Hi Johnny, no problem, I really appreciate the feedback. Yeah, I wish there was a feasible way to improve this system. FYI, the Downloads system is a 3rd party mod to vBulletin, and the guy who created it no longer supports it, so when it breaks, it's me who has to jury rig it
If I could get a good developer to take the existing system, make some improvements to it, I would seriously consider starting over. But I have not found anyone to do it, for hire or otherwise.
vBulletin is a good forum system, and it only costs a couple hundred dollars, so I have been really happy with the investment. The vB devs keep making new versions, but they really should assign someone to keep working on vB3, and add more stuff like this downloads, and an awards system, and more anti spam... but they don't.
The other limitation, the mods are created by a hundred different guys and uploaded by them, along with a dozen of other guys who help out. I put together a How To with instructions on categories but there are still some files in the wrong place, or some mods that either work for more than one sim, or are mislabeled...
I will see about that search improvement, maybe there is something we can do with that.
thanks, man!
Neal