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Bizzy Week

Posted February 20th, 2006 at 4:14PM

This weekend I was visiting my grandfather in PA, so I had limited access to the interweb (although our hotel offered free broadband, I didn’t think to bring an ethernet cable, so no dice). This upcoming week I have quite a bit on my plate; it’s spread out so I’ll likely be OK. I’m writing the second profile story of the semester for my Feature Writing class. The last profile I did was someone I knew. This time around, I am going to interview a total stranger, so it will be a bit more difficult. But I was able to make contact, get his permission, and schedule a meeting for tomorrow, so that first hurdle is over.

Most of my online time has been spent on my new forums, Surfing on a Rocket. Of course, I didn’t get too much done this weekend. It’s coming along, slowly but surely.

Also quickly coming up â€“ spring break. Two more weeks of class, I think? Then a week off. Not sure, I’ll probably be going home. But if I get a job between now and then…

Which I still need to do. Need one of those job things. Yep.

Dreaming About Forums.

Posted August 27th, 2005 at 4:37PM

I’ve been thinking that maybe having a “group” (ie. forum) on Flickr could work in place of having a forum on here. Just a thought, think it over.

I’m looking at you Bakshi.

hmm…

About Those Forums..

Posted August 9th, 2005 at 7:53PM

About a week ago, I checked the forums and discovered that they had been hacked. The damage was not bad, it was simply defaced and the admin account was gone. All of this was quickly remedied, and I closed down the forum so that it couldn’t happen again, until I updated my forum software. Or so I thought. Looking at it today, the forums are empty — no posts and no categories. A quick check of the database confirms this.

Now, of course I have a back-up with all of the posts. It might be a week old, which, considering the activeness of the forums, really isn’t missing much.

But I don’t know if it’s worth it. The forums were pretty dead, and I don’t know if I should invest any more time into them. I might just get rid of it entirely.

This has a few upsides to it. Next winter, when it comes time to renew my website hosting, I could switch to a different provider. I don’t use half of what I’m currently paying for, and nearlyfreespeech looks very tempting (The only trouble is that they only offer one MySQL database per account. Which wouldn’t be a problem if I scrapped the forum).

Or, even if I did give up on the current board, which uses PunBB, I might still set up another forum with different software — At a later date. I’m thinking of BBPress here. This creates a whole host of new problems, since BBPress is still in the alpha stages, but… It would be an educational process for me.

Anyways, I’d like to hear from any of you who used the forum in the past. Whether I should bring back the PunBB, or shelf the idea of a forum until a later date. Thanks, and cheers!

Forums?!

Posted March 19th, 2005 at 1:58AM

I raised the possibility a few days ago. And now, in the whee hours of Saturday, I can definitively say: white male consumer has forums!

Before I was talking about using bbPress. However since it is still so early in development, it really wasn’t suitable. Instead, I turned to PunBB, a cult favorite floating around here. Alex King heartily recommended it, and after I saw how well he was able to integrate it into several WordPress sites, I was convinced.

After a few hours of complete stonewalling, the PunBB template system finally clicked, and I figured out how to integrate it into the current site.

My two main concerns with adding a forum was that it would:
a) integrate completely with the rest of the site. This has nearly been achieved. The font colors are slightly different, and as a whole it is slightly inconsistent with the rest of the site. However it is probably not noticeable to the common layman. While I might continue to tinker on it a bit more, I’m satisfied right now.
b) be lightweight and simple. This is why I was originally considering bbPress. I have easy, one-click access to phpBB and Invision Power Board. There are many other free bulletin boards out there. However all of these popular solutions are entirely too overweight and graphics-intensive for what I wanted. I want something easy on my hosting, and easy on my visitors. I had to take my expertise into consideration also – while integrating phpBB into the site is probably entirely possible – it would have proved nearly impossible for me.

So, I ended up with PunBB. I removed all smilies. Even simple things like avatars were on the chopping block for awhile (I eventually kept them). Guests can post, because I know how irritating it is to have to register to post everywhere. God knows how many forums I’ve registered at through the years. Creating new topics is reserved for members, however. Need incentive.

I don’t expect the forums to be very active on the outset. I’m not even sure how active they will ever become. However I believe they were warrented. In the past year or two, I’ve become a steady forum user at a variety of places, most notably NewGrounds. But I’ve outgrown these places. Like I’ve said before, I just needed a place to call my own.

white male consumer

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Bizzy Week

Dreaming About Forums.

About Those Forums..

Forums?!