ACT BUS Updates

Started by Buzz Killington, December 02, 2007, 08:36:36 PM

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Buzz Killington

ACT Bus Updates

This thread will keep you up to date with changes and additions to all aspects of the website.

Contributions and Suggestions are always most welcomed, and can be sent to us at website@actbus.net

10 May 2009
Specifications Section (Under 'Information' Menu) Redesigned.

9 May 2009
Eight historic AOA Photos added to Gallery. List: http://actbus.net/forum/index.php?topic=1290.msg12640#msg12640

4 May 2009
AOA Page on Website rebuilt in revised format

1 May 2009
10 Historic AOA photos added to Gallery. Full list: http://actbus.net/forum/index.php?topic=1290

29 April 2009
21 Historic Advertising Livery Photos added to Gallery. Full list: http://actbus.net/forum/index.php?topic=1290.msg12173#new

18 April 2009
- Belconnen Stations page added to Infrastructure
- Belconnen Interchange page updated
- Homepage updated

Buzz Killington

Today's updates:

- Network 09 page updated to reflect changes to Routes as part of Belconnen Interchange Closure
- Belconnen Interchange page moved to History section

Buzz Killington

24 May 2009

- Wiki and Fleet list updated to reflect transfer of vehicles to Belconnen Depot
- Information added to various Wiki pages regarding vehicle maintenance and repairs.

Buzz Killington

Tourist Drive #1 has been added to the Enthusiast Section. The rest will be added progressively.

Sir Pompously

#4
I get a 404 Error with that page, Buzz.

Edit: And I see why, the URL has an extra L after html!

And also, feel free to look through my flickr of photos of places the Tourist Routes go to. You may use the ones on there, just hit All Sizes to get the larger size!

Buzz Killington

Tourist Drive 3 has been added

Buzz Killington

#6
Nightrider page updated
New article added "The real cost of free school buses"

Buzz Killington

Some historic photos added to the Gallery today - they were the ones posted on ATDB recently

Buzz Killington

More info added to the Wiki today - a bunch of delivery dates for some of the older Mk1 Renaults - rigid and artics.

You can always see the latest changes to the wiki here: http://www.actbus.net/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges

Buzz Killington

A new article has been added to the History section. It covers the 730-series Evaluation vehicles from a passengers perspective, and is definitely worth a read.

Buzz Killington

Small updates today to the following pages

- Bike and Ride
- ACTION Fares
- City West

Buzz Killington

Tourist Drive 4 has been added to the Enthusiast Section.

Buzz Killington

Tourist Drive 5 added today.

Buzz Killington

20 or so photos added today. Most from the forum, but also a bunch of 846 submitted by a site visitor.

Buzz Killington

Canberra's 1973 Fleet has been added to the History section.

Buzz Killington

Sir Pompously has added 'Gallery Editor' to his list of duties.

His role will be editing existing photographs to ensure that appropriate descriptions are available on more photographs, as well as uploading more photographs.

Thanks to Sir Pompously for taking on this extra role, which will result in a better experience for those who enjoy browsing our Gallery!

Buzz Killington

Various minor updates across the Information Section today:

- MAN18.310 specs updated
- PR100.2 Mk1 specs updated
- MAN18.320 specs added
- Belconnen Bus Stations updated
- Scania specs updated
- Media releases section added

Buzz Killington

#17
Forum

- More 'Hot Topic' links have now been added to the forum index
- 'Hot Topic' links have been fixed to go to the newest post in the thread, rather than the first page.
- New Forum Icons have been added (Green for new posts, grey for no new posts)

Wiki
- A large number of VIN Numbers, Body Numbers and Body Dates have been added, mostly for O.305's and Renault PR100.2's
- PR180.2 Category has been split into two (Mk1 and Mk2)
- PR100.2 Category progressively being split into two (Mk1 and Mk2)

Buzz Killington

#18
Today's updates
- ACTION Fleet List (Fleet info put into table format)
- ACTIONs 1994 Fleet (History Section) - This page has been fully rebuilt to have the same format as the current fleetlist.
- ACTIONs 2004 Fleet (History Section) - also fully rebuilt to have the same format as the current fleetlist
- Evaluation Buses Updated

Buzz Killington

Today's updates:
- History Homepage
- Advertising
- All over Advertising
- Destination Rolls
- Canberra Show
- Christmas
- Commuter Express
- Fare Comparison (Current fares added)

Most of these are minor cosmetic changes.

