A website like ‘My TI-Raleigh SBDU Blog’ doesn’t take care of itself, it needs constant checking and maintaining. And over the last 18 months I’ve neglected mine because, well, you know, things haven’t been quite right for me. But thankfully, I’m in a slightly better place, and I’ve logged back on to see what needs sorting and tidying.
After a quick look around, I found a couple of backend updates hadn’t been happening, some plugins and widgets had messed up and even my website emails had stopped pushing themselves through to me. It was certainly starting to get a bit messy behind the scenes but I think I’ve caught it just in time. I really didn’t want 11 years of hard work to fall apart and disappear.
So a touch of my own user maintenance is bringing the site back under control. I’ve also taken the opportunity to add more robust email integration and gone further, and added a new form to capture your own suggestions for blog posts.
New Feature – Blog Post Suggestions
Yeah you read that right. I’m opening up my blog a little and asking for reader’s blog post suggestions. I’ve always just written about my own bikes and what I found out while researching them. But I’m sure there are some topics or areas of SBDU bikes that I haven’t covered yet.
So rather than me just posting about my own bikes, what feature of SBDU bikes would you want to know about?
Make a suggestion and it might just appear on the blog! That new form can be found here.
Emails
I knew that I had taken my eye off the ball with regards to responding to the emails I was receiving. The motivation just wasn’t there to check and answer them. But what I didn’t know was that the contact form on my website had stopped functioning properly and messages being sent to me towards the end of last year and early this year weren’t coming through. I pride myself on giving people advise, and have been hard on myself for not answering messages. And I’m even more disappointed that some messages just didn’t get through at all. I’m really sorry to anyone who spent their time writing to me but who haven’t had a reply.
All New Email Setup
It will all look pretty much the same on the face of it, but I’ve revamped everything behind the scenes that deal with my website contacts. Completely new plugins, forms and SMTP handling should mean that all your contacts come through safely.
I’ve even added a file upload option to the contact form which I couldn’t do previously. So you should be able to send an initial 3 images when you first get in touch with me.
And those emails and requests for information are already coming through and receiving replies. I’ve just replied to a contact in the USA who is considering buying an SBDU. Hopefully they can secure the bike as it looked like a great example. I even guessed the SBDU frame number to within 60 numbers based on it’s frame features (that’s not bad considering there were almost 10,000 SB numbered bikes!)
Don’t Forget
On the subject of what SBDU information is available out there, I see there are still a few throughout internetland that like to give firm opinions but seemingly only based on assumptions. I’ve lifted the lid and dipped my toes into the murky world of social media again for a few weeks and just from skirting around the edges of different pages and forums, I can see this happening. I’ve read comments and wonder where they came from as they just aren’t correct.
This is a recent message, one of the emails that messed up and that I didn’t realise had been sent to me. I’ve removed names but the sender will probably recognise it. They sum up my site perfectly.
“There seems to be a upsurge in interest in top-end Raleigh bikes, leading to some incorrect or misleading information about SBDU bikes on the internet. Thankfully we can all use your blog as a yardstick to gain the correct details.”
In the last two weeks, I’ve seen bikes with wrong Reynolds tubing transfers, repaired and repainted frames, renovated bikes declared as original and I’ve even seen renovated frames with upside down seat stay caps.
So if you want to know what’s what in the world of SBDU, please GET IN TOUCH!
Hello Neil,
I have followed your blog for some time (though admittedly not overly closely) and really enjoy it. I was sad to hear about your recent problems but happy to now know you are on the mend. As a bit of background, I own one SBDU frame (actually a complete bike) and have had it from new. I had another, which unfortunately died many years ago. The former is a 753 Low Profile (SB8833) and the latter a 531SL (SB5465). One particular area of interest for me is information on the Dynaflite frames. I very nearly bought one when I had SB5465 built, but decided it was outside my budget (I was only 18 at the time). I had some correspondence with Gerald O’Donovan when selecting a frame (I have searched high and low but can’t find the letters) and it was notable that he told me directly that Dynaflite tubing was not developed for aerodynamic reasons, but (in his words) ‘to cope with the cobbles of Belgium’. Being full of the confidence of youth I told him that it seemed a stupid name to give to a tubeset that was not intended to convey aerodynamic performance, to which he replied that he wasn’t in the game of marketing! Interesting I think given that everyone who knows of the stuff believes it to have been an ‘aero’ tubeset, as was the fad at the time. I won’t ramble on any longer.
Best Wishes
Neville Jackson