[Discussion-topic] a new, one-stop-website for maggots! (we're underway)

[AH]

Allright people, listen up! I've had this conversation with Roo and we thought up a plan, a plan that could make us all very happy puppies.

Take a few minutes to think about how your weblife looks like. If it's anything like ours, you were posting on the powderboard, uploading and looking at pictures from biglines, checking movies from eengoedidee.nl and every once in a while using the auto-thumbnail-creator ( ).

But now this has all changed!

Biglines started branding their images, eengoedidee.nl is asking for a password, making direct linking impossible and the powderboard is being jurked around by some corporate dicks.

The question is, what can we do? At the moment, nothing! One of the problems we're facing right now is about control. We don't have any of it! And that could change!

The idea is to create a site, for maggots, by maggots, that combines everything we used to do on seperate sites, but now on 1 site! Take 10 seconds to realize what this means.

* All the porn you can imagine, just one click away
* All the stoke you can imagine on a well organized, feature-rich, bulletinboard, which is frequently backed up.
* All the latest news of the industry by the people that are in the know.
* Customized user-pages : with one page, you'd access everything, your favorite bookmarked topics, a buddy list, an overview of the newly uploaded movies/images, etc, etc
* Control, with a couple of maggots 'in charge', something like a voting system would be a great way to make sure everyones voice is heard. No more corporate dicks making decisions everyone hates.
* All the room we need for creating special pages (for summits et al).
* no more popups/banners, ever!
* the latest links to ebay-deals containing the words 'fat-ski' 'powder' etc

Etcetera.. There's no limit of what we can achieve through this. Of course, renting a big server has a price, but with the connections we have it should be a low one. My suggestion is some sort of fee to not only take care of the hosting-costs, but also do some good for skiing. I'd personally easily pay 2 bucks a year for a server that would provide me with these features. And if we´d have money to spare, we could give it to charity and make a difference.

Primedia won't kill us, it´s only gonna make us stronger!
=============================================

So what do we need?

Overall
* Control, knowing that our history won't be some day deleted. The chance to get our stuff backed up, so that in the unlikely event of a crash, we've got our threads backed up.

Tech
* webserver that supports PHP/Mysql
* huge disk for storing porn
* mysql database of our own
* bandwidth, lots of bandwidth

App
* Forumsoftware that is free, scalable and usable with other modules (www.phpbb.com)
* upload-scripts for both movies and pictures (prolly need to be custom made, based upon free scripts)
* some sort of cms-script, that enables the rapid design of extra pages (eg. summit-pages) with their own 'owners'

People

AH - Webprogrammer
ONS - Webprogrammer / techsupport

Furthermore, we need some people to get this thing on the road. Please let me know if you're interested to help out and what your designated skill is.

[ October 03, 2003: Message edited by: AH ]

[AH]

Bump for the morning crew...

[Cornholio]

If you build it, and it's good, they (we) will come...

[optics]

I like it.

[summit]

Make it an optional pay site. You need a critical mass of users to make it work. If you make everyone pay, even just $2, you will lost 90% of your potential users. Because the price is too high? NO! Because people are lazy tards who don't want to go through the rigamorole to pay.

Give paying users perks... graphical avatars... picture posting space... the prestige of being a supporter... etc.

This model has been successfully used by other boards.... usefilm.com and ar15.com come readily to mind.

[FreakofSnow]

Liking the ideas Bart, lets heare more.

[altagirl]

Sounds like Dirtrider.net You can read posts and post plain old text messages for free. You want to upload pictures or do searches or be able to PM people - you pay a membership fee. And guess what? The site actually freaking works...

[AH]

Well, let's start by saing this shouldn't be my idea. I'm only a shorttime maggot, compared to others, but the community feel has strongly appealed to me. That's the reason that I think we should be exploring our options. Most of all I think our options should be led by the fact that we want to stay together, and not be scattered all over the internet.

I can think of many other things we could be doing, but i'd rather have it that other maggots came out and spoke up about whay they want. This is our chance to make the site we really want. The sky is the limit, as long as we work together on this.

