Given the increased participation on the article comments (and other factors), Lindsey and I have decided to move forward on an idea we’ve been kicking around for a while now. We’re going to be adding forums to the site.
Up until now, the Viridian Dreams yahoo group has been the primary means of dialogue between us and the readers. However, I’ve always been a little nervous about it. There have been incidents in the past where messages were lost because yahoo’s message server spontaneously decided my mailbox was bouncing messages. (Earthlink gave me 100mb, and it never got over 50% full.) It’s bad enough that I had to add a second address so I’d know if I only got one copy of a message that something was wrong.
A second reason is an old artist’s fall back. Control. I’d rather not have something I value so highly completely at the mercy of people I don’t know. There have been incidents in the past that underline this worry. I hear Kinsfire had his yahoo group deleted without warning after someone with a grudge filed spurious complaints about it. I’ve worked with or within a few large corporations to realize that they don’t always exercise due dilligence if it won’t affect their bottom line.
Now does this mean I will be shutting down the yahoo group? No way. I know some people prefer email, especially if they are taking a break at work. I’ll continue to support both channels – I just don’t want all my eggs in yahoo’s basket.
That said, I understand that registering on yet another forum can be a chore, so I’ll see about offering some… inducements… to people that do so.
On a final note: Lindsey and I have both managed forums in the past, but we both know that things change rapidly on “teh intarweb” and they are always coming out with new and better stuff. Does anyone have an recommendations for forum software? The site doesn’t really pay for itself, so we’re not too keen on software that has a high licensing fee.
I hope everyone is as excited about this as we are, but if you have any concerns, please let me know.
Matthew & Lindsey,
It’s bound to be brought up more than once, but I’ve had fairly extensive experience with phpBB (http://www.phpbb.com/). It’s (obviously) written in PHP, and supports a variety of database back-ends. It’s also conveniently open-source, and as such quite free. I’ve also heard good things about Simple Machine Forum, but have not used it personally.
Also, and I am serious, I don’t know what you pay or what for your hosting, but I might be able to help you out with that a bit. I’m the owner of a co-located server in a Dallas datacenter (I physically own the hardware, but lease the rackspace and bandwidth) that basically doesn’t do very much on the average day. It would be pretty trivial for me to help you out with some lightweight hosting.
If you want any more information, please give me a ring at sinister [at] abyssus [dot] net and I’ll do my best to answer any general hosting questions you might have, or to work out any way I can help.
Your fanfiction is easily worth my time, and I eagerly await your eventual (and from my point of view, inevitable) publishing of your own original works.
Well, I don’t know much about the different software, but have managed and installed PHPBB boards before, which is a popular message board software.
That or Invision Power Board, both have different forum and user management controls. I personally prefer phpBB.
On the plus side, a forum can sort the various threads better. as someone who isn’t into anime, nor have i read Team 8, the plethora of naruto-based threads are a head-ache to sort through on the group.
On the minus side… er… *scratches head*. that’s one more thing for users to register too? meh. I’m not bothered by that either way.
another plus, helps identify the most active members better with the top-ten posters in the last week/altogether.
-Alex.
I, as a nobody in this site, agree. It is much more organized, especially compared to Yahoo groups where everything is a mess. I am not sure if there’s enough sub-forums to justify phpbb, but it’s normally great.
I’m very much interested in this. I think a more structured approach to the yahoo groups would be greatly appreciated, given that my main complaint with those boards is the disorganization, and the lack of desire to track back through my email to find the start of a thread.
My experience is that phpBB is a good tool to use, and popular enough to have a number of third party extensions that can be easily incorporated.
I’ll most certainly be keeping an eye on this one.
I’ll second phpBB is a good place to start. It should have everything you’ll need to put together an awesome forum.
Certainly I feel that anything is better than your current system of blog entry comments. ‘True Colours’ appears only here (right?) and I like to comment, but have no idea what anyone else is saying or what conversation/debate might be going on. Hopefully your new forum will have some sort of e-mail notification/tracking mechanism? E-mail is really the best way to ‘track’ a conversation, even if the mail message simply says “something’s been added, go and look!”.
Further to my and brad’s post…
Members can choose to be notified when a new topic is posted in a particular forum, or a new post in a particular thread.
Not only that, but there is the pm system too, so you can chat directly to another user.
As for security for login’s, there is plenty of modifications on the phpBB website.
http://www.phpBB.com
And those are not the only mods. new tag mods, new features like a points system, shop and bank, and lottery.
There was a pre-modded version of phpBB released awhile ago but i do not suggest that, as apparently it has lots of security holes, which the standard phpBB does not have.
Well ………. I actually spent an hour searching for the True Colors story last night and found many stories with that name on different sites but none with your name …. do you have different names? Can you also post links to the stories ? (For thoses like me tooooo close to 50yrs and that maynot be up with all the different searches available.)
He doesn’t post it anywhere but here.
Another web community to which I belong uses vBulletin to good effect. The owner used a free software for her message board at one point that kind of collapsed on her, but I’m sorry to say I don’t know what program that was. So far we’ve been up on the vBulletin version for five or six years now with little trouble. She shares forum administration with a few community members. I think the software costs around $150, give or take a few dollars. Matthew/Lindsey, I can send you the link to the other message board if you’d just like to take a look at the way they’ve implemented it, but I’d rather not post it here.
Yeah, it’s blog-exclusive. It’s not beta-ed much either, sort of a flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants operation.