Coincidentally, right after posting this thread, I received word a good friend died this morning. :( He was very young, my age ;) He will be missed but never forgotten, he was one of the kindest individuals I've ever known. And it reminded me of something I am more convinced of all the time, and is the reason for so many of my life changes I've undertaken the last two years- life is too short and so fragile; there are no guarantees or warranties. So you better enjoy it now my friends, don't waste it being nasty and tearing down or worst yet allowing yourself to be torn down or stressed out. Go make it better for you and others. That is what this forum is capable of doing, helping and building, so let's try hard to use it for that. Take those vacations, learn new things, say those kind words, give those hugs, watch those sunsets. Thanks and all my best wishes for you all.
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Link to article: Para-Equestrian Johnathan Wentz 1990-2012, Cerebral Palsy victim who was the highest scoring US rider at the Para-Olympics just passed away after realizing his dream. Makes me appreciate everything more when I see what some have had to overcome...and did overcome. Makes me realize my problems are very small indeed, and never insurmountable.
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First, I want to apologize for the last six months of grief the site has caused many of you as we have been working through our software issues. As the owner, regardless of my best intentions, I alone am ultimately responsible for the site's poor performance since the last changes. Even if I didn't do the design work, those who did it were chosen by me. Given my performance to date, I want to add how much I appreciate those who have stuck by the site, or at least indicated a desire to return once the issues are ironed out. I owe a huge debt to those who have gone even further to encourage me and thank me for the work. Amazingly, the site continues to have very strong traffic in spite of some of the busy posters dropping off. Unfortunately, this site has cost me dearly, personally and financially, and I probably would not have taken it on if i knew then what I know now. That said, I'm not a quitter so I'm sticking with it until the site is everything I can make it. I know how important nearly two decades of horseshoeing information is to the farrier and horse owner communities and I know I am responsible for restoring the site's reputation and performance. And I will continue to work in that direction. Next, I wanted to talk about where we are at and where we are going. We have just completed many major software updates to the main programs that run the site. You will see some minor changes, like the Preview button and some icon changes and stuff like that but much of the behind the scene machine has been changed to fix known bugs. One that "may" now be fixed is the infamous cookie problem (where after so many visits to the site your browser crashes when trying to access the site and you get a bad request or some similar error). Since our upgrade, Alex (Aleroinc) and I have tried to reproduce the problem but have not been able to get it to fail. We, of course, do not have all of your browser/hardware/operating systems to test so just because it is seemingly fixed doesn't mean it is fixed but it's worth trying. It is important to clear your old cookies/cache for the site because if you already have a cookie set from the old software it will crash eventually if you don't log out from time to time. To preempt the "don't blame the users" mob that usually starts lighting their torches right about now, let me say all prior issues with the site were the fault of the site's cookie management and not the users' browsers. But, the only way to get folks back on the site when these errors occur is to clear their cookies. When I ask you to clear cookies it is solely to get you back on the site (and in the current case to test a software change) and is not an attempt to deflect blame for the site's issue. So please try it again, with a fresh start/login after your cookies and cache are cleared. In addition we have looked at changes to other platforms (software programs) but all have issues for us due to our front-end needing joomla for the articles and such, or the large albums and individual photo collections, as well as other issues. Anyway, no developer could guarantee success with other forum packages so we have pressed on with the hope that Kunena and Joomla would solve their issue (to be fair there are also some non-joomla/kunena parts, such as the template for example, that could be to blame but no one has ever been able to pinpoint what exactly was causing our issues). There is one other, perhaps long shot, solution we are pursuing in parallel. A completely built from scratch site. No joomla, no kunena, no commercial products involved. A completely custom product. This is a very complicated solution that will take time and I am given an 85% chance of success so, for now, we will leave it at that. As an alternative outcome, if the custom forum is just too big to develop, we could use the custom designed program for the front end and then embed new forum software in it that does not run under joomla. This would allow us to use other forum software like some of you have heard positive things about from our farrier/software gurus. Either way, my goal is to eventually move away from joomla that I didn't care for in the beginning and certainly don't appreciate after this year. That is where we are and where we are trying to go. Thanks for your support.
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I agree that more of the 1000 or so should register and comment, I think it would add a lot and even the regulars would appreciate the contributions from new folks. As for difficult to navigate :( , there is no perfect solution for this forum at this time. I have looked at many alternative software packages and they all have issues. This one is the best total answer for the site that I have right now.
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All software updates are completed now. This was a major update for all our software, server side and frontend side (what you see). You will notice a few changes (like the Preview button next the the Submit button) but most of the changes corrected Forum software bugs which should improve your overall experience.
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Tapatalk developers have not kept up with our site's software so for now I am going to disable Tapatalk as it no longer functions properly. As an alternative I've installed mobile versions of our site's software (joomla and Kunena). When you browse to the site on a mobile phone you will now see a simplified menu if you are in the mobile site (it just has links to photos, videos, articles, Ask the Expert, and the forum). If you prefer the non-mobile version just toggle to "Standard Version" at the bottom of your phone or tablet's screen. I've only tested on an iphone, so if your device has issues just select the "Standard Version" link at the bottom of the page to view as the full site. Here is a brief summary of how to use the mobile site to access the forum: 1. Browse to Horseshoes.com on your mobile device 2. Select "Horseshoes.com FORUM" from the menu 3. You can go the the individual sections or near the bottom you will see a "Recent Topics" button, hit that to see topics posted to within the last 48 hrs 4. If a thread contains new posts it's title will be bolded 5. Use the reply arrow to reply to a post and the subscribe button to subscribe to the thread
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It's a template problem that caused the buttons to disappear, I didn't reply to a thread so didn't see it, I'm working on it now.
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Last I heard Tom was having some joints replaced and was going to be in PT for six months, I trust it all went or is going as planned. If you are still checking in Happy Birthday Tom!
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We are having to update the operating system on the server as well as a number of major components of the site so there will be some issues to work through today. Thanks for your patience.
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good to hear from you Bruce, happy birthday my friend
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I just sent him an email and told him about this thread. Hopefully he will check in soon and confirm how he is doing...
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It's been awhile since I embedded a video directly into a post and although it is pretty easy it was a little confusing until I remembered how to do it so I'm documenting it here:

1. Hit the video link in the boardcode editor, the editor that pops up above your message entry area (the video link icon looks like two cells of film, 5th icon from right including the blue question mark icon)

2. This brings up two "insert video" options. The one that worked best for me was the one that starts with the "Provider" pull down. Click the pull down and choose YouTube if it is a youtube video (this is the last one on the pull down list)

3. Input only the video identifier (not the full link with http and youtube and all but just the 10 or so alpha-numeric codes that identify the video on youtube. Using our FarrierFest fullering video as an example, the code is 1mRpMn3AIuc. This goes in the "ID" box.

4. Then hit "Insert video" next to the ID you just entered.

the result should look like this:

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