Oshkosh365

[Bill]

For over a year now, we've been enjoying the fabulous vBulletin powered EAA Forums. Now that Airventure 2012 is over, I'm wondering when Oshkosh365 is going to be overhauled so that we can get to Hints for Homebuilders without the delays and squirrelly behavior of Oshkosh365.

Would be much appreciated by the masses.

[Eric Page]

Direct link: http://www.eaavideo.org/channel.aspx?ch=ch_hints

[Mike Switzer]

I have been downloading old issues of the magazine to read, and it is a major pain. Besides being slow, after I have downloaded one & saved it, when I hit the back button to get the next month's it kicks me back to the main archive page instead of the year I was just looking at.

[Bill]

Oshkosh 365 must be the family relative that no one wants to talk about of EAA. While I was looking for a way to access the new Experimenter via Oshkosh 365 (and didn't find anything that is evident), after waiting multiple minutes to log on and then more minutes to get to the EAA Members Only area, I noticed that there is still a link to AeroPlanner. That service was axed as an EAA benefit in January, 2012.

Oshkosh 365 is so bad that I consider it the major detriment to enjoying the benefits of EAA membership. If you're an AOPA member, as I am, go to their website and see what a member site should be. If you're not, you'll have to accept my word that it is thousands of light years beyond Oshkosh 365.

There must be some reason that Hal and others on the staff have stiff-armed comments on Oshkosh 365, but I can't imagine what it could be.

[Hal Bryan]

Nobody is more painfully aware of the issues surrounding Oshkosh365 than we are, believe me. It's still live because it's the only semi-functional member login system we currently have. That will change - one of the things that came out of EAA's reorganization last January was the creation of a Digital Media Team, led by our former Sr. Web Producer, Brian Tesch (and my now boss.) What this means is that, for the first time that I'm aware of, there's a group of people (Brian and his other direct reports) that actually "owns" EAA's websites - all 25+ of them, comprising what I just heard yesterday was 3,000,000 pages of content.

All of them will be overhauled, and that work is progressing steadily. But, unlike how we've done things before, where different teams within EAA have tended, in all good faith, to put a quick website here, install some new tools over there, with no consistency or planning or ownership... this time, we plan on doing it right. As I understand it, Brian's strategy for this ground-up rebuild will be presented to the senior leadership team in just over 2 weeks for final approval, and then from there, development - I'd guess several months' worth - will begin.

We launched this site (the forums) because it was considered an emergency fix: the forums on Oshkosh365, which made up a vast majority of the usage of and traffic to the site, were dying fast because of the abysmal performance and maddening functionality problems. But we did so knowing full well we were making some painful compromises - forcing everyone to create and use yet another username and password, creating yet another separate website, etc.

It was the right thing to do, but it was unquestionably a reactive decision. The next round of EAA web development won't be.

As soon as I have a timeline, I'll share it.

Thanks -

Hal

P.S. The Aeroplanner link was removed in January, so I wasn't sure what you were talking about until I remembered the link to the FBO/fuel price map. If that's the one you're talking about, I didn't have a problem with leaving it: it's a useful tool and requires no Aeroplanner login or account of any kind. If people want it removed, I'm more than happy to do that, but I don't see that it's doing any harm.

[Jim Rosenow]

Awesome information, Hal. Thanks so much for keeping us in the loop on 'stuff'.

Loved your 'cubs' pic in the September issue, too! Thanks!

Jim