The other thing I didn't think about until now that you should take into consideration (especially before telling me my board is 'newbish') is that I can't do much with these forums. You're not able to make any sub-forums. Heack, you can't even have an avatar gallery. You can't upload custom skins. I've yet to figure out how to be able to delete a post made by someone if it's put in the wrong forum. So if you think it's newbish, even after all that, then you're being way too harsh. I can't pay for this awesome message board with all these perfect features. This is the best I can do with the board, and if you plan on joining, you'll have to accept that. You'll have to be patient because the board is -still new- and we're trying to do what we can to make people want to join by offering as much as possible. If that means a lot of forums, fine. It only looks so crowded because we can't make sub-forums. It allows you to do stickies, but there'd be almost no point in doing so since people have already posted some things that would just end up getting deleted.
Compared to most message boards, this board is great. Considering the lack of things we can do with it, I'd say it's not even close to 'newbish'. I hope you take this into consideration and are willing to be patient as we try to give the board a layout that will work and make people happy. ezBoard isn't much better (the board was there before we moved to phpBB) than this, so...Unless you can come up with a free message board host that's somewhere between ezBoard and phpBB, this is what we're stuck with because I don't want to have to make any big moves to another board unless absolutely necissary.
There's no need to get defensive. You asked for - and recieved - critiques. If they sound at all harsh or argumentive, that's something you do have to get used to at TRF.
But that's not the point. The point is you don't need that number of forums - whether or not they're subforums is irrelevent. I already gave you examples of forums you don't need - I'm not going to repeat myself. But trust me, you have way to many forums.
You can also upgrade, though this version of phpBB is in beta testing.
And you don't need to. TRF was on ezboard for the longest time. And while we did pay for it, the majority of features remained unused. The base of TRF right now could be reconstructed on a free ezboard with a single change - somewhere new to store the planet list and other stickied topics (since free ezboard doesn't have sticky topics).
phpBB is, for a free forum, an incredibly powerful tool. But it is not features that make a good board; it's the board.
You. Aren't. Listening.
YOU DO NOT NEED ALL THOSE FORUMS. SUB FORUMS OR NO, THEY ARE UNNECESSARY.
And? It's for the betterment of the board! Do what needs to be done. Saying something has "no point" because you might lose some posts is ludicrous. I'm not talking about deleting forums, anyway. I'm talking about combining them. You can still offer a lot with fewer forums - in fact you'll offer more to your users.
I can tell you right now that I will never join a board with to many forums and not enough users. It takes to much energy to look through all 50 forums for an interesting thread. When I log onto TRF, I check three forums - Rebel Cafe, OOC, and the Battlegrounds. When I log onto TNO's board, I check two forums.
If I were to log onto your board, I would have to check 20, 30 forums to cover everything. I'm not going to do that. Very few users are going to. That's why no one is posting - the posts are to spread out, and no one wants to take the time to find and read them.
But if you're not going to take our advice, there's really nothing we can do for you.
phpBB supports custom skins, multiple skins, etc, I've done many a phpBB skin in the past. Sub-forums can be created via the subforum hack linked to above. Avatar gallery can be added with a hack, if it's not in there already. Been a while since I used phpBB. Check phpBB.com, and browse their hack database, there's a lot of good stuff in there.
Or, if you're not interested in hacking the board, you could poke around and get the free version of IPB.
PS: If you think setting up ~56 forums is hard work, TRF is currently clocking in at 150+ forums, when you add all the forums the various groups have. Then there's the styles, the permissions system, the rules, and general putt putt work, there are countless man hours in this board.
Message boards are all about work for the admin, if you want it to be successful.
Now to answer your question, no, I'm not interested. No time, no interest in doing anything new, stuff like that.
No. phpBB for free...http://www.phpbbforfree.com ...Does not allow you to upload custom skins; I posted about it on their help forum and they said they don't allow you to upload custom skins. The link you gave is something you have to be able to download, and you most likely need to know how to do web editing and have enough knowledge of it it know what you're doing. I know general stuff but not nearly enough to be useful. It's been years since I've used HTML, and even then, all I know is basic stuff. I've already tried downloading it and it didn't work. You are not seeing the way they the control panel set up; if it were set up like ezBoard where you can just edit everything and move everything around and all that much easier, then it'd be easier to do. But what you're talking about basically involves deleting a bunch of things because you pretty much can't move them up without deleting them. I don't even know how to hack, so I can't do that. As I've already said, I don't want to have to switch servers unless I absolutely have to because I've already moved everything once. How can you say that you won't join a board with too little users? If you don't join them, you won't be able to help get members. If you tell people you're a member and give them a link, they may check it out and join. Thats one of the ways you get members. I. Didn't. Say. I. Wasn't. Going. To. Take. Your. Advice. I'm talking about it with my other admins, or at least one of them because she's really the only one who has a lot of experience with designing web pages and setting up message boards, and we are trying to decide what to do about it, so don't assume that I'm not taking your advice. I think once she gets the web page up, it will be a lot less crowded. Hopefully by then it'll be a lot more active and people won't be so afraid to post. I don't think it has as much to do with the amount of forums as they're too lazy or they just don't know what to post. That's why I wanted members such as you to help get it going because I had a feeling you'd post a lot and help encourage others to post if they weren't already.
