Cumulus Support

Friends,
I grew into loving Cumulus. I am pretty smart and can figure things out...but could use some 'experts" to look at my page and offer some suggestions.

Can some of you look at my site below? My nephew aimed the garden hose one morning in December into the rain bucket . Thus the crazy 82"/hr rain rate in the records..I need to fix this and I will...

But, I have seen the "Steel" gauges package..and love it. Can I also use a web counter or some way to see who visits?

BTW, This site is occasionally used on the local TV. CBS 2 and NBC4 have me on their "local" conditions from time to time..

http://www.montclairnjweather.com/index.htm

KNJMONTC5 on Weatherunderground

Peace

I'm not an expert, but just another user of Cumulus. But I'll make suggestions anyway.

1. A question: are you using the Cumulus forecast or the Davis forecast? I think Steve has suggested the Davis forecast is likely to be better.

2. on your gauges page, do the two real-time ones at the bottom work for you? They don't appear to be live on my browser. I chose to delete them on my site for this reason.

3. on your trends page (which I choose to call "graphs" on my site), I, personally, don't like your choice of the 3D option. Others may think it better.

4. pretty as the Cumulus bird is, you could make your site more personalized to your location if you found a picture characteristic of it, sized it and washed it out in Photoshop to something similar to the bird, and swapped it in to use.

Peter A. Stoll
(my site, recently upgraded with solar and UV sensors, is at: Lynx weather site)

OK, the reason why the two gauges (the wind speed and wind direction at the bottom of the gauges page) are not displaying anything is that they cannot find the 'realtime.txt' file that is produced by Cumulus (in almost real time). Thus the lack of date and time information underneath the two gauges!

As for the SteelSeries weather gauges - they can be obtained from this forum thread: SteelSeries Gauges

AlanJr wrote:Can I also use a web counter or some way to see who visits?

Yes. Generally you'll probably want to sign up with some site, then paste code they will provide into your pages. When I went shopping for such service a year or two ago, I chose statcounter.com (opting for the low end free variant). There are many, many choices available.

archae86 wrote:3. on your trends page (which I choose to call "graphs" on my site), I, personally, don't like your choice of the 3D option. Others may think it better.

FWIW, I don't like the 3D graphs either, and in hindsight it was probably a mistake to offer the option. The charting package I use offers the option, and it's very simple on/off switch, so I passed the option on...

I find the 3D graphs distract from the graph and makes it hard to read it. Just my preference.

I use the free version of FlagCounter on my site. Very pleased with its versatility for a freebie. http://s01.flagcounter.com/more/CXd

You can use the edit feature in Cumulus to remove that erroneous rainfall reading.

The 3D look on the graphs is subjective but I do find it difficult to see the maximum and minimum values. That's why I prefer to stay with 2D even though the 3D one looks snazzier.

I've made lots of small changes to my site over 2 years although the core Cumulus design is still there.

Wow...Great responses and I did remove the "3D"...Had no idea I had the option to display..

I will work on fixing the 2 gauges at the bottom..Also, what txt file is it for me to edit to change the 82 " /hr rain rate I have under "records"?

Peace

Update:

I have located the realtime text file in the C:\Cumulus root. But the Sandysoft Cumulus WIKI doesnt mention anything about me using that realtime.txt file

See my picture of the C:\Cumulus root

How do I get the realtime.txt file to be used? I also see the JPG of the "SeaGull". Can I use a picture of the park that this site is near instead of the SeaGull?

Thanks Again..

I FTP'ed into the root of the site and sent the realtime.txt file. Seems to be working now. How do these realtime gauges update? Do they stay in the current direction and speed? Or are they "animated"?

AlanJr wrote:Also, what txt file is it for me to edit to change the 82 " /hr rain rate I have under "records"?

Open Cumulus then Edit - Dayfile.txt. Find the entry for the day in question and scroll over to the right to find the day rainfall amount. There are a total of 3 rainfall columns. You will probably need to amend the values in all three. Click on a fild to edit the value and then press OK to save the change.

AlanJr wrote:I FTP'ed into the root of the site and sent the realtime.txt file. Seems to be working now. How do these realtime gauges update? Do they stay in the current direction and speed? Or are they "animated"?

No it isn't working, you do not manually ftp the realtime.txt file, you need to tick the 'enable realtime' and 'realtime.txt ftp' check boxes in the Cumulus setup.

I will do that and I love those Steel Gauges...

Steve shud use those IMO in Cumulus
http://www.montclairnjweather.com

Update as to Realtime updating. I DO have those boxes "checked"..

See..

hmm, the file isn't updating, I'd try increasing the realtime interval. I think you will have to switch on FTP logging and take a look at that.

No where do i see realtime.txt ever being uploaded in the FTP log....Are you sure I dont do this manually somehow? Baffled

There is a separate realtime ftp log called realtimeftplog.txt did you look in correct file?