Buzz Killington

Some changes have been made to the forum layout based on popularity.

Multimedia has been split out into its own category, located at the top of the homepage. It has been split into three boards - Canberra Region, Infrastructure and Interstate.

ACT Bus News has been renamed to simply 'News' and is now located within the Bus Discussion Category.

The general rules/updates forum is now located at the bottom of the page, all the restaurant review threads have been consolidated into the one forum, as has the Japanese section into the International section.

Buzz Killington

MAN SL200's 451 - 463 have been added to the Wiki.

For those wondering what will happen when we get up to the MAN 18.320's assigned those fleet numbers, see BUS 671 for an example of how we will work it.

Buzz Killington

The "ACTION BUSES" and 'Numberplate' images in the wiki articles are progressively being replaced with a photograph of the bus itself. Each current vehicle will have a photo, and former vehicles will feature one where possible.

As there are over 800 buses in our wiki, this will take some time. As always, you can see recent changes on the wiki by clicking the "Recent Changes" link on the left hand side of the wiki pages.

Buzz Killington

All current vehicles except some of the newer MANs now have photos on their articles.

Work has begun on the former vehicles.

Buzz Killington

AEC Swifts have been added to the Wiki.

Buzz Killington

Anyone who uses the 'recent changes' link on the Wiki to keep an eye on changes will note there has been quite a bit of work done in the last few days which is somewhat behind the scenes.

In order to add articles for some rather early Canberra/ACTION Buses which carried fleet numbers in the 100 series, the Renault PR100.3's, Dennis Darts, Hino RG197K's and the two evaluators have had their pages moved. For example, .3 Bus 100 is now at BUS 100 (2).

A lot of work is going into the Wiki at the moment, and as a result you can expect to see more old vehicles added, and eventually our comprehensive Disposals List will be complete - http://www.actbus.net/fleetwiki/index.php?title=ACTION_Fleet_-_Disposals

Buzz Killington

- Website has undergone some major back end changes, and the public site now has a new look.
- O.305's, O.305G's and 730 series evaluators have been added to the disposal fleet list.

CNG

#27
buzz can you add the info on higgins interchange I sent to you on the pm. Which Myway posted

Snorzac

have you ever heard of manners?

Barry Drive

I think the favicon in the ACT BUS main site needs updating.

Buzz Killington

Ah yes, forgot about that. Will fix that up in the next few days.

Quote from: CNG on August 11, 2010, 06:47:08 AM
buzz can you add the info on higgins interchange I sent to you on the pm. Which Myway posted

Well, since you asked so nicely.. or rather, edited your post to make it slightly nicer.

CNG

yeah I looked over it and I thought gee that dose sound rude,  I really didn't mean it to sound that way sorry buzz

p_stampy

Quote from: CNG on August 12, 2010, 07:50:09 AM
yeah I looked over it and I thought gee that dose sound rude,  I really didn't mean it to sound that way sorry buzz

Ill assume you mean does, not dose.

lol.. all I can think of now is tarbo flutterz

Buzz Killington

Site
Information > Fleets menu updated
Information > News menu updated
Higgins Interchange page updated

Wiki
337 - 584 added to disposal list (note that 337-409 have not had all details added at this time)

Buzz Killington

#34
Wiki articles have been added for 337 to 409.

