2020 Significant forum upgrade and rebrand

Syphon

Site Owner
Staff member
Feb 28, 2002
9,226
2,033
South West
www.seatcupra.net
We upgraded the forums back in 2018 when we moved away from vBulletin to Xenforo 1 forum software.

We are upgrading again for 2020
We have continued to grow in membership and activity year on year, not just on the forums but also on social media. Our community is not about the platforms themselves, but about the people who use them.

Despite the growth on social media, our forums continue to thrive and we now have over 36,000 registered members and we are growing at a rate of over 500 new registrations a month, with an average of around 22,000 monthly active users.

Therefore we are about to invest in the forum software again.

This post is to let you know that we have just signed the contract to upgrade us to Xenforo 2 with some new exciting plugins and features on the way. This work will be done during April and should be completed in a couple of weeks.

We will keep you posted on this thread as there will be a couple of small periods of downtime required as we are also migrating to a new server.

And before anyone asks, we'll continue to support Tapatalk :)

All of this costs money and will cost us around £2,000 on top of our annual dedicated server running costs which are significant for a forum of this size.

So we'd like to thank our sponsors for making this possible as SEATCUPRA.NET is purely funded by their support.

We are a not for profit entity, and as part of our policy of never charging for membership, it's going to stay that way.

New logo and brand and merch
As part of the upgrade, we will be launching our new logo and rebrand. We're really excited by the new modern logo that still retains some of our original style.

logo-tease.jpg


This will be followed by some new merchandise including new stickers, t-shirts (hopefully personalised for each member) and something of exceptionally high OEM quality we're looking forward to sharing with you soon that you'll be able to affix to the outside of your car... the first person to guess correctly what it might be, gets theirs for free (they are going to be approx £15 each - TBC, as we're still working with the manufacturer and this will probably need to be an advance group buy initially). - updated (13th June) you can reserve your new chrome badge here.

As ever our merchandise is sold as close to cost as possible whilst allowing us to maintain the running of the merchandise shop, postage, materials and investing in new merchandise when required.

We still have some of our original stickers left in the shop currently selling at half price.

New moderators
The forum also wouldn't be possible without the work of our moderators @Jimbobcook @Legojon @Lozzy15 and @paddy6789 so a special thank you to them.

However, as we have grown we have realised that we would like to provide some more focused support to each car model so we're on the lookout for some additional volunteers to help with that. Specialists on each car, for example, a MK1 Leon Specialist, or an Arona specialist or even a detailing specialist.

These individuals would curate and highlight content for their respective sub-forums and support with specialist guides and hints and tips. If you are interested in helping out, please let me or one of the moderators know.

20 years next year
Whilst we've got your attention, we'd like to mention that 2021 will be 20 years since the community started.

Subject to the return to normal life (we hope you are coping well under these strange times) we are hoping to run at least one, but probably a number of special events to celebrate. Our meets over the last few years have been bigger than ever and they will be back. Stay tuned on that.


Thanks for reading and for being a part of our community. We hope you enjoy what we have in store over the coming weeks.
 
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Syphon

Site Owner
Staff member
Feb 28, 2002
9,226
2,033
South West
www.seatcupra.net
For a forum of its size it has a really good feel, much less of the trolling and divisiveness of other forums I’ve been on. Looking forward to the next 20years...
emoji6.png


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks, we used to have our fair share of that many years ago, but I suspect those kinds of people have a) matured! b) moved on elsewhere :).
 
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Syphon

Site Owner
Staff member
Feb 28, 2002
9,226
2,033
South West
www.seatcupra.net
Looking good! You finding this easier being in lockdown than normal work times?

No different really as I've got the day job still! :) Luckily the company who's doing the actual upgrade are based in America so our calls are my evenings and their daytime so works out well.

I'm doing the new forum icons at the moment, but waiting to see their first draft of the new overall forum design next week hopefully :thumbup:
 

Syphon

Site Owner
Staff member
Feb 28, 2002
9,226
2,033
South West
www.seatcupra.net
Thought I'd keep a bit of an upgrade diary going on this thread.

Been playing around with some artwork for our Facebook covers today (I took the day off work for SCN stuff) with some of the newer CUPRA models - one of which I uploaded today.

Using the background of our stylised logo for the model name. Lucky SEAT/CUPRA had these nicely cut out cars with even transparency in the windows (you can just see the tyre tread behind). I think they work well with our new colour scheme. What do you think?

FB-cover.JPG
 

Connor H

Active Member
Dec 19, 2019
1,014
498
Essex
Thought I'd keep a bit of an upgrade diary going on this thread.

Been playing around with some artwork for our Facebook covers today (I took the day off work for SCN stuff) with some of the newer CUPRA models - one of which I uploaded today.

Using the background of our stylised logo for the model name. Lucky SEAT/CUPRA had these nicely cut out cars with even transparency in the windows (you can just see the tyre tread behind). I think they work well with our new colour scheme. What do you think?

View attachment 14896

Designers unite!

I like these, simple punchy. ill be keeping an eye on this thread! PM me if you need stuff cutting out, its something i have to do a lot at work (including adding deleting stuff, window transparency. colour correction etc)
 

Syphon

Site Owner
Staff member
Feb 28, 2002
9,226
2,033
South West
www.seatcupra.net
The new site will feature a new media gallery function. Active members will be able to upload their own images/videos and audio files. We'll also use them for official SEAT and CUPRA photography collections.

:)

Teaser from the test site below

media-gallery-sneak.JPG
 
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