Forum Evolution Latest Topics

A treat if you have the scratch

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 22:04:26 +0000

Could be of interest for someone.

By Skip Barber Racing School - Aug 20, 2025, 4:09 PM CDT

Skip Barber Racing School offers the ultimate European driving adventure

If you’ve ever dreamed of driving the world’s most iconic racetracks, Skip Barber Racing School is making it possible this October with an unforgettable journey across Europe’s motorsport heartland. Over five days, participants will take on two bucket-list circuits — the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife and Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps — while enjoying the kind of hospitality and exclusivity that transforms a track trip into a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

The adventure begins in Germany at the Nürburgring, affectionately known as the “Green Hell.” After settling in and watching the VLN race series, drivers will take part in a detailed briefing before their first full day on track. With 16 laps of the 13-mile Nordschleife included in the package, participants will get plenty of time to test themselves on the most demanding circuit in the world, backed by the confidence of expert instruction and a track-prepared car.

From there, the journey shifts west to Belgium, where Spa-Francorchamps awaits. Unlike typical track days, this is a Spa Premium Track Day — a private event with limited entries, closed to the public. Drivers will experience over 40 laps of Spa’s sweeping corners and legendary elevation changes, with professional instructors on hand for one-on-one coaching. Between sessions, hospitality in the pit garages and lunch overlooking the F1 pit lane remind participants they are in one of motorsport’s most storied venues.

But this program is about more than just lap times. Between driving days, Skip Barber has curated experiences that showcase the beauty and culture of the region. A scenic road tour winds through the Mosel Valley’s vineyards and historic villages, offering breathtaking views and unforgettable stops along the way. Evenings are spent at renowned local restaurants, where group dinners are paired with world-class wines, adding a social and celebratory element to the program.

Every detail is designed to be seamless. Packages include track-prepared cars, fuel, instruction, hotels, meals, and helmets — allowing guests to simply arrive and drive. Optional upgrades are available for those who want additional mileage or full-time, dedicated coaching. Spouses and partners are also welcomed, with access to social events and even the option to ride along on track as a passenger.

In short, this is not just another driving school — it’s a motorsport pilgrimage. To experience both Nürburgring and Spa in the same trip, with expert guidance and premium hospitality, is something few enthusiasts ever achieve. Skip Barber Racing School has created a program that combines adrenaline, culture, and exclusivity in equal measure.

Spaces are strictly limited, and demand is expected to be high. For those ready to check two legendary circuits off their bucket list in the most extraordinary way, this October’s Skip Barber European Driving Experience may be the opportunity of a lifetim

PMs are now disabled for New Users

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 17:12:24 +0000

Due to a proliferation of scammers registering on the site then sending PMs to other members in an attempt to scam them as outlined in this thread, the PM feature has been disabled for all individuals in the New User group. Previously, they were limited to one PM/day to minimize their reach, but more extreme measures are now required. New Users will continue to have their posts moderated until we are confident they are not here simply to take advantage of the community.

If you are in the New User group and have an issue using the site that isn't addressed in the Help Guides, please either start a thread in the Issues & Help forum or use the Contact Us link located at the bottom of each page.

New How-to Guides section added to Articles

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 22:56:52 +0000

I've made some navigation changes to increase visibility of the Articles section, and I have also added a new section there under the Owners Resources folder called How-to Guides. There are a lot of great threads that discuss how to perform certain mechanical procedures, but they require a search to find. The purpose of the How-to Guides section is to give those posts a second home and improve discoverability. If you have a thread that walks people through a process that you think is appropriate for the new section, please send a PM to @JohnCh and @Croc. In some cases, a single post can be lifted as-is, other times it will require pulling together multiple posts and performing some editing to make them flow. If editing is required, well look to the author to perform that work and provide it to us in a Word doc. Please note, a How-to Guide does not need to start life as a forum thread. Net new content is also welcome.

Thanks,

John

Changes to navigation menu

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 22:30:19 +0000

I made a few changes to the navigation menu today.

The Support ticketing system is being deprecated in the upcoming software release. Therefore, I have removed Support from the top-level menu. Most people simply PM me directly or use the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page when they need help, so that is the new process.
Downloads is now called Library which is more intuitive, and it has been moved to the top-level menu thanks to the extra space from removing Support.

-John

Photo tagging

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 19:27:23 +0000

This is a stretch but can increase the utility of the gallery

Is there a way to have photos tagged with users and have those photos shop up under your profile? Same way as facebook or even instagram.

Once others tag you it's very easy for you to view all those photos that you're in under your profile without having to search for it anywhere and that makes it very convenient.

I know I can "@XXX" somebody in the comments on the photo but that doesn't lead to a tagged gallery of any sorts under my profile.