Buzz Killington

#35
MyWay and MySelf (heh) have been doing bits and pieces across the site during the Christmas/New Year period. Some may have been mentioned here and there but here's a bit of a rundown (No doubt I'll forget some but 'MyWay' will surely add those in)

Site
- MyWay info moved to its own section and new content added.
- School Bus info re-added
- Archive of 'Featured Bus' from the Wiki has been added.
- Updated fare comparison
- News section modified - now contains articles - links to forum news topics now a subcategory
- 2010 in Focus added

Wiki
- Disposal list updated to include vehicles dating back to the 1920s - individual articles to follow.

We are continuing to review, update and add new content where possible. As always if there are any suggestions or requests, please let us know and we'll do our best to get it sorted. Our focus in 2011 will be filling in as many of the gaps in our information as possible.


Buzz Killington

haha, i love that ostrich.

Snorzac


Buzz Killington

We've made some changes to the frontpage of actbus.net, namely some new modules on the right hand side of that page.

According to our data this should look fine to anyone who has a screen resolution above a width of about 1100 pixels, which represents a majority of our users, but if anyone is getting some serious overlap of the right hand modules over the top of the photo of the month, please send me a message or email with your screen resolution so we can look to fine tune it.

Buzz Killington

The forum software has been updated to the latest version. Not much in the way of front-end changes but there are various security updates and whatnot.

You may notice a few things missing/changed here and there - those that can be fixed will be over the next few days.

Barry Drive

Did the latest forum update remove the chat function again?

Buzz Killington

Unfortunately, yes. We're awaiting a new release of the chat function.

Buzz Killington

The chatroom is now back up and running :)

Buzz Killington

Sorry about the downtime yesterday. I logged a support call yesterday morning and was told that it was a server issue affecting a number of sites including our own. The site did reappear mid-afternoon but the problems persisted into the evening.

If you're not already following our Twitter feed or liking us on Facebook, please do so as those are our only channels of communications with you during site downtime.

Finally, you can generally tell the difference between downtime and scheduled maintenance - when we're undertaking scheduled maintenance only one section of the site is taken down at a time (e.g. wiki, forum, gallery..) and generally we'll give advance notice. When it's a server issue, you'll get an error message no matter what part of the site you go to.

Buzz Killington

Gallery and Wiki are still offline following yesterday's troubles. Tech support are onto it. Sorry for the inconvenience..

Bus 400

Quote from: Buzz Killington on October 24, 2011, 07:39:50 PM

If you're not already following our Twitter feed or liking us on Facebook, please do so as those are our only channels of communications with you during site downtime.

So who won the most MyWay transactions thing?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Buzz Killington

Can't recall the name, but it was 1,503. Check the twitter feed.

--

Wiki is back up, images and front page to follow but all the data is there. Still no ETA on the gallery.

Buzz Killington

#48
Thanks to a brainwave from ACTbusspotter, our Disposal List now includes this icon to indicate that a photo is on file for that particular bus.

Not much else to report - the desto roll listing page has been updated with the MAN SG192/MAN SL200 roll, and we're continuing to tag and caption the gallery.

Buzz Killington

The ACT Bus Website now has a mobile version, joining the Gallery which also has a mobile version.

If you visit either of those parts of the site, your phone should automatically display the mobile theme. You can switch to the full version via a link at the bottom of the page.

I hope to get mobile versions of our Wiki and Forum happening sometime soon, although in the meantime Tapatalk provides a great platform for using the forum from your mobile, and can be downloaded from your app store.

Buzz Killington

Apologies for the downtime over the last few days - we hit our traffic limit for the month on the 28th and so the website wasn't able to be accessed until the start of the new month (Today).

There were more images (and with higher file sizes) added to the Gallery last month, and the Wiki was reloaded with the newest software, which was no doubt what pushed us over the line. I'm hopeful it won't happen again this month.

Buzz Killington

#51
We're coming close to our bandwidth limit again guys. If you get a white screen with an error between now and 1 July, that's the reason.

