Done - Rec Fly, Aircraft Pilots & TAA

[Admin]

Hi All

 

I am pleased to announce that the merger of Recreational Flying, Aircraft Pilots and The Aussie Aviator has now been completed from a structural point of view. There is still a lot to do in tidying everything up and some cosmetics etc which will be done over the coming days (see the To Do List below)

 

I want to take this opportunity to apologise if the work that has been carried over the last couple of days has caused any inconvenience to you but I hope you understand that this was a major task and some down time was inevitable.

 

The outcome is that:

 

Recreational Flying - for all the recreational aviators out there

 

Aircraft Pilots - for all the professional pilots working in the aviation industry

 

The Aussie Aviator - now called Aviation Enthusiasts (www.aviationenthusiasts.net) for all the hardened aviation enthusiasts

 

now all have the same user registration and login across them all. This means that if you register (or are already registered) on one of the sites, you are automatically registered across them all with the same username and password. Which ever one you are on, your PMs, Alerts, Profile Page, Settings etc are the same and you should be able to login to one and find that you are then logged in to them. This allows you if you have a broader interest in aviation than just the one site, you can flick between any of them and participate in each, if that area is also of interest to you as well.

 

When merging the users of the sites, users that were registered on any or all of the sites that had the same email address were combined into their Recreational Flying user name. When two user names were the same but had different email addresses, they were not merged but instead given a user name prefix for example TAA . This is because some user names are were common across two or more sites. I believe we were able to merge about 95% of duplicate users. Those that were unable to be merged will received an email from us soon to seek more information.

 

A big benefit of all this is that many of the resources can be shared across each of the sites. The Video/Audio/Text Chat Rooms can be used across all, the Aircraft lists, the Photo Gallery, the Video Library, Aviation News, Events etc are shared across all the sites so for example upload a photo and users that just use one of the other sites can see it and comment on it as well. There are enormous benefits for all users with the merger and not to mention we are approaching 10,000 registered users...a nice number for our upcoming 10th birthday.

 

Anyway, once again I apologise for any inconvenience and hope you will all benefit from this.

 

To Do List (will cross off when completed):

 

Create a colour style for Aircraft Pilots

 

Set up links to Facebook and Twitter for your posts should you choose to use that feature

 

Merge some forums that have the same subject area

 

Add new forums to expand each of the sites

 

Email and resolve non merged users

 

Review the News Section (and revisit news on home page)

 

Implement new Photo Gallery that doesn't use albums but individual photos instead

 

Review and re-organise the Tools Section specific to each site

 

Populate the Aircraft Section

 

Re implement the fast and enhanced site search feature

 

Change licenses for the chat rooms to all sites

 

Please advise if you can think of anything else you recommend being done...thanks

 

 

[Admin]

Just to advise that if you are currently unable to connect to Aircraft Pilots or Aviation Enthusiasts then this is because these two sites were moved to the same IP address of Recreational Flying as Rec Fly has its own dedicated IP address, so the internet has to catch up with the move which can take 24hrs

 

 

[fly_tornado]

so what happened to the nz and uk sites?

 

 

[Admin]

so what happened to the nz and uk sites?

Google penalises sites in their search engine for having duplicate content. The way the extra sites were structured, as in all the aircraft forums were also accessible by the different geographically spread domains, it was discovered that the sites were starting to be penalised by Google in their search rankings. I had hoped that Google would see the reasoning behind the structure but that was not the case. So, unfortunately they have had to be removed until I can come up with some better alternative.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

is SEO that important with aviation forums?

 

 

[Admin]

is SEO that important with aviation forums?

Doh...

 

 

[Admin]

The Chat Rooms are now open and available on all sites

 

 

[planedriver]

Good work Ian.

 

All your hard work is appreciated mate.

 

Thank you!

 

 

[Guest Howard Hughes]

Really enjoying the integrated function of the sites.

 

Looking forward to seeing a few more professional pilots over on Aircraft Pilots!