Forum2pt0 Is Back

Forum2pt0

I’ve been giving the forum idea some second thoughts and have decided to bring them back online, right were we left off. With my new interest in WordPress, I have created an entire section in the forums dedicated to various aspects of the open source project hoping that this will help build an awesome community of WordPress users. I’ve since replaced the link to the forum to the top navigation bar of the blog. If you don’t feel like moving your mouse that much, you can check out the forums here.

I’ve also created a child forum for WordPress weekly so be sure to check out the forums again and lets see if we can’t make this forum rock the house.

Forum2pt0 Launches And More

Forum2pt0 Header

First off, how was your Thanksgiving? Mine turned out great if you take out the dangerous driving conditions that developed. Some lake effect snow formed over Lake Erie and as I was traveling through the snow belt on the turnpike, things became dicey at times but I managed to bring everyone home including myself, in one piece.

As for the blog. Sorry I haven’t been doing my regular rounds of postings. This holiday week has screwed me up in terms of getting things done. I am hoping that starting Monday, I can get back on track and start delivering the content you guys want. However, I did manage to get one thing done, that being the forum.

As mentioned in a previous post, I have made the switch from PHPBB to VBulletin forum software. VBulletin in my eyes, is worth every dollar. It’s a powerhouse of forum software that I hope you guys will enjoy as much as I will. At any rate, I managed to find a somewhat related forum theme that looked good called RedandBlack developed by GFXStyles.com. I’ve also installed a few plugins such as the Top 5 Stats plugin which highlights Top Statistical areas of the forum near the top to help keep us all abreast as to what’s happening on the forum. I’ve also installed a GIVE THANKS plugin. If you have any forum experience what so ever, you’ll know that people make forum posts all the time that only contain the text THANKS or THANK YOU. Instead of creating a post or replying with a thank you, you can click the Thanks button which will thank the user for you. This will help keep the forum posts on topic and should aid in keeping the discussion clean.

Screenshot Of The Forums

Other features of this forum include the Subscription options. As a registered member of Forum2pt0, you’ll have the ability to subscribe via email in a multitude of ways. For instance, you can subscribe to a particular post, to a particular thread, to a particular forum topic, or to the entire forum. Alternatively, if you want to subscribe to the entire forum via RSS to keep tabs on new posts, click on the following link and add it to your FeedReader.

I’m also working on installing a mod that let’s you add your own blog’s RSS feed as a part of your profile. This will display a link to your last blog post that is shown to the public on every post you make. If I can successfully install this mod, I’ll be sure to remove the “NoFollow” attribute.

The forum currently covers the broad topics of Blogging, Technology, Jeffro2pt0.com and general Chit Chat.

Over time, I’ll be adding bits and pieces to the forum such as an arcade. What’s a forum without an arcade? Overall, the browsing and posting user experience on this forum is leaps ahead of my previous PHPBB forum. I hope you’ll agree as you check out Forum2pt0 – A Forum About Stuff and register your own account. Be sure to stop by the Feedback Section of the forums and let me know what you think.

The Switch To vBulletin

Vbulletin Logo
Don’t mind the dust that is being kicked up by the work I’m doing to the forum. Actually, I wanted to let everyone know that I have decided to plunk down $85.00 and purchased a one year lease on vBulletin. I gave PHPBB a shot and although they have made leaps and strides over version 2, I can’t help but feel how spoiled I was when I managed a forum that was powered by Vbulletin. In my honest opinion, Vbulletin is worth every penny. It’s more user friendly, is packed with power and punch right out of the box, and provides an excellent framework for growth. Best of all, most of the things I want to use in forum software is already built into Vbulletin. I don’t have to spend every waking moment of the day installing 100 mods in order to get the functionality that I need.

Everything that was on the PHPBB forum install is now gone. We are starting over from scratch but this is as good a reason as any to do so. I have experience with Vbulletin and I know what it’s capable of. It might take me a few days to get everything the way I want before I re-launch the forums but it’s something worth waiting for.

Some Ideas I Had – Feedback Needed

Some Ideas I Had I just wanted to pass along some ideas I had concerning this site. Your feedback to these ideas or perhaps some of your own would be highly appreciated. The first idea is, creating a live chat area where visitors of this site can get together to chat about the various topics this site covers.

The chat room could be available 24/7 or I could schedule chats which would occur at a specific date and time. I was going to give this a try tonight using Meebo, but I experienced an enormous amount of problems.

The second idea is attaching a forum to the site. The forum would contain sections that would cover the various topics covered on this site. It would open up yet another, community avenue for this site where like minded individuals can get together and talk about what’s going on. I’m not sure if this site has enough traffic, or if the readers of this site would have any interest in becoming a participating member of the forum, so do me a favor and let me know if you like the idea.

If I decided to attach forum software to this site, I would us Vbulletin. Vbulletin is still the best forum software in my opinion and I have a few years of experience using it. I know of an Ajax powered shoutbox which could be used by the forum members as a chatroom, which would solve idea #1. The only problem with using Vbulletin is the price. It currently costs $85.00 for a lease of one year. I’d be willing to chip in $20.00 towards the price, would anyone else be willing to donate towards the forum? If so, let me know.

Those are the ideas I had floating around in my head and I figured I’d toss them out here to see if there were any takers.