New Forum Plans

So, we've decided to let everyone in the community help decide our plans for the future.

Right now, all we have decided is that the new forum/site will revolve around movies/games, and media in general, allowing us to be both a bit more specific while still remaining rather general.

It would need to be either on Forumotion again, or another free forum/site hosting service, unless someone is willing to donate to make a professional site, although I doubt that will happen. Therefore, we need to decide if we want to keep using forumotion, or try migrating to another site altogether.

We also need a new site/forum name, preferably something creative and catchy. Probably something related to our general theme, unless someone comes up with something completely spectacular that isn't directly related, but broad enough of a name to work.

So feel free to use this topic to help plan and discuss the migration, since we cant seem to get everyone on the chat at once right now.

I thinking staying on a Forumotion forum would be, being that everyone seems to be pretty firmiler with it. Not sure how that would affect those making the site, being that they'd be the ones primarily dealing with all the details.

Media in general? That would also incload news on current subjects in the world or would news need to be more aimed at movies and games?

As for names. Drawin' a blank right now.

I do have a question, will their be a rank system still? And will the admins/mods/chat mods pretty much stay the way they are or end up changing? Personally, I'm fine with who and how the staff positions are now.

I will say if we stay on Forumotion, I should be able to handle most of the set up most things by myself since I already know the system fairly well. However, Forumotion does have it's limitations, and a Forumotion forum can only get so large.

I think it would mostly be movies and games, but we could have a forum for Current Events/general news like we have currently, and it would fit in with the new forum a bit better, I think.

I'm somewhat debating if we'll institute a rank system on the new site. On one hand, it does inspire some people to post, adds some variation, and helps new users know who the more experienced members are. On the other hand, it can also lead to people spamming just to reach a new rank if not monitored carefully. I'll let you guys give your thoughts on that, since I'm personally unsure.

How large are you wanting it to be? If you want it to be larger then what Forumotion can handle, then going to a different site would be better I spose.

Ah ok, that'd be cool

Hmm. I see what you mean on the ranks. Although, so far on here, I don't think most people have ever really spammed to rank up. But then, I've not been here as long. But this is just what I've seen.

I thinking having some sort of ranking would be nice, like you said, so new members can see who's been around a bit longer.

Though, maybe instead of having people to post to rank up there could be another way? I'm not sure bout that, just throwing it out there cause its another option even if it might not be the best.

Well, on the note of what hosting we want to use... The main advantage FM has going for it, quite frankly, is the chatbox. Personally, I'm fairly fond of Zetaboards, but I'm not familiar with all of the admin tools there, so sticking with FM, simply due to familiarity might be worth it. Another possibility of course is to look at this all this way. Which host looks like it will be best for expansion? ... On the other hand, we might want to avoid some perfect ones so we're not constantly swinging the banhammers. So, we not only need to look at the possibility of expansion, but also expansion in the right way. Now, if we somehow end up getting huge, then things become another matter entirely. Then, well, if we manage to get huge, we'll get trolls and spammers. That's a simple fact of life.

Sorry that was a bit rambling. I'll try to basically summarize my thoughts on that.
For now, I think we're likely fine using FM. I don't think it's a particularly great forum host, but, well, we're used to it, and that's saying something. As for size expansion, I don't expect that we'll get so huge that we'll need a different place. If that happens then we could definitely look into another move. Because I think if we get that big we'll want the forum to get a bit more of a professional appearance, and that will include not being hosted by a place like FM. That will be a big bridge to cross if that day comes, but right now I don't think we need to start preparing for that kind of expansion.
Before we settle on FM though, we might want to consider if there are other forum hosts which might be useful for bringing in new members. I'm not the most up to date on these possibilities. Quite frankly, I only know of three, Forumotion, InvisionFree, and Zetaboards, which is an upgraded version of InvisionFree.

As for ranks, I'd actually say lets keep the ranks simple. Member, Moderator, Administrator. Possibly if we expand we could include ranks like Senior Member, and give them slight moderation authority, or something like that. But in general, I'd say keep them simple. Partly because the forum ranks we had on the LMBs and the like almost imply a children's forum. And well, this isn't a children's forum we have in mind. It's more along the lines of a forum for teenagers and adults. So, let's start off with a bit more of a professional rank system to help reflect that.

Though it might divide the purpose of the forum a bit too much, I would somewhat like to see a writing subforum around, but it might not be too important, and again, it wouldn't entirely fit alongside the rest of the forum, so I guess I don't know how useful it'd be.

I think, JJS, that ya made a valid point with the ranks and site host. Make sense.

If you feel that forumotion is limiting then I recommend IcyBoards. I will make the point though that pretty much all good free hosts don't care how big you get, because it means more money for them through guest ads and stuff.

Reason I'm putting IcyBoards out there is simple, it's running with MyBB (you can choose between 1.6 and 1.8 right now), they have a very large selection of plugins which would allow you to do some cool stuff with the site and the owner of the host looks at the community forums regularly so you can easily suggest new plugins and stuff.

Themes can also be changed in any way you like (as long as you don't mess around with ad placements too much).

The MyBB software is very powerful too and much more advanced these days over vanilla phpbb which is basically what Forumotion use. If you are interested I can setup a MyBB installation on my small web server for you to mess around in.

That would be great, thanks Roddy. I'll take a look at it.

Wait a second. A movie/gaming forum? Dude. We have to name it Lemmings.