbnail of images to be uploaded, and ability to rotate them upon upload.
7. Ability to embed youtube and vimeo videos in your post. There are two buttons rightly named youtube and vimeo, which, when you're posting, will insert in your post a BBcode like this or then all you do is copy the video IDENTIFIER from the youtube or vimeo link. The identifier is usually the last string of characters after the equal sign in the case of youtube. Example for youtube: if this is the link to your video
then the video IDENTIFIER is nDqh3226a78, therefore to embed this video in your post you do this: Same thing for vimeo, for this vimeo video link you would insert the following in your post: Example vimeo here:

8. From the beginning I decided that a color scheme based on Power Red and Desert Sunset would be best for a Case forum. Took me some time to find the hex values for these shades, and then to modify the theme colors. Still haven't finished, but at least you know why color may be changing from time to time.

We had two reports of people trying to create new accounts and the image verification was too difficult to read. Never mind that two spammers got past it already the stupid image verification :13:

Therefore, I changed the verification to be question and answers. Should be much easier for us Case people!

Cleaned up a bit the smilies existing smilies, added describing emotions to those we kept, and added a few from a site I used to be admin on long time ago and I liked, like etc. enjoy!

I'll look into making some tractor smilies

Courtesy of our own Spike , the Case creeper guy smiley:

hang tight, now we know how to make our own smilies!

Thanks Spike the creeper guy is Amazing!
Keep the Peace
Harry

A new smiley:



Needs a little more work, but it's not so shabby like this either.

Featuring one of Spike's 446 tractors and that nice Case garden cart!!! we're on a roll here!

A small improvement, I think. Don't know how many of you noticed that the Attachments tab from posting was Power Red. I thought it was not really fitting the theme, so I have changed it to Desert Sunset. Small things.

I've installed an extension to mention users by username like this @Spike188 should receive a notification that I mentioned him in this post. Difficult to mention Tim because he uses a character that I don't have on my keyboard But I can mention @MattA and @Gordy and @DavidBarkey and @Chad and @Eugen

To mention someone you simply write the character @ and start typing the username, and it should show user names that start with that letter.

I'm excited about this feature because it would be nice to say something that you know should attract someone's attention. Let's see if this works, as I haven't tested it yet.

Hey @Eugen did you get a notification?

thank you @relu your mentioning me worked! I deserve a beer! I'll have to go buy some tonight

Eugen wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 3:08 pm I've installed an extension to mention users by username like this @Spike188 should receive a notification that I mentioned him in this post. Difficult to mention Tim because he uses a character that I don't have on my keyboard But I can mention @MattA and @Gordy and @DavidBarkey and @Chad and @Eugen

To mention someone you simply write the character @ and start typing the username, and it should show user names that start with that letter.

I'm excited about this feature because it would be nice to say something that you know should attract someone's attention. Let's see if this works, as I haven't tested it yet.

@Eugen the accent on the A means nothing, I must have fat fingered it when I was setting up my account. I don't have it on my computer either, so I can't log in on it. I'm ok with changing it, as long as it doesn't cost me too many beers.
I could go back to Timj from my previous life, or just get a normal A on there.

costs nothing @Timj

Happy to oblige!

Eugen wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 4:48 pm costs nothing @Timj

Happy to oblige!

Holy crap! your fast.

I got the notification


Gordy

Another improvement to the site. You probably have noticed that our manuals section

http://ccigt.com/manuals

was a bit of an eye sore, especially on mobile devices. I meant to find some way to provide a better reading experience of this entire section, and finally did it. Should be much easier now to browse and navigate on both desktop and mobile browsers.

Besides the usability it many also increase the google rating which suffered. This might help bringing in new users, because currently anyone who gets a Case tractor and looks for a manual google gives them a link to the old manuals site which mostly doesn't work. Still, those people then go and open an account there. Which is fine, I just wish we at least show up on the first page of Google search so that people can have an alternative. There's place under the sun for both sites.


Here's a couple of screenshots from my phone.

Eugen

In duckduckgo on cell phone browser, typed in Case Ingersoll manuals. CCIGT came up as the 3rd listing!

Spike188 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 01, 2021 5:59 pm Eugen

In duckduckgo on cell phone browser, typed in Case Ingersoll manuals. CCIGT came up as the 3rd listing!

Yay!

Eugen wrote: ↑Wed Sep 01, 2021 6:06 pm

Spike188 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 01, 2021 5:59 pm Eugen

In duckduckgo on cell phone browser, typed in Case Ingersoll manuals. CCIGT came up as the 3rd listing!

Yay!

I just checked my goggle page, ccigt came up 8th with case colt Ingersoll search. We've really moved up.

Query "Case Garden Tractor Forum" in Bing and CCIGT is the first listing. Woot!

Great news! Little by little we grow and improve. Ultimately it's the people that make a community great!

The manuals section of our site

manuals

has been giving me all kinds of trouble. It sits on disk as a plain old directory and files tree all under "manuals" and I used two different html generators to create the downloadable links for all the pdf file. The first script did not generate mobile friendly pages and both google and bing complained and refused to index. The second script was a well written php script that rendered the contents on the fly, and the result was beautiful, and mobile friendly. Except it went somehow into a recursive loop that google really didn't like, so it again refused to index it.

I changed it again, generating the html pages of all the manuals pdf files using the unix program 'tree' and then making the result mobile and search engine friendly by modifying the pages with a couple of scripts I wrote. Not as beautiful rendering as the php script, but as far as I can tell it should be indexable by the two major search engines.

