A Part of the TiffinRVNetwork

Hey folks, just wanted to take a moment and update you as to what is happening here at TiffinRVNetwork. Your site continues to grow by leaps and bounds as time goes by. Here are a few numbers for you. We have 4,638 registered members. The site is averaging 1600 visits per day, 37,000 pages opened, 127,400 page hits per day. Due to the increased traffic, this has brought on the need for more moderation help in managing the forum to make sure that we keep this site as family friendly as possible and to maintain the reputation that this site has gained due to you, our members. For the most part, your site needs very little policing, but sometimes we have to step in and moderate. One of the biggest tasks is making sure your posts are placed in the correct topic area so they will be grouped with similar posts. Each topic has a description of what should be posted there. Please select the correct topic area for your post. The new moderators will begin their duties on August 1st. We will announce who they are at that time. We feel that all four of them will do you a fantastic job.

For those of you who might not be aware of this, Skip, our webmaster, lost his battle with cancer a couple of weeks ago. He will be deeply missed and we want Marcy and family to know that you will continue to be in our thoughts and prayers. One of the things that Skip was adamant about, if anything happened to any of the main admins, that this site would continue to operate without a glitch. All of the key information necessary to operate the site was shared amongst the administrators so that the site will continue to function with the loss of any one person. Although not a nice topic to discuss, it was something we took care of several years ago. So, with that said, nothing concerning the operation of this site has changed!

We would like to ask all of you to think about your site and send us suggestions as to what we can to do improve what we consider the BEST motorhome site on the internet. Tell us what you would like to have on the forum and we will see what we can do to make it happen, if feasible.

One thing we have already been researching is to set up online training for those who need help in navigating the forum. We would be able to have, as an example, a dozen or so folks online at the same time for a training class. This would be accomplished thru something like Webex, or GoToMeeting. You could be anywhere in the world and as long as you had internet access, you would be able to ‘go to school’!!

And lastly, we want to thank all of you for your support of this site, your kind words of encouragement, and your support financially. We really DO appreciate ALL OF YOU!

Chief
Admin

It's the best in my opinion.

Thanks to all of you for the great job. Looking forward to welcoming some new moderators. We will all miss Skip. His shoes will be hard to fill, but I know how much he was respected and that the people who keep this forum running will do so with his grace and wisdom.

KEEP ON "ROLLIN"!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks Chief
Fred

As a novice Tiffin owner, I can tell you this site is invaluable. Thanks to all you guys who do all the work. And, thanks to all you guys who solve my problems.......some even before they happen.

Thank you too. You've always helped us a lot. (Especially when I bought my Droid, and you had to keep helping me log on) Thanks for everything all of you do to make this the great forum it is.

The adminstrators and moderators here are the best. I know they will keep up the good work. Bob

About 18 months ago, my wife and I were newbies to RV'ing. This site has been a god-send in helping us get up to speed in both RV'ing and the Tiffin products. I've learned so much from all of the folks out there, and it's comforting to know that there's such a friendly place to ask "dumb" questions. I'm sure I've saved tons of money and time with this info.

Thanks for all you Admins do, as well as to all the folks who've responded with all the ideas and answers.

Joe

A big round of aplause goes out to the Admin & Moderators who keep this great forum running. Skip created a wonderful forum for those of us who share one common thing, a love of our Tiffin motorhome. I only joined this forum last Sept. I am sadden that I never got to meet Skip, but his legacy will live on forever.

We think this forum is GREAT!!! We've learned a load from the forum and that has helped us solve the few minor issues that we've had with our 2010 Phaeton. Thanks to everybody who contributes good info.

If I had to offer one suggested change it would be as follows: I would like the search capability to include the option of searching on an EXACT PHRASE. Many times we've entered a search with multiple words (searching for ALL terms) and get way too many results because one of the terms is fairly common and, even though the other term is found, it's not in the context we're looking for. As the data base of posts increases, it becomes a bigger problem. If this is possible, we'd love to see it.

In the meantime, thanks to all and keep up the good work.

Try puting quotes ("xxx") around your exact phrase. This should give you the capability you want.

Ditto to all other posts! Great site and we appreciate all the hard work to keep it running.

I do have a request: We look for other members as we travel, but presently the "we are here" map will only show one person per location. I understand that is because multiple people using the same lat, long overlap so only one is visible. Is there a way to have the multiple location entries appear as a list in the bubble? Also it would be to nice to add an optional blank for name of campground and/or city in "we are here".

Thanks,
Kathy

Kathy,

I don't know if something like this is possible or not, but I will make sure it gets to John (Jag&Bev) who developed this little program and let him take a look see.