While increased traffic has played a part, I think I have identified another back-end issue that is being a bit of a data hog, and have a workaround in mind.

Buzz Killington

Sorry for the downtime at the end of the month again. I think we were down over the weekend and on Monday.

I've put a few things in place to hopefully cut back on our resource usage. These won't have any impact on your usage of the site as they affect back-end processes.

Iif things don't improve our next move is to reduce the size of the Gallery. This would be achieved by identifying individual photos that have a larger than necessary size (such as a 2MB photo when a scaled down version looks just as good), and removing the photos that 'aren't that good'.

I'll post again later in the month to let you know how things are looking.

Buzz Killington

My apologies for the significant amount of July that the website was displaying the 'bandwidth exceeded' message.

We're having some back-end issues with one part of the site. I strongly suspect it's the Gallery, which we have taken offline for the moment to investigate the issue. The site will continue to have the Gallery, but there's a good chance we will be replacing the software it runs on with something a little more reliable.

I'll keep you updated, and if you're not following us on Twitter or Facebook, I strongly encourage you to do so (the links are up the very top of the page above the ACT Bus Forum logo) as these are the ways we will communicate with you in situations such as the 'Bandwidth Exceeded' one.

Buzz Killington

So, false alarm on the Gallery front. The problem was actually in the Wiki. I've updated the software and problem solved. All parts of the site are now functioning as normal and we can get back to adding content :)

smitho

Thanks to Buzz and team for persevering and finding the cause of the problem!

Busnerd

Found out last night that Bus Australia had a problem with it's wiki too causing the site to not be available, possibly exceeding bandwidth also, they have since shut their wiki down permanently i'm lead to believe.

smitho

I couldn't get in to ACT Bus on Sunday night, but I suspect that was caused by a TransACT problem....some other sites were troublesome also.

Buzz Killington

I get email alerts whenever the site goes offline for any reason, and didn't receive any on Sunday evening.


Buzz Killington

Some improvements for mobile users - the wiki and forum now autodetect mobile devices and switch to a mobile-friendly theme.

The forum version is currently on trial, and I'd appreciate any feedback on how you find it.

This now means that the website, forum and wiki have mobile versions. The Gallery will not have a mobile version at this time due to conflicts with the tagging functionality. You can also access our forum via the Tapatalk app, which can be downloaded free of charge from your app store.

Bus 503

Feedback: maybe a 'last post' section at the end of the topic bar? :D

King of Buses

Quote from: Bus 503 on March 19, 2015, 06:55:40 PM
Feedback: maybe a 'last post' section at the end of the topic bar? :D

Seconded. Or at least the green bus symbol showing if there are unread posts since last visit.

Buzz Killington

Thanks guys, I'll see what can be done. I'm not too sold on the mobile forum skin so if people prefer the standard version I'm happy to revert to that.

Bus 503

Is it just my iPad or is the forum part on the home page of ACT bus not showing?

King of Buses

Quote from: Buzz Killington on March 19, 2015, 08:45:05 PM
Thanks guys, I'll see what can be done. I'm not too sold on the mobile forum skin so if people prefer the standard version I'm happy to revert to that.

I'm in favour of reverting to the standard version. I'm not sure about everyone else though...

Buzz Killington

#65
Quote from: Bus 503 on March 20, 2015, 06:04:24 AM
Is it just my iPad or is the forum part on the home page of ACT bus not showing?

Not just you - thanks for pointing it out. I'll take a look over the weekend and see if I can fix it.

Edit: Seems to be an issue on the forum side - the feed that populates that box on the website is not functioning. I've removed the box from the website homepage for now until I can fix it.

Bus 503

#66
Quote from: King of Buses on March 20, 2015, 09:15:40 PM
I'm in favour of reverting to the standard version. I'm not sure about everyone else though...

Yep, also in favour - it gets annoying changing from the mobile to the standard version all the time!

