How about linking the CFive and Z06 forums together?
1. Start by creating a cross site search feature.
2. Add a common logon for both sites.
I think that would increase the usage of both sites and would be good for your business, the vendors and the users.
It is great having a forum dedicated to the Z06, but that specialization also severely limits your customer base and potential. By linking the two together, I think you would have the best of both worlds and would be better able to compete against the "other" forum.
Oh yeah, and I'm ready to post my power steering fluid flush techniques for the C4 somewhere when your ready
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Pat - Sig forcibly restrained by the Sig Police
1985 Coupe/Red with Grand Sport wheels
2002 Z06/Millennium Yellow/Black/All but PSMs
Built 8/22/01!!! Delivered 8/29/01
Mark, I think we missed this on the last one, but we can't make an email list (part of our privacy thing) BUT, we can build a PM list! Want that?
Pat, the next version of the software will have links as forums (actually it has it now but its not very polished) but to allow both and future forums to use the same user DB would be an engineering nightmare, since the ID numbers are used all over the sites, ie, member rides, reviews, etc. We are sharing some things like links, reviews and such but the forums are so feature rich with things that rely on your ID that combining them this late in the game would be crazy.
HOWEVER.....there is some talk amongst the moderators to form an ubersite which has forums that link to the appropriate places....but, searching cannot be done across multiple domains.
In conclusion, we'd love to do this and agree with your points, and I will continue my discussion with the software engineers on the best way to move forward, but its a long, painful process.
This idea (actually the execution) of large scale, feature-rich online communities is fairly new. Sure there are some large forums, but combining features and functionalities between connected yet seperate communities has yet to occur on an enterprise scale.....
IE, even the largest sites, Stangnet, the Honda and VW guys have with traffic much higher than any Vette sites are still singular sites w/o much complexity.
And look at the other sites, Stangnet, NewBeetle, CF, really not much happened in this area until we started really pushing the boundaries of true online communities. These sites were basically forum only sites with a front page and some product reviews....
Doc, you can limit the number of days per forum in your CP.....
Hehe, yea Mike. But disk space is actually not that bad, its the bandwidth that kills us.
Really, images should not have to be any larger than 100k to get the point across. 100k is a LOT to work with.....
Swapping print quality photos should probaby be done between users
Some members have suggested that we continue to offer the free hosting of 100k pics and offer more space at a premium but we have no plans to do so......
I say again - this site is AWESOME. I'd love to know the software engine behind it - is it commercially available? If so, where and how much?
How about the ability to have smilies inserted at the insertion point rather than at the end of something you're writing? Sometimes, after you've written something and you're reviewing it, you see a good place for a smilie (like the "confused" smilie above) and so you click on it, then cut and paste it from the end to where you really want it.
This site is so feature rich compared to most I've been to that it's hard to find something you're not already doing!
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'06 Velocity Yellow Z06, 1LZ. LOVIN' IT!!
'06 Chrysler 300C Hemi, Bentley Grill, Tint, Nav, DVD
'06 Navigator, Nav, DVD
'93 Black RX-7 with 4000 miles (FOR SALE - want a vintage Corvette)
SimPlus, the engine is a heavily modified (the Z06 version) of vBulletin. The base software is very cheap, around $160. then add about $20k for all the time to get all the features and tweaks/maint. in
And yes, there is a fix for the insertion point thing, will look into that....
what i can recommend (this works well in a reverse auction ecommerce mode) is a feature whereby we (users) can register subject areas that we're interested in being notified about when a discussion thread occurs.
i.e. if i'm interested in headers, i could register my interest in this topic and the feature would do 2 thing(a) return all existing threads where this met the search criteria (launch of search - nothing more advanced that this) and then (b) ping me when someone launches a thread that contained this subject matter.
i think this feature would be widely used and would (a) remove all the unnecessary posts that could easily be resolved with a search (people ARE lazy!) and (b) will proactively initiate discussion for those parties that have registered their interest.
my humble $0.02 worth.
Boz.
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2002 Torch Red / Mod Red
B&M Ripper w/ Kirban billet knob
Vortex Rammer & TB bypass
Magnaflow x-pipe
CAGS defeat
V1 hardwired
FRC partition
1.5" lowered all around
N4C5S: SimPlus, the engine is a heavily modified (the Z06 version) of vBulletin. The base software is very cheap, around $160. then add about $20k for all the time to get all the features and tweaks/maint. in
Thanks, JC. I'll look it up. We'd like to add something to our company web site www.simulations-plus.com for a forum for our customers, but I don't want to spend 5 figures for it.
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