Chief

Folks, I just do not understand the search engine either. I've tried the brackets and " marks and tried them together. I am sure there is a way to only search for XM Brain that will not bring up my xm radio makes my brain hurt.

I wish I could figure that out too.

If you look closely at the map, you will see one icon that is cyan (blue). That represents the Service Centre campground in Red Bay. If you click on it, it will pop up a list of people at the campground, and from there, you can click to see details about each person. That one was easy to do, because it's easy to recognize all of the people who are in the campground, NOT by the (lat,long) but by the presence of '@ N' (N=1,2,3...) in the "we are here (place)" entry (that I automatically fill in for you).

However, it's not as easy to do for people who are elsewhere. I would have to run through the list multiple times to find people who are in close proximity (e.g. within a 200 metre radius). It's possible, but for N icons, it would require N X N calculations of the distance between (lat1,long1) and (lat2,long2). I'm not sure it's worth the trouble because a facility already exists to resolve a cluster of people in close proximity.

Go to the map and read section 5(b), which explains how to do this in Google Earth (it's very cool and well worth installing). Google Earth automatically aggregates icons in close proximity into a single icon. When you click on it, it 'explodes' (a very cool thing to see!) to separate the icons so you can click on them individually. Zoom in and click on one of the icons in the Red Bay area, and you'll see what I mean.

The other solution is to zoom in on the map - that usually separates the icons enough to see that there are two people in the same campground.

---

The "We are here (place)" field can contain anything you wish, e.g.:
(a) "" (blank)
(b) "Home" or "On the road" or "Somewhere between Los Angeles and Tucumcari"
(c) "My town"
(d) "My state"
(e) "1234 My street, My town, My state"
(f) "Joe's Campground"
(g) "Joe's Campground, Amarillo"
(h) "Joe's Campground, Amarillo, Texas"

In other words, the "place" field can be used for as much or as little information as you wish and that's the way it was intended to be used. I deliberately didn't create additional fields for street address, city, state, campground, etc. because it just isn't needed and not all information (e.g. "somewhere near Salinas" ) just doesn't fit into a specific set of fields.

There's another reason not to add more fields. It's difficult enough to get people to fill in the two "we are here" fields now. A lot of people put the place name into the (lat,long) field and end up getting listed as an error under the map itself. If I added fields for (campground, city, state), how many people are going to put the campground name in the city field and the state name in the campground field? Lots. Simple is definitely better.

I will try to remember to write shorter answers...
I will try to remember to write shorter answers...
I will try to remember to write shorter answers...

Thanks for the mini seminar
I will try to remember not to ask questions that require long technical answers

Kathy

Dick,

I can tell you one thing about this particular search you are attempting and it is not your fault this is happening. XM is only 2 letters, (of course). and the search engine requires a minimum of 4 letters (per word) to do an adequate search. The phpBB forum software has never been known to have a decent search capability and that is the nature of the beast here. I have been hearing that the developers have been looking at improving this feature. With that said, I also know that it can take years for something like this to happen. I will do some research and see what I can find out on this.

Chief

Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication. The information shared helps us all solve problems and saves us money. And thank you to my fellow Tiffin owners that care enough to share their experiences.

I'll add my appreciation to the hard working Admins and members whose contributions make TRVN the best RV website on the planet. As you asked about suggestions for improvement, please consider addressing the need for TRVN public financial reporting (income statement and balance sheet) as addressed in the working thread: viewtopic.php?f=148&t=29248
Thanks again for everything you do and for asking how an already great TRVN can improve.

Agree.

Kathy (Wakyroads) makes some great points in that thread. I too would like to see the donation process improved. I fear the continual solicitations by just any member whenever they choose could be working against you. The impression is everyone is in charge and not sure that you want that to be the case when it comes to the money. It also makes me think more money is needed. Is it? Basically where are we going and how are we going to know when we get there? I would think some regular consistent reporting would clear all of this up.

As a prospective Phaeton owner, I can't tell you how helpful this site is in making my upcoming purchase decisions. Theses days when you spend $250K you want all the facts. Thanks to all you guys who do all the hard work running the website.

As for suggestions to add to the site - how about adding a screen matrix on the welcome page where we all can vote on a given topic of the day - maybe have a multiple choice questions - record all the votes and display them in real time, As an example - I would like to see a list of all the Tiffin adding options (airhorn, house vacuum, in-dash GPS, etc) and see what's most important to each of the members - anyway just a thought

Thanks for having a great website

JR

If its not broke, don't fix it. Keep it simple. The forums great, if they can't figure out how the forum works then they won't understand the answer to their problems. That being said good job.

I wouldn't change a thing. Keep up the good work and Thanks