Interest in a 3D printing or fabrication forum and Downloads section?

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 19:17:12 +0000

I've noticed more and more mentions on USA7s of people using 3D printing to fabricate parts for their cars, which has got me thinking. The Westfield forum (WSCC) has a dedicated section for 3D printing and a location for people to share their source files for the parts they've developed for their cars (brackets, pedal extensions, dead pedals, phone holders, mirror mounts, etc). If there is interest, I can do something similar here. We can even expand that idea to cover all types of fabrication people may undertake: sheet metal, milling, electronics, 3D printing, fiberglass, etc. The end result could be:

a section focused just on 3D printing, or
broaden it to create a fabrication section where any type of car related fabrication is discussed, or
add 2 sections: one focused on 3D printing and a second covering all other types of fabrication.

We'd want to keep the conversations and files focused on parts for our cars to avoid this becoming a destination for people interested in these techniques but with no interest in se7ens. However, that still creates a lot of space for relevant conversations for those of us already taking advantage of the technologies or people considering testing the waters. What I don't want to do though, is create a new forum or forums that no one will use. Please weigh in below and also use the poll to help quantify interest in the various options.

Thanks,

John

Night theme

Wed, 01 Feb 2023 10:44:29 +0000

Is there a night theme available? I looked through options and didn't find one

Changes to Search

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 15:25:34 +0000

Today's maintenance update provided a slight upgrade to the Search interface. Previously, if you wanted to narrow your search to a specific location, you had to click "more options" to access a new screen. With the update, you can do this directly from the Search box as shown below. Simply click the default location which appears on the right side of the Search box when you either hover over it or click into it (picture 1), then select from the options shown in the drop-down box that appears below (picture 2). You will continue to have additional filtering options available from the Search results page (picture 3) by clicking the "More search options" button (picture 4).

-John

Reactions are now live!

Sat, 05 Mar 2022 00:36:21 +0000

We now have Reactions available that enable people to post a reaction to any piece of content using an intuitive icon. Options are:

To give a Reaction, look for the Heart-in-a-circle icon at the lower right of any content, tap the icon or hover your cursor over it, then select your Reaction icon from the choices that appear to the left.

Before anyone asks, yes there are other gamification features available such as Leader Boards, Badges, and Reputation Scores. Some people love those in a forum, but I have heard from others here who expressly do not. Because these options are not something that a user can turn off, and they do bother some in our community, I am consciously choosing to not enable them at this time. That means the forum may not be quite as engaging as some would like, but it won't be bloated and turn others away. We are all passionate about a simple, basic, no-frills car (writes the person who's building a car with traction control and heated seats -- yeah, I get the irony). I'd prefer our forum reflect that spirit.

Cheers,

John

Status Update feature is now off

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 19:40:51 +0000

There is a feature in our forum software that enables you or anyone else to post a status update that appears on your profile page. Anything posted there is public for anyone to see -- even spam bots that troll the web. Unfortunately, people miss the text in the status update box that indicates this is public information and confuse it for a Private Message (see portion circled in red below.) On many occasions, I've removed phone numbers, email addresses, and even home addresses when someone has made this mistake. Because the proper use of this feature is so rare, and the privacy issues created when it is used incorrectly are severe, I am making the decision to turn off Status Updates. As per Invision, who makes our software, this is the only option as the feature is only fully on or fully off.

Thanks,

John

Vote on the forum home page changes

Sun, 20 Feb 2022 15:22:55 +0000

As mentioned in this thread announcing test changes to the forum home page, it's time to vote. Do we keep those changes or revert back to the plainer home page? I'll keep the poll open for a week to enhance the drama.

-John

New Forum home page layout

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 18:01:06 +0000

I'm sure many of you are wondering what happened to the home page layout. After prompting from @Vovchandrto better expose the gallery functionality, I've implemented a way that doesn't involve custom code but does come at the expense of pushing the list of forums further down the page. To offset this, feeds were added to the right that highlight new topics, popular topics and new downloads. There are no changes to navigation or Activity Streams, so any links in your favorites that go directly to an Activity Stream will continue to work unchanged. I'll do a poll in a couple of weeks to gauge opinions once everyone has lived with it for a bit. If people hate it, we'll revert, if people like it, it will stay.

Below is a brief description of each feed. Simply click on an image or post within a feed to access it directly.

1) Rotating image feed displays up to 30 random images from the Gallery. The feed is refreshed with a new group of images each time you visit or reload the page.

2) Newest Topics - displays the 5 newest topics on the forum.

3) Popular Topics - displays the 5 topics with the highest post count.

4) Newest Files in Downloads - displays the 5 most recently uploaded files to the Downloads section.

Note: if you are viewing the forum on a mobile device, feeds 2, 3, and 4 will appear below the list of forums to maintain readability of that section.