Bus 503

#67
Recently, I've noticed a new member roaming through the threads of the forum.
His name is ACT Bus forum and rather likes advertising on everywhere he posts.  >:D

Is this just an error on my iPad or is everyone else having this 'advertising member' showing up on random threads?

(Sorry for being picky and finding errors that don't really make a problem)

King of Buses

Quote from: Bus 503 on June 29, 2015, 08:14:27 PM
Is this just an error on my iPad or is everyone else having this 'advertising member' showing up on random threads?

I've noticed this too...it isn't a member though, it is like an add on to some moderator posts as the ad post, and the post above, share the same reply number...

But only in some threads sometimes  ???

Buzz Killington

im just trialling ads in threads. They'll show up after a certain number of posts have been made in a thread. They display similarly to a normal post, attributed to the forum

Buzz Killington

Apologies for the downtime today, and the generic error message. Both of these have been sorted.

Buzz Killington

A couple of minor changes - spotting threads (AOA, what bus did you get?) have now been shifted over to the Games section.

Buzz Killington

Apologies for the downtime on the forum lately. Not too sure exactly what's causing it, but I'm looking into it.

If you do come across the error message during a weekday, the forum will generally come back online that evening. 

Buzz Killington

#73
Apologies for the forum downtime (and the ever informative white screen of death) over the last day or so. Let me know if you encounter any issues while using the forum.

Buzz Killington

Tapatalk and the forum software have been updated to the latest versions.

Sylvan Loves Buses

#75
I see the forum has had an upgrade.
May take a little while getting use to the new format though. Has anything altered or is it the same just with a different look?

Buzz Killington

Same features, new look.

The new look also scales to the size of your screen, so phone users in particular should have an improved experience.

Sylvan Loves Buses

Oh that's good, no more of posts with multiple photos on one line being pushed around. Hooray.

Sylvan Loves Buses

This new update seems to have bugged out a lot of the photos that had been uploaded over the past 2 years. I know things like that tend to expire, but it usually shows something to say that that has happened, but I was looking around some recent posts last night, and many with recent photos just have multiple paragraph spaces now.

Sylvan Loves Buses

Now that is more like it! Nice update.


Busnerd

Thanks for the feedback Sylvan, we're trying to roll out some minor updates around the place so expect a few teething issues for a week or so whilst we get everything working.

Sylvan Loves Buses

And they change colour to the ACTION livery when there's something unread, that's awesome! Love it!

Sylvan Loves Buses

#82
Did something change recently, cause I could've sworn i had more than 1 of those yellow squares below my avatar a few days ago? What do the different yellow ones indicate anyway, cause I've noticed a few other members have 2 or three?

Also, still love the Renault fronts for the read/unread indicators, but have you possibly considered doing a bunch for each section of the board? Like having the Renault's for the old bus related boards, CNG or Euro front for modern, Bustech for the more active boards, and a LR and plane front or whatever for the others. Any chances of something along those lines?

Barry Drive

Yes, I changed the squares recently. It basically represents your seniority on the forum. Once you go over 1000 posts, you'll get more squares.

As for the icons - no. The forum software only allows for "read" and "un read" icons.

Buzz Killington

#84
Hi all, we've upgraded to the newest version of the forum software. If you spot any bugs around the place, please let me know and I'll do what I can to sort them.

Tapatalk will be unavailable for now unfortunately. While the latest version of Tapatalk is apparently compatible with the new software, it definitely did not work when I installed it. I'll need some more time and testing to sort that out.

Avatars have also blanked out, so you may need to re-add those.

Most of the improvements are to the back-end, but you'll see some new features around, including two-factor login authentication, likes, and notifications.

Sylvan Loves Buses

At least for me, I set the time zone to Sydney, but it appears to be running 11 hours ahead which is rather off putting.

Barry Drive

Time display problem should now be fixed. If your time is still wrong, set your account to "Forum Default". If that still doesn't work, send me a message.

