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Post by chech on Sept 9, 2014 22:47:58 GMT
Very clean layout. Missing the name of the person giving the review. Even a first name. Without it, it feels like anyone could write them.
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Post by tassiedevil on Sept 9, 2014 23:08:50 GMT
I am so glad I went to the TT forum yesterday for the first time in about a month and found out about the closure and this website. A couple of hours later I tried getting back on and it had gone. If I hadn't gone on when I did I would never have known what happened and would never have found out about this forum. I was very lucky!
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Post by chech on Sept 9, 2014 23:28:25 GMT
The cats would have found you!
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Post by Oz-T on Sept 9, 2014 23:34:58 GMT
Hi Trish, great to see you here. I was in Belgium last June and because it wasn't a Trafalgar tour, I didn't discuss it on their forum. I will be writing a travel tale about the entire trip so hopefully there will be some information that's helpful to you.
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Post by Oz-T on Sept 9, 2014 23:41:17 GMT
Welcome, Tassie! Glad to see your timing was impeccable; Trafalgar didn't give much notice that they were closing the door for good, so much depended on members seeing the announcements in time. It was an incredibly disloyal way to treat customers, especially those who put so much time and energy into discussing and promoting the Trafalgar brand. I do think that there were better ways to go about the changes but unfortunately, our views did not appear to be highly considered in the decision.
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Post by tassiedevil on Sept 10, 2014 0:10:18 GMT
Thanks Oz! I didn't really get to read many of the posts, but did see that there was a lot of ill feeling towards Trafalgar about their decision. Just very glad my timing was on, a couple of hours later it would have been a totally different story.
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Post by kiwidi on Sept 12, 2014 4:38:13 GMT
Hi there,
I had joined the Trafalgar forum earlier in the year with a view to doing some research about which tour and tour company I would choose. I would be travelling solo and wanted to make the right choice.
I was saddened upon reading the announcement that Trafalgar were closing the forum as I had spent many hours browsing everyone's experiences and advice. I am planning on doing a Trafalgar tour, hopefully next year, now that the children have left home, so was heartened to read about this forum.
After reading all your travel tales and advice I feel like I know you all but most of all you have given me the confidence to know that I can do this and do it well.
So planning continues, just a few small things to tie up here at home and then can move forward.
Thank you so much for creating this forum and will definitely add my tour tales/thoughts
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Post by Oz-T on Sept 12, 2014 5:25:44 GMT
Hi KiwiDi, and welcome. There was just so much travel experience in the membership of the Trafalgar Forum that it'd be a waste to have everyone go their separate ways. There was much angst about being herded toward Trafalgar's preferred social media platforms and it was apparent that few members would do so. This joint was a pretty rushed job setting up, so please excuse the decor if it's not looking quite perfect. However, the rent is darn cheap (i.e. $ zero) and there's no landlord telling us what we can do, so it'll serve as our meeting place for the foreseeable future. I'm pleased to hear that members have been helpful to you on the old forum, and I'm sure that this will continue here. I don't have much experience with solo travel (although Mrs Oz says that I'll get it rather quickly if I continue to clown around on tours ), so that's why we have several experts here who should be able to make you comfortable about the impending trip.
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Post by Boop on Sept 12, 2014 6:08:21 GMT
Hi KiwiDi!
Glad you found us! I am one of the "solo" travellers on the forum and I wouldn't have it any other way. Once you get one trip under your belt, you'll wonder what took you so long!
Where are you thinking of going?
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Post by marielouise on Sept 12, 2014 20:29:49 GMT
Hi Trish, great to see you here. I was in Belgium last June and because it wasn't a Trafalgar tour, I didn't discuss it on their forum. I will be writing a travel tale about the entire trip so hopefully there will be some information that's helpful to you. I am looking forward to your tale.
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Post by NancyS. on Sept 21, 2014 19:26:34 GMT
Hi, This is me Nancy from the Trafalgar forum. I found this link from the Face book page. I don't really like posting over there, except liking a few pictures from people's travel's. Anyhow I had to switch my tour a few times, the timing is not working out for me! So let's see if I can keep the Spring Break tour of the Spanish Wonder in March! I couldn't take my September tour because I started school. I'm in the Pharmacy Technician Program! One thing about booking directly with Trafalgar, is I haven't had to pay any extra fee's to switch my tour. Now I just want to go!!! I am glad to see a few familiar icons! The time works out perfect with the Spring Break! so it looks like a go for now. Sad to see that they closed the community forums, though. Glad that this one is available.