-Shrug- maybe when the board is organized better and we have a site, you'll change your mind. Otherwise, I really don't want to have a war with you.
By the way, I didn't ask for a critique. I gave you the link, told you what it was for, and said we needed more members and that we're -still working on it-. Like I said, if I wanted a critique, I'd say "hey, why don't you guys check out my Star Wars stories?" but I didn't.
I don't want to make any enemies on this board without hardly being a member yet, so can we please change the subject?
And you don't think I've put a lot of work into this board? Give me a break. You try coming up with everything you want to offer, setting the forums up, then writing out the rules and coming up with resources to use for things for writing and picture prompts and see how long it takes you. It's not a five minute job.
Mystery, if everyone is throwing in their two cents it's probably because you seem nice and they really would not like to see your board fail.
All in all, I hope it's a success.
Perhaps you should try your RL friends and familiy and see if they are willing to help widen your board-base membership. Then expand to online friends with similar interests. Of course, there's a good chance your friends and familiy will think you weird, a nerd or SW freak..:b
Posting anything on this board and not thinking it'll be critiqued is being naive. Shoot, doing that on ANY board is. People are going to comment whether you ask for it or not, especially at TRF. We're FULL of opinions. But until you step back, stop rolling your eyes and saying 'whatever', you won't realize these guys are just trying to be helpful, and in turn your going to keep having membership problems. You don't need to go any further than this thread right here to run into some of the best role playing people your going to find anywhere on the net. They gave you sound advise.
Very few people joining a board want to be the first person to post in a section, unless their a butthead who just likes to post things that say "first post! first post! I rulz!". Their unsure whether they should, after all, no one else has posted before them. While 12 members is a good number for a beginning group, it's no where near an amount of people who need that many forums. Unless everyone of your members post in each forum at least once a day, anyone browsing is going to think you have very little activity even if you don't. And no one will just randomly join a board they think is inactive.
You've got interesting ideas and an interesting concept for your board. But your making plans for a site that needs a lot of people to make it work. Right now, you don't have that many people. I've seen it happen a lot. The members you do have will dwindle off because they feel they can't provide the activity level your wanting. They'll feel guilty and leave. Unless their close personal friends, and then you can guilt trip them into not leaving. I'm assuming that's not the type of group you want.
Stop trying to drive a luxury yacht before you've learned to handle a dingy....
I'd like to see it not fail either. But with the way things seem to be going, it doesn't seem all that likely, and as I've said, I haven't had the best of luck with actually keeping a board active for a number of months without it somehow dying...Whether someone stops coming online or is too busy or whatever excuse they come up with. It'll be interesting to see how it goes once my second semester of college starts up next week.
As for getting my friends and family to join...
1) None of them besides me are Star Wars geeks. My dad likes Star Trek and makes fun of Star Wars. My dad hated Episode 2 and said that the script was fifth grade work. He said -I- could write better than that, and that's comparing me to a director who CREATED Star Wars in the first place and has way more experience in writing than me. 2) ....They're computer illeterate. They barely know how to type, and wouldn't last long posting on the message boards. 3) I don't trust them saying something stupid to my online friends...Which HAS happened, thanks to my dad. Because of some chick thinking I dated some...guy I didn't even know from the internet, he thought I had an online boy friend. 4)...I'd be much better off just starting it out slow and hoping to build the members up to a good amount than having friends and family join. 5) None of them would actually remember to post because they don't spend that much time on the net.
So, I'm pretty much stuck waiting patiently for the board to become active.
Why do you think I'm trying to get people from here to join? :p They obviously have the experience in running their own boards and RP, which I need, ESPECIALLY for Star Wars RP. There are very few Star Wars RPers at the board at the moment, which is why I posted about it here in the first place. I figured that if I got some of you to join, especially since you guys seem so outgoing and would probably be some of the first people to post, then others would see that the board really isn't all that inactive and would start posting on their own. I don't think it's so much being afraid to post, because they've already started to so...One person posted a story...Actually, a few people did...I think it's more that they're just being slow in posting and it's not in their memories to remember to see what new posts there are.
I'm a member of jedi.net, and I received an offer from there that is also a member of my board (though she hasn't been very active lately because of real life stuff). She has her own...web site hosting thing and a thing where she can make a message board for me to use as the board for the Q&S. I have to ask her a few questons about it and see what one of the other admin at my board says, but there's a chance that we'll probably be taking her offer, which means the board will be a LOT more organized because well be starting over. We were planning on deleting all of the forums on the current board anyway because it'd give us a chance to go over the rules and different sections that we want to offer that we don't already and stuff, and she saw the email I had sent out to members and that's why she offered. The good thing about it is that she's the one who'd be paying for it and not me.
So...Basically, I'll let you guys know when the new board is made, if we go through with it, and will give you a link to that and the we site that the other admin is making...I think for now, we're going to use the current board until everything can be figured out and stuff, so...If you want to join the current board and eventually join the new board (I promise it won't be as disorganized as the current one once we're through with the new one if we go through with it), please do so, and that way you'll get updates on what's happening with it and you guys can give it a second chance. The offer is open at any time for anyone to join the current one. If you'd rather wait and see how the new one comes out, that's fine.
