Hello Mike,
I wouldn't touch Yahoo or Google forums with a bargepole. You would
always be at their mercy.
Personally I think the email option is completely overrated - possibly
by members who are not familiar with the ease and speed of looking at a
proper web based threaded forum. It may be handy to receive a digest but
if its too confusing to navigate or follow a thread then whats the
point? I get the digest daily but these days I rarely look at it. Its
too messy. Complaints about having to log in or use passwords are also a
bit lame. You can save the password so it only has to be done once.
I'm a member of many forums. The first 4 that I looked at today all use
various versions of vBulletin.
http://www.vbulletin.com
I've always found them to be very easy to use, with ample features
including the ability to POST PICS. (How handy would that be! You can
also run ads which would help cover the cost.
They can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make them.
Cheers
David
David wrote:
How this forum has survived is a miracle. Its just too complicated. Its
time this list moved to a more stable and user friendly, website based
platform. Only Mike can do that. He has the loyalty of the members.
I agree! However there is one need I've never seen satisfied by any of
the options I've examined and would otherwise like -- preserving the
e-mail option for receiving and contributing to the list. Every time
I've looked into changing it, members have emphasized their desire or
need to continue to use e-mail to receive the list. I prefer it myself,
so I understand, but apart from this or other e-mail reflector systems,
I've yet to see a complete implementation.
The model of how to do this seems to be Yahoo! lists. They have a
not-entirely-awful web interface, plus you can sign up for e-mail
delivery, just like here. The downside would be becoming just another
Yahoo! group, and the loss of ownership/control represented by putting
ourselves under the management of a massive, faceless corporation. If
they ever decide we're unwelcome, we're gone and there's not a thing
anybody could do about it.
I haven't checked in about a year, but so far I've never seen an add-on
for any of the Forum software packages like phpBB or V-bulletin that
integrates e-mail subscription and posting. I think something could be
custom built under a system like Drupal by making a bunch of existing
modules work together, but I haven't managed to climb that learning
curve yet. And it seems that nobody has tried very hard to duplicate the
Yahoo! model in any open source project, so I must be fairly rare in not
really wanting to trust them. <grin>
Even just building a web interface to reliably handle subscriptions on
top of this or other e-mail reflector software would be an improvement.
If I could bring the archives under the same roof it would be even
better... but by then you're approaching the complexity of implementing
Yahoo's model.
Whatever the solution, I'd like to preserve the flexibility that would
allow me to migrate our group to some ISP or rent-a-slice provider
offshore if something happened to Eskimo or some domestic (US) agency
ever decided to crack down on folks like us.
So, that's where I'm at on this. If I were an accomplished web coder, I
could build something that satisfies everybody, but I'm not and I
haven't. If you have any thoughts, suggestions, options, or know a coder
who would work for cheap or free, please lay it out there! I'd love to
improve the platform.
Be well,
Mike D.
list owner
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