Nancy
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Post by Boop on Sept 21, 2014 21:11:56 GMT
Welcome Nancy! Happy to see you found us....the time will go quickly and you'll be off on your adventure!
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Post by Oz-T on Sept 29, 2014 12:20:53 GMT
So how's everyone going with navigating the new forum? Any tips to share or aspects you'd like explained?
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Post by chech on Sept 29, 2014 14:15:37 GMT
Navigating is smooth. I like the Participated button and that it brings me right to the last post read. I love the Like button too. Oh, wonder if a section for photography stuff might be an idea.
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Post by californian on Sept 29, 2014 14:32:48 GMT
Well, posting pictures is still a mystery to me, but I guess I have to spend more time studying it...I think I was one of the few that did not have problems posting pic to the Trafalgar Forum, I guess once I learn how it will be easy, and is great to see the text and pics are compatible, no delays or glitches. Good job Oz-T, now if this old dog could learn the new trick...
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Post by Oz-T on Sept 29, 2014 21:46:34 GMT
.... Oh, wonder if a section for photography stuff might be an idea. Done.
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Post by Oz-T on Sept 29, 2014 21:56:16 GMT
Well, posting pictures is still a mystery to me, but I guess I have to spend more time studying it...I think I was one of the few that did not have problems posting pic to the Trafalgar Forum, I guess once I learn how it will be easy, and is great to see the text and pics are compatible, no delays or glitches. Good job Oz-T, now if this old dog could learn the new trick... Uploading images is fairly straightforward, Californian; as long as they're small enough in size and not too many of them in one go. Remember that this is a free forum, so nobody's going to supply us with unlimited storage space for us to post dozens of our favourite 15 megapixel, 7Mb photos. The size is limited to 1Mb each, which is similar to Trafalgar's rules. This means that you have to resize them if the originals are larger. There are several ways to do that and I'll open a separate thread to explain it. We're also restricted to three images per post, so that's usually not a problem. Even Chech and I can spread funny cat photos around without running into trouble there. However, travel tales with embedded photos will be a problem and as we all know, images make a tale much better. The best advice I can offer on that is to end a post after three images have been attached, then continue on a new post. This means we wouldn't have one post covering a day of a tour, but there's nothing wrong with splitting a day into three or more postings.
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Post by bet on Oct 6, 2014 8:31:31 GMT
Hi all and thank you Oz T with this forum, great job
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Post by Oz-T on Oct 6, 2014 21:27:54 GMT
Welcome aboard, Bet. Nice to see another familiar member make their way here; glad you found us.
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Post by kiwidi on Oct 7, 2014 22:16:21 GMT
Hi KiwiDi!
Glad you found us! I am one of the "solo" travellers on the forum and I wouldn't have it any other way. Once you get one trip under your belt, you'll wonder what took you so long!
Where are you thinking of going?
Hi Boop Sorry for the delay in replying, thought I had replied at an earlier but I must have done something wrong as I can't see it. For a start I want to do a trip like the Britain and Ireland Grandeur and take in the sites of London. Will then probably have to return home to save and accumulate annual leave and then head onto Europe.
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Post by Oz-T on Oct 8, 2014 0:52:20 GMT
"For a start I want to do a trip like the Britain and Ireland Grandeur and take in the sites of London "That's the tour I did one year ago, KiwiDi. There's an incredible amount of ground covered, as well as history; it's Trafalgar's most complete tour of Britain and Ireland. But it doesn't include London, other than starting and finishing there. Having visited London many, many times, that suited us fine. If you would like any advice on that specific tour, or what to do in London, please feel free to ask.
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Post by keitel on Oct 9, 2014 3:17:50 GMT
Just a thought. Due to my limited computer skills I need someone's help. Just the way Oz-T let me know about this site. Many moons ago we had prolific posters that stopped posting when Trafalgar introduced new and eventually self destructing rules. It would be great if we could let them know we exist.
