New site features for the upcoming ski season?

[Greg]

It's the middle of August and the ski season is a short three months away. Are there any features that you would like to see me try to implement for the skiing section/forums? I'm asking this now so I'll have some time to work on any suggestions before the snow flies. I find it's very useful to request feedback from time to time. Thoughts?

[hammer]

Would there be any way to link the skiing trip reports to the ski area profiles?

[Greg]

Hmm. Now that's an interesting idea. A really good one in fact, but there's no way that I can think of to do it easily using the current forum-based TR approach. Perhaps I can set up something like VFTT with a basic trip report script. Then it would be pretty easy to call up TRs based on resort.

Awesome idea though, and if anyone has any suggestions on a good way to do this, feel free to discuss here. The more I think about it, the more I like it. Thanks hammer!

[Charlie Schuessler]

"There is a better way to do anything. Find it."

Thomas Edison

We know you can....

[Greg]

This is about the best I could come up with. How about if I provide links that search on the ski report forum for specified keywords like this:

http://forums.alpinezone.com/search....arch_terms=all

This would rely on accurate ski area name spelling by the member and will pull all posts from the trip report forum that includes any occurrence of the search term, regardless of whether the report is for that specific ski area or not.

I'm looking into a way to specify the search to just include the occurrence of the ski area name in the subject/topic title only as opposed to the entire message. This would help in isolating threads for the particular ski area, but it would still rely on accurate spelling and the ski area name would need be in the thread title. Thoughts?

[hammer]

Using the search capability works for me..

Originally Posted by Greg

I'm looking into a way to specify the search to just include the occurrence of the ski area name in the subject/topic title only as opposed to the entire message. This would help in isolating threads for the particular ski area, but it would still rely on accurate spelling and the ski area name would need be in the thread title. Thoughts?

I think that this idea would work better than a search through the entire message, since it's more likely that the message body could contain names of several ski areas. I would not mind having to include the ski area name in the title of a trip report.

[Greg]

Originally Posted by hammer

I think that this idea would work better than a search through the entire message, since it's more likely that the message body could contain names of several ski areas. I would not mind having to include the ski area name in the title of a trip report.

Agreed. Hopefully, folks will continue to use the format outlined HERE for their TRs, specifically the subject line.

The only other issues is the possibility of shortnames being used, e.g. MRG. I'll also need to define a list of potential keyword(s) for each ski area. Most would be one word searches, e.g. "killington", "loon", "sugarloaf", etc. It gets tricky with ski areas like Black Mountain (NH and ME), but I believe that's the only execption.

[uphillklimber]

Wow, do I like the whole idea of this!!!!

Is it possible to have a whole forum, with the ski mountains listed alphabetically? Each in it's own separate thread? (Already sounds like it will use a lot of server space) Then, as each person gets back from, say Sugarloaf, they can click on the Sugarloaf thread, give the specifics of the trip, the conditions, the crowds, etc... Could the most recent posts be at the top?

Pretty much, as we plan for a weekend of skiing, we keep an eye on conditions at the mountains thru the week leading up to it, on the ski areas' websites, which sometimes are just propaganda. Then I search fro recent trip reports on Thursday or Friday, before making the decision where to go Friday night. This is how I try to maintain a pulse on the ski areas just before we visit.

Anyways, whatever you come up with, I am sure looking forward to being able to peruse some recent trip reports there, before we go.

[severine]

Bob,
The only problem I see with having a separate forum for each ski resort is that I know I wouldn't check through each of them to see which have been skiied recently. I like the format currently where you can see at a glance which resorts were skiied recently, instead of having to hunt each one down in a separate forum.

But maybe there could be a way to link back from profiles to show which reports were made recently??? It could show links to the original messages (which would be in the general Skiing Trip Reports)... I'm not sure how that could be executed, but I think that would be a great way to accomplish what Bob is suggesting while still allowing us to easily see where everyone skiied recently.

[Greg]

Originally Posted by uphillklimber

Is it possible to have a whole forum, with the ski mountains listed alphabetically? Each in it's own separate thread? (Already sounds like it will use a lot of server space) Then, as each person gets back from, say Sugarloaf, they can click on the Sugarloaf thread, give the specifics of the trip, the conditions, the crowds, etc... Could the most recent posts be at the top?

Certainly possible, but it would be a mess. This site covers 131 ski areas in the ski area profiles section. Could you imagine how daunting it would be to sift through that many forums? Perhaps this could be doable if I could create sub-categories/forums. Better yet would be creating sub-forums for each state, with a forum for each resort under that. Unfortunately, nested forums are not possible with this version of phpBB. phpBB 2.2 may offer it though. I'm still investigating a way to search on just the subject which should improve upon the search option mentioned above.