-John

Help Guides

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 17:43:41 +0000

I've updated the top-level navigation to include a direct link to the Help Guides and also created new help guide articles pulled from the FAQ to increase discoverability for common issues. If you are having trouble figuring out how to do something on the forum or why something isn't working as you expect (e.g. How do I upload a photo? Why is my photo upside down? Why can't I send a PM?) please check the Help Guides first. Most issues mentioned in threads or via direct message to me are covered there and using them will result in much faster resolution for you. If the issue isn't covered there, then please don't hesitate to contact me so I can address.

Thanks,

John

Forum offline today (11/2) from 12-12:30pm PT

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 12:46:09 +0000

Duplicating the announcement in red at the top of the forum for those who miss it. I need to take the forum offline today at noon PT to perform a major upgrade to the software. Based on how things went in test, it should be back up by 12:30pm. However, sh*t happens, so keep your fingers crossed. The upgrades are almost exclusively to the back end. Therefore don't expect any changes to functionality or look and feel. If work gets in the way, I'll need to reschedule this upgrade and will update both this thread and the announcement at the top of the forum.

-John

Disable the Topic Rating Feature?

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 13:45:12 +0000

The forum software comes with a topic rating feature at the top right of each thread that allows a viewer to rate the thread on a scale of 1-5 stars. A quick count of the last 60 posts in the General and Technical Forums, shows only 3 threads have a rating. Because it is used so infrequently, it's likely true that those threads with ratings are based on input from a very small group of users. This means a single low rating, whether intentional or inadvertent, will dramatically effect the rating. Also, the sample size is too small to have any real value.

Personally I don't see the benefit of a rating system in a forum like ours which only has a handful of new threads each day, so my preference is to turn it off, but before I do, I thought I'd let folks weigh in via the polling option.

-John

Gallery feed into main page

Thu, 24 Jun 2021 15:12:31 +0000

I don't remember if it's part of standard package or you need to install an add-on but could we have a feed of gallery onto main page to give the gallery more visibility?

I think I might even still have the addon downloaded in the library somewhere from a number of years ago if one is needed.

Here is an example (no personal connection, just the first random forum I found that has it enabled)

There are a number of settings and you can set it to auto rotate through random gallery pictures.

I don't think gallery gets much traffic and it's easier to have random pictures fed than have to navigate through categories myself.

There are other gallery tricks to make it more useful but that's another story.

https://www.monstermuleys.info/xf/

https://xenforo.com/community/threads/media-gallery-breadcrumbs.194287/

Deleting posts is disabled

Fri, 02 Apr 2021 21:47:28 +0000

I discovered an unfortunate feature today in the new forum software. If someone is a thread starter and they delete their initial post, they have the unintended consequence of deleting the entire thread. This means they are deleting other people's posts in addition to their own. Although I don't have a problem with someone deleting their own content, I'm not ok with people deleting the content of others. To prevent this from occurring again, I have disabled the ability to delete your posts, however, you can edit them within 24 hours of posting and remove what you wrote. This effectively achieves the same outcome, but if it isn't sufficient for a specific post, please open a Support Request for further assistance. I have updated the FAQ with this information.

-John

Community Map is live

Sat, 06 Mar 2021 02:18:42 +0000

We've had a number of request in the past to add a member map, but there wasn't an easy way to do this with vBulletin. With the move to Invision, we had an opportunity to address this with the purchase and installation of Community Map. The map is only visible to authenticated users, so casual web surfers won't have access. If you don't wish to expose your exact town, just pick something in the general area.

If you haven't already done so, please go to your Profile and add your brand of Se7en and your location. Both of these fields are exposed on the map, but the map does not use the location field to crate your marker. You must do that manually. A Help Guide is available if you have questions.

BTW the "Use Current Location" option is not visible in the test environment even though the software was installed within an hour of production and is the same version. I'm looking into this, but recommend you don't use that option. Although it may work and be accurate for you, some IP addresses resolve to very different location depending on the location service used. Entering your zip code is the better method.

-John

New Build Thread Forum & general cleanup

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 22:18:40 +0000

I realized we don't have a proper place to store and easily find build threads, so now we do within the Technical section. As stated in the description, the new Build Threads forum is intended for build or rebuild threads focused on your se7en, engine, or transmission. Things like a suspension rebuild or differential rebuild are not as intense, so should continue landing in the General Tech forum.

I've moved over a few build threads to get it started, but if you find others, please report them here and I'll move over the ones that meet the intent of the new forum. I'll also start working on general forum cleanup. I've found other post in the catchall General Sevens forum that belong elsewhere. Going forward, I'll try to stay on top of that and move new threads to the correct location when they come in.

Thanks,

John