Announcement Thank you for making these 2 years so successful!

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doublespaces

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Here I am at 4AM crafting this post and yet by my standards the night is still early. Surely there is something wrong with this situation but I'm not worried about that right now because SpoolStreet.com has now been up and running for TWO years strong! In the meantime we have completely trampled a forum in the process and have set the bar for what a forum experience should be on several levels. We aren't Lamborghini yet but we have definitely gone gold and this next year will be full of interesting new upgrades. For anyone hoping we were on the decline, I can confidently disappoint as our position has never been so incredible.

For a bit of history we have completed what I would consider one of the best sequence of site-launch giveaways I've seen pulled off in terms of giving back to the member base. Once again I'll include the names of those who thankfully participated:
AD-E 650HP FMIC @AD-ENG
MHD Flasher Package @Martial@MHD
VRSF FMIC @Tiago@VRSF
ZNM VRSF CP @Matt@znmperformance
xHP 5x Flashtool @RayBan
Motiv BoostBox/ProTune @MOTIV Motorsport
Bimmer Life Ignition Coils
Precision Raceworks LPFP @PRECISION RACEWORKS
BimmerGeeks 5x Flash Cables @BimmerGeeks!
NRW Steering Wheel @Snelson3003
Precision Raceworks $100 Store Credit @PRECISION RACEWORKS
PSP DCI/store credit @Dusty Waterfall
Black Market 350 store credit @BlackMarketParts
NRW Paddles @Snelson3003
VRSF Any VRSF Branded Item @Tiago@VRSF
Vader Solutions Stage 2+ and Pump brackets @Omar@VaderSolutions
Motiv FF and BB @MOTIV Motorsport
PSP FMIC @Dusty Waterfall
EOS $350 off Intake Mani @EOSpeed
Clark Performance Lockdown brace @Steven@ClarkPerformanceFab

Thanks to these vendors we were able to share a mutual benefit and direct that energy toward a variety of members on this forum. Hopefully you all have enjoyed your mods. We have forgone all profits during this process in the name of nurturing a positive environment which was not dictated by sponsors as it was important to set the tone for how this board would operate with or without money involved. Luckily, we've manged to make it this far without caving to any particular entity on the N54 platform and the goal is to expand into other areas, some directly related and others....Well, lets just say we hope there will be some smack talk happening within our member base :p (of harmless nature of course).

This brings us to the next stage in our lifecycle where we have brought on FCP Euro as our official sponsor of the N5X Enthusiasts Facebook group. This group laid the bricks for where this site is today as it was created over 8 years ago in 2010 and has grown to over 13,000 members and continuously rising. We run Google Ads for those whom are not logged into the site to help recuperate our operating expenses and yes, we have several hundred dollars per month of those. As of today, the server currently lives in a datacenter in Tempe, AZ with a private locking 1/4 cabinet to call home. We have an ever growing bandwidth cost and with the constant stream of development there are various costs associated there in addition to licensing related to our growth which we need to pay for. To be frank, if we did not need more money we simply wouldn't be imaginative enough.

On the topic of development, you will notice over the next few days a dramatic change in the site layout. There will now be a new structure which may take a moment to become comfortable with; however it is the best solution to the mega-site predicament that I believe can be brought to production given the current state of forum technology. This has been in the oven for well over a year, nearly since inception and finally we will get to roll out some of these changes. Here is a very short list:

Push Notifications - You can ditch the emails if you wish and get Push notifications directly to your device! Initially this will be an Android only feature and not available at launch but iPhone and other iOS devices are on the drawing board.

Interactive datalogs with auto-upload API support - No need to visit a different site to read datalogs. No need to manually upload your logs each time you come back from doing some pulls. We have spoken with all the top Tuner app developers and API integration is coming.You can even specify users who you automatically share your logs with, such as your tuner which simplifies the e-tuning process.

Wiki functionality - While limited we will have a wiki style system which will help us catalog the seemingly never ending supply of information, procedures and notations.

Enhanced User Blocking and Ignore features - Sometimes you just don't want to see or hear somebody

News page - The top posts of each board will come together on our home page to form a highlight feed of the best content SpoolStreet.com has to offer

Optional Premium Memberships - Some people want to support the site as well has have elevated permissions and status, these needs will be satisfied.

Vendor controls - We will begin defining who is a verified vendor and who is a random person slinging goods.
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We will save the other news for later but there are a ton of behind the scenes changes being made. Your browsing experience will improve, the site will be faster and overall you'll feel more at home in the Web 2.0 world. We understand many users are on a phone which is why the entire site has a fully responsive design and is the most smartphone friendly BMW web-forum on the internet while flaunting the newest and best forum technologies in the industry. I mod the forum like my car, so that should keep it interesting for you :)

To conclude we just want to say thank you to those who have joined recently and an even bigger thank you to those who have been around since the beginning. We have big (BIG) plans coming and we would appreciate your input!
 

langsbr

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Congrats. Looks like some great enhancements coming. With the site upgrade, are you planning on changing your screen name to DriveSpace? :p
 

doublespaces

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Congrats. Looks like some great enhancements coming. With the site upgrade, are you planning on changing your screen name to DriveSpace? :p
I'm pretty sure the number of people tha catch that reference can be counted on one hand and probably for good reason.
 
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fmorelli

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There is a post on the Facebook group explaining how it's going to work.

Filippo
 
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langsbr

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There will definitely be some discounts coming. Hopefully we can get them to post here also.

I'm all for them posting here, but wouldn't that be the antithesis of their whole "sponsor a FB group" rather than a forum? Believe me, I much prefer a forum to FB so I'm not complaining, just trying to understand their and your goals.
 

Panzerfaust

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Congrats Tyler, you've definitely put in the work and earned the success of this site! While I didn't officially register until this past year I've been around the other forums for a few years and can easily say this is a much, much better experience than any of those sites at their peak so I excited for what the future holds.
 

doublespaces

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I'm all for them posting here, but wouldn't that be the antithesis of their whole "sponsor a FB group" rather than a forum? Believe me, I much prefer a forum to FB so I'm not complaining, just trying to understand their and your goals.

Their main focus will be the FB group. But they have an account here: @JR@FCPEuro
 

doublespaces

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Aw yeah. Great work Tyler. Congrats on the success.

Side note, the new data center is giving me phenomenal load times.

The server we're on right now is actually slower in terms of physical hardware as it is just the failover/nagios/vCenter server. But the jump to php 7.2 probably helps a lot. If the budget can call for it, I might upgrade to NVMe drives to handle the SQL queries on the primary server once I have it shipped to the new DC.
 
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