As most of you know ezBoard is switching to a new system they call "Yuku." In my opinion Yuku looks too much like MySpace and we just won't be taken seriously be authors if we're using a childish forum system.
I've recently met an incredible web designer who also owns his own hosting company. He is capable of creating for us an advanced PHP forum that would have far more features, control and security than our current ezBoard system.
Here are a few forums he created:
www.fishingterritory.com
Take a look at all the features we currently don't enjoy. We can have subforums or forums within forums. This would come in handy for archived book discussions. Instead of having 35 forums stacked on top of one another we would have one forum called "Archived Book Discussions" and then 35 subforums.
Notice at the bottom we can post pictures. Imagine having that section full of member photos or book cover images or whatever. It is simply a cool feature.
We can have Google AdSense ads in the sidebar, which means we can earn money to help pay for all the upgrades. This obviously doesn't impact you guys directly, but BookTalk can improve if we have ad revenue. This goes without saying.
Notice that there is a chatroom - although you need a password to enter the one on this particular forum. We could still have a chatroom.
But here is the problem...
What do we do with our current forums?
There is a GOOD chance that all posts from the current forum can be moved over into the new forum. We're discussing this right now.
But in the event that this isn't possible what should we do? Is having a new forum worth losing everything people have posted for the past 5 years? This is a tough call.
We wouldn't have to lose anything though as ezBoard isn't going away. One idea would be to create brand new PHP forums and then keep a link at the top to our old ezBoard forum. Would this be acceptable? I'd love feedback.
Here is another forum example:
www.performancepoultry.com/forums/index.php
I've recently met an incredible web designer who also owns his own hosting company. He is capable of creating for us an advanced PHP forum that would have far more features, control and security than our current ezBoard system.
Here are a few forums he created:
www.fishingterritory.com
Take a look at all the features we currently don't enjoy. We can have subforums or forums within forums. This would come in handy for archived book discussions. Instead of having 35 forums stacked on top of one another we would have one forum called "Archived Book Discussions" and then 35 subforums.
Notice at the bottom we can post pictures. Imagine having that section full of member photos or book cover images or whatever. It is simply a cool feature.
We can have Google AdSense ads in the sidebar, which means we can earn money to help pay for all the upgrades. This obviously doesn't impact you guys directly, but BookTalk can improve if we have ad revenue. This goes without saying.
Notice that there is a chatroom - although you need a password to enter the one on this particular forum. We could still have a chatroom.
But here is the problem...
What do we do with our current forums?
There is a GOOD chance that all posts from the current forum can be moved over into the new forum. We're discussing this right now.
But in the event that this isn't possible what should we do? Is having a new forum worth losing everything people have posted for the past 5 years? This is a tough call.
We wouldn't have to lose anything though as ezBoard isn't going away. One idea would be to create brand new PHP forums and then keep a link at the top to our old ezBoard forum. Would this be acceptable? I'd love feedback.
Here is another forum example:
www.performancepoultry.com/forums/index.php
