This Sucks

rob046

Pinball Nudger
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My first post here. I have a suggestion. Let's move everything from AJ's, VPF, and shivasite over here.
I wish this could become the main place to go for anything VP related. It will be a challenge because there is not a good way to advertise it since VPF and shivasite are always down or slow. How can we get the word out other than using those places?
Try to make this site the first thing that comes up when people type in "Visual Pinball". That could help.
Something needs to be done because I'm finally getting irritated. I tried to connect to VPF and it was either down or extremely slow. I couldn't sit there and wait any longer. I bet the community is losing people by the dozens every day.
This was brought up at VPF and when I can log on, there is no response at all from the staff. I think everyone quit!
That place is going to be a ghost town soon. All of those popular VPM tables aren't even accessible. This sucks.
How can we turn this place into Grand Central Station if need be?

About this site, I like the VPF set up where you can view new posts. I use that all the time. At this point for here, maybe new can mean the last few days instead of hours. I'm sure I'll have some other suggestions as I think of them.
 
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Thanks for the post, Rob. I wish I knew why, other than out of habit, VPF is still the major site. It does seem to be down more often each day. I don't know if this site could handle everything, or if JPH, who owns the site, would want to or afford to host it all, but I do hope to host at least some of shivaSite's resources if things get even worse than they are.

I just wonder how much interest there is any more in Pinball discussions, since we have as many forums as VPF, and most of our posts are Pinball related, which might be keeping some folks away. We also have a humor and an Anything Goes forum, but people still don't use us much when VPF and shivaSite are down. Maybe shiva was right that the VP community is on it's last legs. I sure hope not, but I do wonder.

As for viewing new posts, there is a link just above the forums on the right that lets you view all the posts since your last visit. I use it all the time.

tiltjlp
 
Relax guys. There have been problems before and we have always found a solution.

I also wonder why the staff doesn't answer. I guess they're just as helpless as everyone else right now.
 
I think that things will work out over time. I also think that people just simply don't even know about this site yet except for the people who have been around for a while.
People are interested in pinball and anything that has to do with pinball. They just need to be informed about what is going on here. If there was a way to advertise VP better?
I only ever found it just by searching for PC pinball stuff and I still didn't even really know what it was when I signed up for it.
When I mention to other pinball enthusiasts that we have a program that has recreated just about every table they can think of, thier ears perk up and they ask more about it.
The people who do know about it only see what's on the surface and don't really understand what everything is really about and the potential it has.

I think that FP might bring in some interest. I see that they are supposed to release something by the end of the year. It would be nice to have incorporated FP with VP. I hate to see there being different programs popping up and competition. It's all basically the same thing and the same idea. Building pinball tables.
I would love to work with FP and learn it but the fact that it won't support VPM really turns me off. I'm not even sure if you would be allowed to recreate older tables.
If we can't ever get an update with VP, we might all have to settle with that. Like it or not. Unless somebody can do something about this whole mess.

Let's stay optomistic about everything and be patient. tiltjlp and JPH, be happy with what you guys have given to the community and thanks for your efforts. I really think that things will start to turn around somehow as Kristian said.
Then we can look back at this time as say "remember when....". Let's hope that is the case.
I'm doing what I can to get people involved. I've been in contact with more and more real tabl enthusiasts and filling them in on VP and telling them about it. I just hope I don't let them down by all of the server problems and such that they might experience.

I think that if everyone pitches in to help advertise and support this site or any other VP site that is healthy, then we will get things back to normal eventually. It would also be good to give people a reason to come here other than a certain forum topics and such. Meaning that people need to start uploading thier work here, making it so that they need to come here to get it. Then they may start hanging around the forums more and checking out the rest of the site. I'll do what I can to help.

I also know that shiva isn't taking all of this stuff lightly and he really does care about what is going on and he is ready to take action. I will support him all the way with whatever he wants to do.
I think that it would be great to bring everything here or in one place anywhere. That way people can find whatever they need. I know that many people know of VPF but not of any other sites, which leads them to miss out on so much other stuff.
Let's all hope for the best and do what we can to help the situation and hopefully we will all be rewarded in some way.

BTW, I really like the emoticons here. :cry: :arrow: :!: :twisted: :lol:
 
Some info courtesy of alexa.com

Traffic Ranks (#1 of course is yahoo)

flipperless.com - 1,854,117
shivasite.com - 1,129, 083
vpforums.com - 286,196
vp-originals.com - no data
 
Where do we need FP? Look at PD's Sorcerer, Road Show and Firepower. Or Scapino's Fathom. How could you create better computer pinball simulation than that? What there is really left to improve?

I'm not excepting FP to change anything, really. Especially if it won't be compatible with VPM. Perhaps average original tables would look a bit nicer but that's it. The screenshots I saw didn't impress me that much, there was nothing revolutionary there. Maybe seeing the whole thing in action could change my mind - but I doubt it. Pro Pinball is great but even that can never compete with real emulated machines in my book.

And I agree with you, there's a lot of potential left in VP, unused. There must be millions of pinball fans who have never heard of the program. It's only the hardcore people that hang around in newsgroups and such.

I've been playing the tables quite a lot lately and some of VP-stuff is simply amazing. I don't think even the regulars appreciate some of this stuff enough.
 
Kinsey said:
Some info courtesy of alexa.com

Traffic Ranks (#1 of course is yahoo)

flipperless.com - 1,854,117
shivasite.com - 1,129, 083
vpforums.com - 286,196
vp-originals.com - no data

What are those numbers? Hits?

How can VP Forums have only 286,196 hits compared to Flipperless' almost 2 million? If there's over 50.000 registered users at VPF (big % must be ghost accounts but still...) These stats look unbelieveable to me.
 
I would say those stats are meaningless, I'm betting most of those hits are from bots or some such.
 
It's not just bots. For instance, PostNuke will double register, even triple register a page hit, and if you have no robot text, the robot will count every single file, and that would be considered a hit. Other things will not register a hit at all, like mambo (VPO uses it) and some things in VB will block traffic and search bots as well. Especially the old out of date versions like what VPF uses, but even the latest generation of VB has blocks just to protect certain files
 
No. It's nothing to do with page hits.

It's traffic ranking based on search result requests used by all the major search engines. Things such as the Google Toolbar collect this type of data. The lower the number, the better.
 
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