Busfanatic101

Probably not something you can change at your end, but selecting the correct word/spelling suggestion on my preferred phone keyboard no longer works. It works fine on other sites. 
The stock keyboard on my phone does work for the forum though.

Sylvan Loves Buses

#88
Accessing other areas of the site with click-able links aren't possible anymore. There was always a button to go to the gallery, wiki, actbus site etc. Obviously it can just be typed into the address bar, but I feel it's a good thing to have esp for guests.

Busfanatic101

Also noticed under profile stats, posting activity by time has AM and PM flipped around (or is out by 12h), so has me most active in the wee hours of the morning but never posted during the afternoon...

Buzz Killington

#90
Earlier in the week, our site was moved over to a new server. Unfortunately I was only notified after the fact. It appears that a full snapshot of the site on or around 15 February 2020 was the version that was migrated, meaning posts made in the last fortnight or so were not migrated across. My apologies for the inconvenience.

The Wiki and Website are both functioning reasonably well, however we ran into some issues with the Gallery, and I've had to run a fresh install. Thankfully our Gallery software stores images directly on our server rather than within a database, which meant it was easily restored. We will however need a bit of time to restore some of the custom look and functionality that our Gallery previously had.

Let me know if you encounter any unexpected error messages or problems around the place (screenshots including the page URL are great).

Sylvan Loves Buses

Nice to see another new logo, would be good to see a better font though. It wouldn't be too hard to do it in that weird old font ACTION used for their first logo?
What happened to the Renault faces that would light up? I miss those.

Buzz Killington

The ACTION font forms part of registered trademark, so we're not going to go there.

I'll add the Renault forum icons to my to-do list for the site, which is admittedly quite long at the moment.

Buzz Killington

PR100.3 and Dennis Dart SLF Manuals have been added to the website: http://actbus.net/bus-manuals/

Buzz Killington

We've moved to a new server!

Some of you may have noticed that we hit our bandwidth limit near the end of March, making the website inaccessible for a couple of days. In a bit of good timing, our current hosting plan is expiring next month, and the long weekend gave me the opportunity to move everything across to a new server. While we've been with our current hosts for nine years, the limitations to that plan meant that we were seeing downtime, and limited in our ability to expand content.

For the most part, there's no real change to the user experience, however what it does mean is:
* We now have unlimited storage - so can continue to expand the Gallery, and our timetable scans.
* We now have unlimited bandwidth - no more of those annoying outages!
* We now have https, for a more secure browsing experience™

As is often the case with these sorts of things, not everything went totally smoothly. A couple of issues to be aware of:
- The forum has moved from actbus.net/forum to forum.actbus.net (different, apparently!). This was unfortunately a side effect of the forum software not being totally compatible with some back-end settings. Rather than switch to different software, we've elected to have the forum in a 'subdomain' to keep it operating as-is.
- The current version of the Wiki software has a bug that impacts on Safari users, who will see a 'cannot parse response' error message. I'll update the software when a fix is available, but in the meantime, Apple users can get around the problem by using another browser, such as Chrome.
- Some non-essential items are currently being reloaded - Wiki categories, and images on the website articles.

If you do encounter any unexpected errors, please let me know - screenshots are helpful, otherwise the error message and what you did or what you clicked on before it appeared are good too.

Our new home is reasonably future-proofed, so hopefully we'll not need to do this again for a while. By my count, it's about our fifth move since May 2005!




Buzz Killington

Wiki issue for Safari users has been resolved.

Buzz Killington

I've been able to re-load the forum to the old URL (actbus.net/forum). An automatic redirect has been implemented for forum.actbus.net (where we've been for the last few weeks).

Let me know if you encounter any issues.

Buzz Killington

Some updates to the Timetables section, with additional timetables added from 1981 and 1982

https://www.actbus.net/category/timetables/

Buzz Killington

Around fifty timetables have been added to the 1982 collection:

https://www.actbus.net/1982-bus-timetables/