So let's hear it! What should a 'free' site offer? What should a paid site offer over the free version? Where do we draw the line? What's the kind of money we're talking about? What does everyone want? I can think of vids, stills and a forum, but we've also got writers amongst us, who might even deserve their own space..

[AH]

Originally posted by altagirl:
<STRONG>Sounds like Dirtrider.net You can read posts and post plain old text messages for free. You want to upload pictures or do searches or be able to PM people - you pay a membership fee. And guess what? The site actually freaking works...</STRONG>

Could you tell me some more about that? Does it offer personalized pages (I'd like some sort of page where all your prefered threads, images, links, etc is together)? Do you know who much users it has and what the pct of paying users is?

[brownmonkey]

Think about it - what needs to happen to make this work?

Snappy URL - Roo suggested Chowdermag.com...

Webspace / Bandwidth for Forum - how much per month? I see good hosts with all the features we would need (1Gb space / 40,000Mb/Month bandwidth) for about £20 per month.

The UBB Bulletin engine is cheap and effective.

That's all we need to get started, and build the community - the rest of the value add pieces can follow as soon as we get them online.


I agree with making the cost voluntary - we need to get enough of a community together to make the site work. I think most of the regulars wouldn't mind throwing in a couple of bucks if the site is worth it, but that will follow based on how good it is.

I'm happy to pony up some of the cash to get this started...

[EPSkis]

Thumbs up on the idea. We have enough experience among the Collective to get this thing off the ground..

Once again - I'll volunteer my design and maintenance knowledge.

I may actually be able to speak to someone about hosting a site using this and PM as an example...

I'll touch base later on with any details. Oh, and who's the contact?

[AH]

Originally posted by brownmonkey:
<STRONG>Think about it - what needs to happen to make this work?

Snappy URL - Roo suggested Chowdermag.com...

Webspace / Bandwidth for Forum - how much per month? I see good hosts with all the features we would need (1Gb space / 40,000Mb/Month bandwidth) for about £20 per month.

Bandwidth for a forum isn't that much, but I increases, rather rapidly, when we start exchanging movies/pictures. Besides that, I'd rather pay a couple of bucks more for a decent hoster (good backups, low downtime, good service, etc) than take my chances with a cheap one.

The UBB Bulletin engine is cheap and effective.

True, but there's better ones, which are completely free and offer more scalability (which we're gonna need if we're expanding in steps).

That's all we need to get started, and build the community - the rest of the value add pieces can follow as soon as we get them online.

The community is allready in place, we just need to steer it somewhere

I agree with making the cost voluntary - we need to get enough of a community together to make the site work. I think most of the regulars wouldn't mind throwing in a couple of bucks if the site is worth it, but that will follow based on how good it is.

I'm happy to pony up some of the cash to get this started...</STRONG>

Ok, cool But here's a problem, who's gonna lead this bunch? I'm all for democracy, but there need to be people in charge. My guess would be to get a group of some well respected oldschool maggots together..

Furthermore, I'd be more than happy to work on the tech-side of the site, with some help.

[Dexter Rutecki]

I'm not too smaht on computer issues, but can all of the above be accomplished here? Or would cost to TGR be prohibitive?
ONS?

[ October 02, 2003: Message edited by: Dexter Rutecki ]

[AH]

Originally posted by EPSkis:
I may actually be able to speak to someone about hosting a site using this and PM as an example...

I'll touch base later on with any details. Oh, and who's the contact?[/QB]

If you need a contact, my mail is bart [at] skizone [dot] nl, I'll make sure everything will be posted here. (if needed, you can show em the new design i'm working on for my own site, www.skizone.nl/forum/index_new.php)

[ October 02, 2003: Message edited by: AH ]

[Karl Stall]

I'll throw a few bucks in, but I ain't got no computer skilz other than my general spelling prowess.

I want an email address at the new site - that would be cool.

Otherwise, this place is fine and Owens is already our leader and, on top if it, he listens!

[Mountainman]

Those are some great ideas.i'd pay. don't forget a chat for the few of us that go in it though.

anybody still have powder as their homepage? im still afraid to let go of it

[altagirl]

Dirtrider has almost 31,000 members. Not sure about what percentage are paying members. I'd say we could contact their webmaster guy to ask about details, but they're in the middle of Dirt Week - which is like our summits x10. (Free demo bikes from Yamaha and KTM, sweet giveaways, organized races and events...)

