Separate By Cities

[travelingman]

Love this site - I've been using it for a couple of years now. In the beginning there were few enough posts in the Texas sections (which I use the most) that it was easy to look for Dallas rooms - but the success of this site is starting to make Texas crouded.

Is it possible to create some sub-folders in Texas for:

Dallas

Houston

Austin

San Antonio

and Other Cities

and then separate to old posts into the new folders?

I'm sure there are other states where this would be benificial too.

Keep up the good work. Thanks for offering this great service to us bidders.

[travelingman]

Also ... It may become nessesary - or useful - to divide the city posts up by area.

[thereuare]

This was recently asked in the same thread as a hotel win so i've copied/pasted my reply below:

There are other cities on the slate to be broken up before we split Canada (Florida w/ Miami and Ft. Lauderdale are the first to come to mind).  The more forums that are added the more resources are required from the server on every page load, so we try to create a balance between server stability and functionality.

I simple solution, although it would require a few extra clicks on your part, is to use the SEARCH function.  As each hotel win has the city in the topic title, search for the city you're looking for (not providence), select 'search topic titles only' from the lower left corner, and then select your date range on the lower right corner.  This will display all of the results that meet your criteria and will actually be more of what you're looking for than an East/West forum.  Few things to note when using the search:

-separate words that aren't continuous with 'or' or 'and'

-as the topic titles are listed, for example, as Toronto (Downtown), a search for TORONTO DOWNTOWN will yield no results as it doesn't match the parenthesis which appear in the topic title, you would neeed to search for 'TORONTO and DOWNTOWN'.

As we continue to get (hopefully) more user support we will be able to upgrade the resources of our server.  While we welcome all suggestions on how to make the forum better for everyone, the new feature requests of those who support the board with their travel purchases will likely take priority and be implemented first.

Using the SEARCH technique mentioned above, here is a list of all Priceline and Hotwire wins for Dallas (very easily could have been for just Priceline or just Hotwire by only searching that particular forum instead of the 'master' Texas forum)

California is already set up by city and as that state has over 3000 posts (as does Florida), such states would be done before Texas (which has just over 400 posts)

[pirate]

Thereuare,

I haven't raised this before for the very reasons you mention above. Increased demand on resources and your time, that you already give unstintingly. But now this thread has opened may I respectfully suggest that the "other countries" section is growing to the point where splitting could be beneficial. Maybe just to "Europe" and "Asia/Australasia"?

Thanks to your enlightened policy of allowing reporting of bids won on "non US" Priceline sites this part of the board is rapidly becoming the pre-eminent resource for researching bids for hotels outside the US.

Many thanks for a wonderful resource, :) Pirate

[thereuare]

I'll think about the best way to go about this over the new couple of weeks, but here are a few additional comments:

One problem is that whatever area of the board a user uses the most is the area that they feel should be sub-divided. :) As everyone can see, pirate wants 'other countries', travelingman wants 'Texas', the quote from above is from a 'Canada' post and sure enough the user that requested it visits the Canada forum most. So where do you draw the line and make everyone happy without upsetting others? Florida seems like the first area on the list when any changes are made... we can start there (in a few weeks after some other changes are made) and see how things go. (California is already sub-divided, based upon past user requests, if anyone want to see what it will eventually look like).

We do our best to make things easier for users (and the current format would not have been possible without the help and feedback of users), but a great deal of time goes into editing almost every topic title in order to make sure that the same consistent format is used throughout and that 'common search terms' that a user would likely include appear in the title (ie- 'Lauderdale' instead of 'FLL', 'Miami (South Beach)' instead of 'SoBe', 'Downtown' instead of 'DT' or 'Dwntwn', etc). While time consuming, this is specifically done in order to assist in the SEARCH function and make it more useful and worthwhile. While obviously easier for users to click to a sub-forum, and such changes are likely forthcoming, the equivalent already can be achieved by using the SEARCH feature and a few extra clicks of the mouse.

While none of the above are long-term problems, we're thankful to be experiencing such 'growing pains'.

There is also a new category that we want to add which i think will benefit everyone and we're working on getting that done first (in addition to some more 'travel tools').

[travelingman]

Thanks for the SEARCH info - I'll use that next time.

You do a great job keeping up with the site - mega thanks.

Do you have different moderators to help you with different states? If you want/need the help I'd be willing to help with Texas. I'm not sure I'd be familiar enough with any other place.

This offer comes from my "Don't bring up a problem unless you're willing to provide a solution" upbringing - - but I am familiar with enough web projects to know that sometimes it's easier to just do it all yourself.

Thanks again!

[Travelling]

Would it be clearer if the "Other Countries - Priceline" section was split into a few subsections so that it is easier to find information for the specific area you are looking at.

To keep the sections relatively "busy", a suggested split may be something along the lines of:

- Europe (may be even splitting London plus Airports out on its own)

- Asia

- Australia

- Other (if there are any other areas?)

[No no no]

What about updating Invision Power Board software? I don't see a reason why additional subsections would affect performance that much. Maybe newer IPB versions are more optimized?

[thereuare]

I don't see a reason why additional subsections would affect performance that much.

... but it does.

Nothing has been done in this regard yet as the load had been relatively high the last few weeks and the source was unknown. A hard drive proved be faulty and had been replaced, so now loads must be re-monitored with the new hardware.

As well, we continue to release new tools (such as the new Google Maps), all of which contribute to the load on the server... and if given a choice i'd imagine most prefer the new features/tools rather than an additional sub-forum.

As we continue to grow and continue to earn user's support, a dedicated server may be in the cards, but currently it can't be justified.