[blackpanther-st]

Yesterday I made a suggestion to the site admin about the garage section of this site, he replied back to me and asked I could start a new thread for recommending improvements to the garage.

Please feel free to post your own suggestions for the garage

Once the garage grows to at least 200 cars listed, he will consider investing in the programming required for worthy improvements.

suggestions for the rest of the site I am assuming should still go to ... http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums...thread-28.html

My own suggestion is posted below.

[blackpanther-st]

It would be really good if we could add a little more the the written content for the garage entries. basicly I am thinking a way to document progress steps. the notes section doesn't allow for text formating, and I am not sure yet, but I have a feeling that it also has a text limit which may inhibit its use for this.

Thanks for your consideration,
Matt.

[TheSGC]

I would like a drop down menu for Motor Selection. Have a list of all the common ADC, Netgain, Kostovs motors and Other Forklift Motors. When I want to search for EV's I like to compare ones that use the same motor.

[rbgrn]

There are a few things I thought of that I'd like to add in:

1) Better text formatting in the notes section and new sections
2) Micro-blogging (journal updates, IE: What did you do this week?)
3) Related Discussions - Links to discussions related to this EV.
4) Comments
5) Change table header html so that it always renders correctly
6) Auto-completion in most fields (instead of drop-downs)
7) Link the different EV parts to tags in the forum (clicking on Warp 9 would bring up a page of discussions about Warp 9 motors)

[david85]

All very good ideas. I feel the garage is one of the best features of the forum and will give real staying power.

I must say, I am VERY impressed with how many vehicles have been posted there in the forum's short history.

The auto completion for forum search is also a great idea. I'm not a programmer, but would it be possible to have a program that will automatically add new keywords based on which searches are done more often?

That would make the search engine more "organic" so to speak and it would automatically adjust to whatever trends happen in the future instead of having to add a new motor or battery brand every time one comes out.

I've been holding off on adding my car because there isn't really much to show for now and figured it was better to wait until its done, but if more features to cover progress are put in and they are easy to use maybe long term builders like me would be more likely to post builds that are in progress.

[rbgrn]

David - yup, that's the idea. The autocomplete would suggest things based on what it has seen before. When I did the first version of the garage I simply didn't have time to get into that. In fact, I still don't have time, but if there's enough demand to improve it, I'll make the time.

[blackpanther-st]

Originally Posted by rbgrn

David - yup, that's the idea. The autocomplete would suggest things based on what it has seen before. When I did the first version of the garage I simply didn't have time to get into that. In fact, I still don't have time, but if there's enough demand to improve it, I'll make the time.

Two ideas I would like to suggest, one I think you may already be onto with the quote above, and the other builds off of that feature.

First; pull key words from the components and specifications fields in the existing forms, and second enter that data in a searchable database which links each component and specification with all garage vehicle entries sharing the same component or specification. so say someone wants to see who has used for the sake of example, a lesser known, like a BelkTronix controller? They could enter BelkTronix in a garage search field and see a page listing links to all the vehicles in the garage which use the BelkTronix system.

This type of search is very helpful to new builders looking to see what works and what doesn't. To take this one step further in that direction, make the search return page, subsearchable and each one there after. this way a builder can easily search through various component combinations and see what kinds of results other builders are getting with those combinations.

Oh yes! and the car model should also be treated as a component, for the sake of the search feature.

[Ashev]

Metric <-> imperial conversions on any weights and measurements would be good.

[JRP3]

I agree that improved search parameters would be helpful. Frankly, take a good look at how the evalbum.com is setup. It's very clean, easy to navigate, well laid out, and easy to search under things like motor type, motor brand, battery type, battery brand, vehicle make, etc.

[omonoid]

It would be cool to have it like a journal, where the owners explain the hurtles they went through