Link to trip reports in sig.

[Vegan.Hiker]

I love the BCP interface so please don't mistake this as a complaint or anything. More just an idea. So I was playing around a little with my BCP profile yesterday. I thought, hey it might be cool to compile all of the links to my BCP trip reports into my profile and maybe put the link in my sig. So I put them all in the "About You" field in the "information" tab in my profile. This field has a BBCode editor in it so I was able to customize the url labels and format the text which was nice.


Once I was done. The lists of hyperlinks I created looked like this in my profile.



So here's the part that brings me to the "Questions, Suggestions, and Support" forum.. I realized when I was done that there is no direct url to the "Information" tab of the profile. So I couldn't actually direct link this page into my sig. Which really isn't a big deal at all, but was sort of my initial idea. If I were to link the url in my sig, it would open up in the "Profile Posts" tab which isn't what I wanted.

So this isn't exactly a big deal and I know that if I want to see all TR's by a certain member, I could always use the search function. It's not really that I want all of my TR's linked in my sig as much as me wishing everyone else did sometimes. The idea might not go anywhere... still waiting on my BCP desk calendar ; ) But I thought I'd bring it up to see if others would dig the idea of compiling all their reports in one spot with a direct url?

 

[Artemus]

Very creative Vegan! Are you a web developer? It is up to @Nick to evaluate your request in light of the vagaries of BCP though so I won't weigh in.

 

[Vegan.Hiker]

Are you a web developer

Nooo, not a web developer by any means Art. My job used to require me to do quite a bit of statistical programming but those languages are very different (SPSS, SAS, and SQL). Thankfully, I rarely have to write code anymore. For this, I just googled a BBCode cheat sheet and used it for reference. It's much much simpler than it looks.

 

[Nick]

This is something I've been dreaming of for a long time, I just need to get someone to do some custom development for me (slightly over my head). My idea is basically the same as yours, but there would be an actual tab just for trip reports and they would be listed in a nice looking way, hopefully with a thumbnail next to each one. A link could be added to your signature, but what I'd really like is to have a spot under your avatar kind of like the current "Messages: X" but that says "Trip Reports: X" and it's clickable to those reports. Not only would it be a cool way to be able to get to those quick, but it would also give props to members who actually post trip reports (sorry lurkers, but the TR posters rule!).

I'll look into getting this done sooner than later.

 

[Vegan.Hiker]

Your solution sounds way more elegant and automated. I like it. I never realized # of posts, and location under our avatar were hyperlinks... very cool. I mostly wanted to compile the links to my TR's because I don't have my own blog or website and I don't use Facebook or anything so besides my photos stored in dropbox and a few Youtube videos, my BCP trip reports are the only other artifacts I have of my hikes. I only wish I started taking pics and writing them up years earlier.

 

[Artemus]

(sorry lurkers, but the TR posters rule!).

Thanks for taking up the challenge Oh ADMIN!

Don't forget there are people that contribute very significantly but don't do it as TR's. (not speaking of myself)

 

[Nick]

I just put out a request to a community of developers that specialize in our forum software. I'd pay a good price to get it done, so we'll see what happens.

 

[Nick]

Don't forget there are people that contribute very significantly but don't do it as TR's. (not speaking of myself)

Yes, I know. I don't mean to minimize that, but if not for trip reports, this place would simply not exist. When you look at the traffic of BCP as a whole, it's like 99% lurkers (not necessarily even members), then in that 1% of those that post, another smaller fraction that actually post TR's, so I gotta poke the 99% when I can.

 

[IntrepidXJ]

This is something I've been dreaming of for a long time, I just need to get someone to do some custom development for me (slightly over my head). My idea is basically the same as yours, but there would be an actual tab just for trip reports and they would be listed in a nice looking way, hopefully with a thumbnail next to each one. A link could be added to your signature, but what I'd really like is to have a spot under your avatar kind of like the current "Messages: X" but that says "Trip Reports: X" and it's clickable to those reports. Not only would it be a cool way to be able to get to those quick, but it would also give props to members who actually post trip reports (sorry lurkers, but the TR posters rule!).

I'll look into getting this done sooner than later.

I like this idea. I always thought it would be nice to have a link somewhere where we could pull up a list of our trip reports.

 

[Ugly]

Thanks for taking up the challenge Oh ADMIN!