Here's the link to their subscription/membership options:
http://dirtrider.net/members/subscribe.html

You get more benefits the more you pay. I thought it was a little expensive, but it's been worth it.

[AH]

Originally posted by Karl Stall:
I want an email address at the new site - that would be cool.

Otherwise, this place is fine and Owens is already our leader and, on top if it, he listens!
[/QB]

Email-adresses are cool.. something to think about. And yes, this place is fine, Owens rules, but this place has limited options, because it's the TGR-site and not the Maggot-site. That's exactly the reason why I would realy like to have owens on board on this, btw. I don't want to compete with tgr, I just want to create something complete that will last, for a long time..

[ October 02, 2003: Message edited by: AH ]

[brownmonkey]

Ok, cool But here's a problem, who's gonna lead this bunch? I'm all for democracy, but there need to be people in charge. My guess would be to get a group of some well respected oldschool maggots together..

Absolutely - I've been lurking in the sidelines at the PM forum for over a year, occasionaly posting, but we need a few of the senior maggots to make this a winner.

The biggest problem I can see is that this will take time to get up and running, and in that time, the community might have split up, or found a home somewhere else (or settled here).

[brownmonkey]

One thing - I think we need to avoid this colour scheme. I feel sick

[summit]

Originally posted by Dexter Rutecki:
<STRONG>I'm not to smaht on computer issues, but can all of the above be accomplished here? Or would cost to TGR be prohibitive?
ONS?</STRONG>

I like the idea of a new site... but its a big endevour and woudl take a lot of time to build up and a lot of time to make run. I think Dexter has a point that we should see what we can do with what we already have before we go out on a new site. I'm not totally clear on what all cannot be done here that we would otherwise want.

But what do I know? I am brand new to the TGR forum as it is so don't listen to me (or else!)

As to the pay at will site idea, it has been implimented on large scale sites like AR15.com (the data line to which seems to have temporarily lost a fight with a backhoe, they have at least 4 domain names) and the other dirt biking site mention. Both have 10s of thousands of users. AR15 at least has 2 or 3 levels of paying membership each offering more features and prestige. It has also been implimented on small sites like usefilm.com (few hundred users) and others where hte payment and benefits are minimal and don't always offset the operational costs, but certainly help keep them down.

[AH]

Originally posted by brownmonkey:
Absolutely - I've been lurking in the sidelines at the PM forum for over a year, occasionaly posting, but we need a few of the senior maggots to make this a winner.

Any volunteers? Splat?

The biggest problem I can see is that this will take time to get up and running, and in that time, the community might have split up, or found a home somewhere else (or settled here).

True, we shouldn't take too much time deciding on irrelevant stuff.

I'd like some opinions from people : Given the current situation with Primedia and given the idea as posted in this topic, do you think the general idea will be feasible?

If so, what's the suggestion on the url?

[trainnvain]

Originally posted by brownmonkey:
<STRONG>One thing - I think we need to avoid this colour scheme. I feel sick </STRONG>

Is that what it is? I just thought I was Really hung over (which could be the case too).

[funkendrenchman]

This sounds like a great idea, but i have a question - how are the JONGS going to find our site? Eventually, we are going to need new people to join our community. Where could we advertise it so new people would actually go there?

[optics]

I think the way to go is freestanding. Split things up more, it'd be tough to not have a separate forum for techtalk/etc., have biglinesesque pic upload for payers, features (trip reports ala Rev, gear reviews ala Spatters...)

Who would run it? Just get it set up, let it run itself. Judging by the number of maggots who run their own sites, it wouldn't be a problem to get a few spare hours donated tot the cause. Maintenance only did harm over yonder.

I like the idea of free viewing, small (one-time) fee to upload, if you want instants, all that.

Summitco- your statement that having to go through the hassle of paying would keep people away shows how ridiculously unfamiliar you are with this/that community.

changeforanickel.com is unregistered, btw.