Over the past few days I have revisited my research on forum software. My top picks was vBulletin and IP.Board for my forum. While people totally love vb 3.8 the latest release vb4 has far too many bugs for a non-techie no budget having person like me to spend my money on and then have to deal with the bugs. IP.Board is cheaper and more user friendly. So I went with the user friendly and budget friendly forum software.
After buying IP.Board I realize there are some great things I could do with the addons as well. So I bought IP.Blog and IP.Gallery. I contacted a designer/coder that specialize in Invision Power products such as IP.Board, IP.Blog, IP.Gallery, and etc. He gave me a quote on coding my forum to look like my site and I sent back a couple of questions regrading integrating aweber so when users sign up they are added to the newsletter and single log on for both my site and forum. Still waiting on a reply for that.
Until then I have been working on simple stuff like making the forums, added a few posts to see how it looks, added events to the calendar to see how that works and look, and added a shoutbox (mini chat room). I also created a blog and made a blog post to see how that looks.
I also seen an awesome video gallery addon that allows users to embed their youtube videos and others can comment on it. I think it would be great for users trying to help each other better their poker skills. I’m sure I will be active helping users become better limit holdem players and hopefully I can become a better pot limit omaha player.
I know its well known its hard to convert forum members into players. However, I will be running promotions that reward players for being active forum members, active bloggers, and since it’s a rakeback site they already rewarded for playing poker. Some of the promotions I have seen done while others I never seen done so it should be a ton of fun and a learning experience. I’m sure you can see the reasons why I want members active playing poker, posting in the forums, posting blog posts, uploading pictures, and videos.
I was thinking of adding the forum in 3 months or so. However, my players talk to me about it and I got to thinking. If I am going to build a community. The forum should be there from the very beginning. Anyways, I thought I’d update you all on what I been up too. As soon as the forum design is up, I will surely link to it or post a screenshot of it. Cheers.
as well.
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I’ve always been impressed with anybody that can manage a successful forum. Huge amount of man hours keeping on top of so much user generated content man.
Best of luck with it, I’ve been keeping track on your Poker stuff and the amount of effort you’re putting into your sites deserves real success.