Don't forget there are people that contribute very significantly but don't do it as TR's. (not speaking of myself)

My name is @Ugly ... and I am a former lurker...
As a reforming lurker I can poke out to others as well...

I am not online a lot, but for sure the forums and reports are only fantastic because of everyone's contributions.

 

[Vegan.Hiker]

I just put out a request to a community of developers that specialize in our forum software. I'd pay a good price to get it done, so we'll see what happens.

I hope this doesn't make you feel uncomfortable Nick and that I'm also not hijacking the thread, but I've also thought about writing up a suggestion about putting a paypal link or something on the BCP homepage where we can donate. My trip out west last year, and two of my upcoming trips this year wouldn't at all be possible without the help of this site and it's members. I'm sure many other members feel feel the same way and would like to contribute, even if it's in just a small way.

 

[Nick]

I hope this doesn't make you feel uncomfortable Nick and that I'm also not hijacking the thread, but I've also thought about writing up a suggestion about putting a paypal link or something on the BCP homepage where we can donate. My trip out west last year, and two of my upcoming trips this year wouldn't at all be possible without the help of this site and it's members. I'm sure many other members feel feel the same way and would like to contribute, even if in just a small way.

No discomfort at all. I have this philosophy that the only thing members here should contribute (if they choose to), is their experience, trip reports, photos, etc. Just participate and that is more than enough.

I'm more interested in monetizing through ways that are as unobtrusive as possible. For example, the few ads that do exist are even fewer to logged in members. Sometimes I think I'll just get rid of all of them to logged in members. For the lurkers/guest traffic, they get a few more, but even then display ads aren't really that prevalent. Most of BCP's income is through affiliate marketing, so whenever we have discussions about gear and link to a manufacturer or retailer's site, BCP can get a piece of that if it converts to a sale in the near future. I like that so much because it doesn't even feel like an ad, it's just part of the conversation, but it still keeps the lights on around here and makes things worthwhile. Between that and the few display ads, we do just fine. I hope there will never be a need to actually ask members to pony up for any kind of 'supporting member' plan or similar. So basically if you want to contribute, just keep posting, and maybe link to that piece of gear you mention in a post, it actually makes a huge difference.

 

[Parma]

do we need to do anything to the links to gear when we post? or any link is fine and it gets linked to this site?

 

[Nick]

do we need to do anything to the links to gear when we post? or any link is fine and it gets linked to this site?

Nope, you don't need to do a thing. Sometimes I add a little tag, but even if I miss it, I have some code in place that still catches most of them.

 

[Nick]

This reminds me, @langutah. I have the light theme mostly ready if you want to start using it. I've been meaning to polish it up more, but if you'd like a light background sooner than later, it's ready to go.

 

[piper01]

Yes, I know. I don't mean to minimize that, but if not for trip reports, this place would simply not exist. When you look at the traffic of BCP as a whole, it's like 99% lurkers (not necessarily even members), then in that 1% of those that post, another smaller fraction that actually post TR's, so I gotta poke the 99% when I can.

Just don't use your dislocated pinky for poking!

 

[Artemus]

This reminds me, @langutah. I have the light theme mostly ready if you want to start using it. I've been meaning to polish it up more, but if you'd like a light background sooner than later, it's ready to go.

I'd like to try it out please.

 

[Nick]

I'd like to try it out please.

It's accessible to you to try out now. I may have been a little optimistic about how close to ready it actually is. If it's something you really like, I'll spend a few hours and pretty it up and give it the proper BCP treatment like customizing the node icons, add avatars to the online list and do something else with the background. At the very least I need to swap that logo for the 'on light' version... Anyway, to access it, just click on the style selector at the bottom left of any page:



Then select BCP Light 1.0.

About the trip reports tab and counter thing, I've got a couple developers that I'm talking to. It's looking to be a few hundred bucks but that'll be well worth it if they can do it up the way we want. If anyone has any other requests on that feature, let me know ASAP before coding begins.

 

[Ben]

hope i'm not too late on this, but it occurred to me this week end. have you thought about a trophy for trip reports. i'm assuming that if you're counting trip reports already, it would be simple enough to do, but i certainly have no idea. some mild incentive for some people to post them. i'm in favor of what ever gets more trip reports posted.

i suppose then though there's some issue if people post each day of a trip as a separate report, versus one report for week long backpack. but i'd still rather take it than leave it. posting is a good thing.