Random thoughts on Readers Rides

If there was any justice, East Coasts' Celica would have more votes. That's not the only car that seems to have been inexplicably overlooked (at least in my opinion), but it did jump out at me.

I like the slideshows more than the list view. Maybe it's the bigger photos.

Several cars are seriously vying to knock the Group 44 Jag out of the top spot in "Most interesting"

The rides with updates are more interesting to me. I like seeing what folks are up to.

Is there an easy way to add video?

It's been done, but it doesn't work well.. sizing issues. I've been thinking about some sort of youtube integration, but don't know when I'll get to it.

Instead of a static, random picture, in the dreaded side bar. Maybe a slideshow of reader's ride's would work better and generate some traffic for some of the less watched rides?

I think the biggest issue that for those of us who spend way too much time on the boards, it is hard to connect the reader's rides to the people posting. If there was a way to show a small thumbnail of their rides below their names, etc.

The tie-in for the Challenge (East Coast only, sigh) is interesting and worthwhile.

East Coast's Celica is overlooked because well.... it's a Celica.

^ Double click 4 awesome ^

What do you have to do to have your car show up in the slide show? My Solstice does, but my Mustang, Civic and 2 TVR's don't.

Which slideshow? There's one for everything, and they pull the top 100 for whichever category you're on (latest, most interesting, votes, recently updated, type of car, whatever)

As for pushing them up higher.. get votes and comments, or post updates.

Is it in bad taste to put up past cool cars that are already sold? Is there a limit on cars per person and......is your server up to snuff? I was up over 200 cars (lifetime) at last count, though thankfully I don't have pictures for all of them

There's no limit to the number of cars you can put up. If you mark them sold, they don't show up on the Readers' Rides list anymore, although they are still available through your profile.

So yes, you can easily put in all the cool cars you USED to have, too. They'll just be attached to you, rather than in the mix with all the current stuff.

How do i attach more than one pic to my reader's ride thingy?

I don't really have an online album of the car at the moment, but i do have another picture or two i wouldn't mind just putting up on here, like you guys do with the project cars....

I may just be E-Dumb and it's right in front of me...

Every time you do an update you can upload another pic. That's probably the easiest way. I've got "more pics" on my to-do list, but like video, I don't know when I'll get to it.

TIm, how do I reorder the pics, I noticed at first only 4 show up when you add them, but then when you go to the page you can see them all, this was misleading to me and I didn't add as many or in the right order according to our build!

My MR2 was ranking top 3 in most interesting for a long time, but now it's sold! Both and

hmmm.. guess I should get some work done to the Fiat then...

BMW is getting stripped and repainted next month.. I will post some pics then

I will post more pics when the TRM chipped OBD-I S52 is under the hood of the E30.

Longer-than-wide photos are displaying oddly in Safari.

See my updates here - http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/reader-rides/108/

There's no snow on the forecast (FINALLY) so I can GBTW on the RX-7's brakes. My next update will be free of any bitching about the weather, I promise!

I should get around to putting my car up, once i finally have all 4 matching alloys on it.

I updated the Ti and 900.. but I do not see how anybody can touch the awesomeness of the Group44 jag.. other than to note it is definatly not grassroots

I have to agree, I just recently updated my Celica, but it'll be hard to push the Jag off the top because it's just plain sick! I know that niether of my cars are anywhere close to the level of coolness in that car.

I'd be a lot more likely to spend time on the reader's rides section if the pictures were bigger, that's a deal breaker. In our era of mega bandwidth connections, ~350x250 images just aren't doing it for me. I suppose if I did more browsing with a phone I'd appreciate it....?

Another thing that tons of forums have is when you click on a users name/avatar a pop-up allows you to see more posts, send a PM, see their gallery (reader's rides), etc. Here, it's a multi-page affair. I'd love to trade the bandwidth of loading multiple pages for fewer page loads and larger images. I still prefer build-threads over the reader's rides, mostly for the convenience of seeing when there's updates when I visit the forum, larger image size, and quicker to scan through the update (multiple large images per page) in short order. Getting an email is nice for a few really important-to-me threads/users but fairly cumbersome for lots of interesting things.

Hopefully this is taken as constructive criticism. I'll be documenting my $2009 car just as soon as the west coast event gets an actual official announcement/date. I've been meaning to stick my other cars in the reader's rides thing, but it's yet another forum to document my cars on so I haven't got around to it. I probably will when I start my $2009 one.

Bryce

Big images are definitely a must in this day and age. But I do think that there should always be thumbnails I thumbnail all the images I post anywhere because it helps to load faster even for the high speed internet users (which I do have).

Build threads are definitely the uber best! Lets you keep track of the progress as it happens, and lets you get up to date on something you have been out of the loop on.

Nashco wrote: I'd be a lot more likely to spend time on the reader's rides section if the pictures were bigger, that's a deal breaker. In our era of mega bandwidth connections, ~350x250 images just aren't doing it for me. Bryce

When you click on the ~350x250 image, a larger (1024x768?) version is displayed.

Luke wrote:

Nashco wrote: I'd be a lot more likely to spend time on the reader's rides section if the pictures were bigger, that's a deal breaker. In our era of mega bandwidth connections, ~350x250 images just aren't doing it for me. Bryce

When you click on the ~350x250 image, a larger (1024x768?) version is displayed.

Not in IE6 or Firefox 3 using XP...???? I can get the single picture that's their "ride" to blow up bigger, but none of the updates/progress pictures. For example, I can see Gimp's F-body in front of the garage nice and big (with some extra clicks) or go to another forum and view his pictures nice and big, but can't blow up the picture showing how he attached his a-pillar bar to the floor without opening another page/site.

Bryce