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Post by tiffany on Oct 9, 2014 12:13:59 GMT
"For a start I want to do a trip like the Britain and Ireland Grandeur and take in the sites of London "That's the tour I did one year ago, KiwiDi. There's an incredible amount of ground covered, as well as history; it's Trafalgar's most complete tour of Britain and Ireland. But it doesn't include London, other than starting and finishing there. Having visited London many, many times, that suited us fine. If you would like any advice on that specific tour, or what to do in London, please feel free to ask. I went on this tour in 2010, and for Canadians and Americans, it does include two days in London at the beginning of the tour. For us, it’s a 24 day tour (including flight), and we had an orientation drive through London our second morning and got out of the coach at Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the Guards. The included sightseeing ended around noon, and then we had the rest of the day free to see the sights. The next morning, we met the rest of the group on the coach and started our tour. There were two coaches parked outside of our hotel, and there was a lot of confusion as to whether we were on the correct coach because the North Americans kept referring to it as a 24 day tour, and the Australians kept referring to it as a 20 day tour. Our tour director finally got on the coach and explained everything to us.
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Post by chech on Oct 9, 2014 12:48:38 GMT
Yeah, if you look at the brochures from other countries, the length of the tour and the 'start' day can vary. It threw me when I was getting ready to book a tour. I was double checking the start date and it didn't match my notes. Took me the longest time to notice the currency was in Rand. My browser was still viewing the South African site from when I was down there.
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Post by chech on Nov 26, 2014 14:11:55 GMT
Oz...are you able to track clicks? Just wondering if you had any clicks directed from Facebook or Twitter in last couple days.
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Post by Oz-T on Nov 26, 2014 23:28:42 GMT
No, the statistics page available to administrators shows the number of page views, posts, threads created and members who joined. We can see this for any particular date or for a period of time by setting the start and end dates.
It does not collate data on where somebody might be redirected from.
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Post by Oz-T on Nov 26, 2014 23:41:46 GMT
The redirection from other sites can be seen more broadly by way of increased activity here. If there's a change to the usual pattern that can be seen by a spike in daily viewing activity. A quick look reveals the following: For the 17 days prior to 25 November the page views were fairly constant, averaging 590 views per day. But on 25 November they skyrocketed to 1,512 views. Something unusual must've happened on that day to cause this. Possibilities are: many members or guests browsing the forum for whatever personal reasons; interesting threads that attracted ongoing viewing; or guests being directed here from other websites. The 'view' counter clicks an extra unit whenever anybody accesses any page within this forum. After log-in, you add one to the count. Clicking on a thread adds a further unit. There are far too many thousands of 'views' each month to be mainly attributable to member activity; in fact, more daily views relate to guests who just pop in to look and read.
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Post by chech on Nov 26, 2014 23:48:32 GMT
Interesting stuff. It's possible the spike on the 25th was, at least partly, from posting the link to the Panama tale on TT's FB page and putting it on twitter (which TT retweeted). I get similar spikes on my blog when I post the links to the tales I put up there. I didn't think to check the number of views on the tale before posting the link. Don't know if you can see the views per thread.
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Post by californian on Dec 15, 2014 3:19:10 GMT
Praying for a peaceful resolution of the hostage situation in Sidney. Can't imagine the agony of the relatives, my heart goes out to them.
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Post by Oz-T on Dec 15, 2014 11:47:26 GMT
This news must be spreading around the world....
It would seem to me that this guy is more a nutter than a standard terrorist. He hasn't behaved like a terrorist and seems to be an amateur. He doesn't appear to have thought much of this through - he's alone, without a plan or coherent list of demands, nor any idea of who in the media he should be contacting. He also goofed enough to allow five hostages to escape.
It's now 10:40 pm and this has been going 13 hours, fortunately without anyone being injured. Hopefully, this moron will be overcome by the need to sleep and that's probably what the police will be anticipating, possibly planning to overwhelm him in the night. They are in no hurry. Maybe hostages will even be able to quietly escape during the night.
Australia has strict gun laws and it's almost impossible for a madman to acquire automatic or semi-automatic weapons. Or handguns. There's speculation that this guy only has a shotgun and if that's correct, it would require reloading if discharged, thereby giving people time to flee or even overpower the terrorist.
Yet again, it appears that another Muslim has demeaned his religion and hurt fellow Muslims throughout the world. As I've argued many times, this sort of act demands the absolute condemnation by all major Islamic leaders. Shaming these sorts of misfits for bringing disgrace to their religion may not be a cure for the problem, but it's a necessary start.
Let's hope that nobody is hurt, although it's hard to imagine that the hostages won't be traumatised.
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