If this works as it should, we might get higher in searches and perhaps get new users from that. At the moment the other site gets all the new users.

Glad you know what you are doing when it comes to these things. hope it doesn't cost you too much time in your already busy schedule.

Timj wrote: ↑Mon Sep 20, 2021 8:10 pm hope it doesn't cost you too much time in your already busy schedule.

How much sleep does one need anyway?!

One of our users pointed out that attachments are not enabled in private messaging. The problem with allowing attachments in private messages is that users send each other large files and the forum storage can get filled up pretty quickly. This would not be good for anyone, so I have enabled only small (up to 512KB) attachments, and only of type document (pdf) and text.

If you guys want to exchange larger files please do it via your personal email.
Thanks!
Eugen

Testing lightbox extension which displays images in a nice light box that opens up when you click on an image.


Without this extension the image was open on a new page in the browser.

Please comment if you would rather prefer the old way.


Edit: when viewed from a phone, the mobile page still shows it the old way.

I have installed an extension which puts a button in the upper right corner like this:
So that if Guillame or if we have other people wanting to translate into their language, they could read our forum easily, and write in their own language if they so wish.

@Doublet has suggested an extension to the forum, named Pages. This allows for static pages. To give you an example, the entire rest of the forum is dynamic content, meaning everything you can see is retrieved from a database when you click on things. The static Pages are sitting somewhere as they were written. I'm not sure how we can use this yet, maybe for a new area of the Technical library. I wrote a small page whose link appears at the top to the right of the "Board index" link.


I also created a new Forum named Technical Library. Maybe in that forum we put all manuals with nice links to them, so that it's easier to find the manula for a particular tractor with a particular serial number.

I'm still unsure what makes more sense, so if you have suggestions fire at will

Eugen wrote: ↑Tue Feb 01, 2022 4:27 pm @Doublet has suggested an extension to the forum, named Pages. This allows for static pages. To give you an example, the entire rest of the forum is dynamic content, meaning everything you can see is retrieved from a database when you click on things. The static Pages are sitting somewhere as they were written. I'm not sure how we can use this yet, maybe for a new area of the Technical library. I wrote a small page whose link appears at the top to the right of the "Board index" link.

I also created a new Forum named Technical Library. Maybe in that forum we put all manuals with nice links to them, so that it's easier to find the manuals for a particular tractor with a particular serial number.
I'm still unsure what makes more sense, so if you have suggestions fire at will

@Eugen
I am still studying the pages extension and currently believe the Admin could use it to create a very nice place for the manuals and or Static links to current members YouTube Colt Case Ingersoll repair videos. I don't have a lot of experience with video but it makes perfect sense to store these video elsewhere but have immediate access through the forum pages. I know of a couple of members that have excellent videos all ready posted.

I have in the past created what is called a binder that contains, (Example: all of the 100 Series manuals in one PDF file) The file then instead containing 130-180 manual it would contain. All the manuals for 108,110,111,112,114,116,118,120,150,155,195 in one binder.

My reasoning for this is when you need a manual you could download a 100-200-300-400 or Ingersoll series manual as needed and then they could be stored on your computer in one place. This could also apply to attachments, etc. Instead of scattered files (Although a little large sized (roughly 20 megs is the limit) they are together. I will let you know what I find out. May take a little time.

Thanks to @Eugen and @Spike188 for working so hard to make sure this board is done right.

Doublet

@Eugen I didn't read the above post about link. I'm bad. I actually remembered or thought I did there was a way to put an icon of the manual on the static pages. I will re edit this in a few minutes.
This is what member would see to click on. As many manuals that could fit on a page could be viewed at one time.
Doublet (Terry)

hm... I see this when I click on it






I just created it to test, and there's only one link to a manual on it.

Eugen wrote: ↑Wed Feb 02, 2022 12:30 pm hm... I see this when I click on it

Screen Shot 2022-02-02 at 12.29.35.png







I just created it to test, and there's only one link to a manual on it.

Ya that is what I get too.

Dave

Eugen wrote: ↑Wed Feb 02, 2022 12:30 pm hm... I see this when I click on it

Screen Shot 2022-02-02 at 12.29.35.png
I just created it to test, and there's only one link to a manual on it.

@Eugen What it does when you click on the link you created, it downloads that file to your computer.
If figured that out while clearing some recent activity from my computer. lol
In my mind the link should show you the file. Anyway! Later

Doublet (Terry)

Doublet wrote: ↑Wed Feb 02, 2022 7:57 pm

Eugen wrote: ↑Wed Feb 02, 2022 12:30 pm hm... I see this when I click on it

Screen Shot 2022-02-02 at 12.29.35.png
I just created it to test, and there's only one link to a manual on it.

@Eugen What it does when you click on the link you created, it downloads that file to your computer.
If figured that out while clearing some recent activity from my computer. lol
In my mind the link should show you the file. Anyway! Later

Doublet (Terry)

@Doublet Terry, the URL points to a .pdf file, and it depends on the browser you are using what it does. Some show you the pdf file in the browser window, and others download the file.

But really, the page is just a test of the static Page extension, to see where it creates a link to it on the first forum page, and what it would look like.

There's something that didn't make sense to me about the forum software and it confused new users a lot, because it wasn't clear how to add images or files to posts. The Attachment tab was now shown by default. So I changed the code of the forum to show it by default, hopefully it will be more obvious for new users that this is how to add files to posts.

Now the Attachments tab with the Add files button is shown by default right under the writing text box.