I want to let everyone know that The Best Forum Ever is now considered a big-board according to TAZ!

Remember how I posted about how I finished the majority of the forum theme (with the new software?) I finished the majority of the wordpress homepage using Studiopress:

Homepage Beta of The Best Forum Ever

Don’t get me wrong. I still run all my sites myself (besides my moderating team on The Best Forum Ever). All I’ve been doing is asking friends to do things for me as I’ve never known how to do it I am a little bit lazy. It is a lot of work – all of it. Plus I am not quite familiar with some of it.

XenForo was the first time I actually skinned a website. I haven’t shown it to the public yet, as I am waiting for it to come out of beta,  but close friends and premium members to see it. I’ve gotten quite a lot of praise for it and I am quite happy.

Since I’ve done the XenForo styling, I decided to take my newly learned skills and try it with an Image Hosting script. The reason I am doing this is for multiple reasons:

1. I don’t want to rely on others anymore.
2. The time spent waiting for something that isn’t coming is ridiculous.
3. It is actually quite easy. If you know HTML and CSS, it is beyond easy. PHP isn’t really needed unless you are doing a lot of extra stuff.
4. Help is always there. Google is a great resource, twitter is another fantastic resource, friends are beyond amazing. I know that King Kovifor hates my stupid questions, but he has saved my butt multiple times. He not only shows me how he did it, but because he did, I was able to learn from from him and now can answer my own issues (well most of them).

Anyway, my image host was the result of the updates I plan to make on my forum. Currently, I have an image host on The Best Forum Ever. When I plan to upload, I am not bringing the modification with me due to incapability of it on XenForo, but the fact that I do not like it. With that said, The Image Igloo was born. I’d like to thank my friend and active member, Mike (aka Velocity) for coming up with the name and slogan which I love. From there, I google’d like crazy to find a fantastic script. I must have found like 10+ image hosting scripts. Out of those 10, maybe 2 or 3 were kept updated. Out of those three, 2 provided what I wanted. Out of those 2, one was completely in English. Oddly enough, I tried the Spanish one first because it was partly in Spanish. Unfortunately, it was way to hard to theme (at least for me).

Since I finished this, I thought I would show you what I worked with and it shows the progress via pictures.

The Spanish Script (it is a fantastic one, but until the update, it isn’t very ideal for me at least):

Then I completely decided to change scripts abruptly, but I kept the image links that were already established.

Before I chose this, I didn’t realize how amazing this script was and how awesome it truly is despite how ugly it looked. Then, I found this theme for it (actually found the theme before I re-found the script).

Using that as my guide, I’ve made my own theme to compliment the name.

It took a while, but I am very happy with it. I want to thank Nick (aka Hellazz) for making the Eskimo as well as for making (the soon to be as I am writing this) logo. I am very happy with all of this.

I hope this turns out well and willing to change the settings to fit my users need. Check it out: The Image Igloo

This was supposed to be done months ago. It is now done now. I’ve learned a lot from doing this and plan to finish my other sites as according to my New Years Resolutions.

Next is my viral site and to get Bundiez and Steal the Internet live!

Stay tuned for my New Years Resolutions!

Before I get into the article, I wanted to throw in a bit of background information. If you read my Future of Forums post, you would know how I got from Geezer Gamers to Gamingvidz on 12-17-2005. Anyway, Gamingvidz was owned by this famous Halo player, TheHaloGod. From that, I worked my way up in the site and ended up helping TheHaloGod with his other forums such as Haloboards.com and Adobechat.com. Eventually those sites died out and my site grew. Well, over time I ended up finding out that Chris Guthrie was TheHaloGod. At this time, he was employed by Microsoft and was blogging off of ChrisGuthrie.net. That was about 3 years ago

That brings me to what I read. Some-what recently, Chris changed his blog from Chrisguthrie.net to Make Money on the Internet. In that time, he was fired from his job (despite doing a fantastic job), decided to work for himself full time on the internet, and all this other stuff. I am not trying to get into his whole life story as his blog gets into that. I want to talk about his most recent article.

Chris wrote about How to Sell a Website for Six Figures. Now, I was very interested in this as I’ve known Chris for some time and we have discussed websites a few times. Every we do speak, he always tells me to get into blogs and such and away from forums. Now, while I agree, he took the wrong approach for forums.  Either way, I remember when he first started Netbook Reviews. He told me he got this amazing domain name and he will do this. Since then, he sold it for a good amount of money. This is amazing. He went from making $60,000 a year to over $150,000 this year. Of course he isn’t allowed to say what he made, but the fact he made six figures is ridiculous. From playing Halo and running a forum to making XXX,XXX (imagine all those 0′s).

What does this have to do with me?

This inspired me. He worked hard and it paid off. Plus, he networked with what started as just in Social Media. Unlike Chris, I am going to keep my forums. Now, I don’t plan on devoting my time on the forums, I care about my community. You need to care about them. With that, I want to take advantage of my resources. I know how to make a website look sexy. I am full knowledge. I know how to run a website. I plan to open up my network of websites. I want to start making a living off of my websites. This is going to take hard work and initiative. Do you have it? I know I do. I will make my New Year Resolutions for all my sites and we will see how I do.

Lately, I have been thinking more and more about my websites. The reason for this as when I first got into websites, I thought about them as a hobby and nothing more. Then again, when I first got into designing websites, I was very young and money wasn’t an issue. Out of this came a lot of insight into the internet. I learned a lot very quickly and used that knowledge to the best of my abilities. My first site (technically) was one made out of Microsoft Frontpage. This was long before I realized how much work it was a website. Although, after some issues, I left the computer and tried other things in my life – mainly sports.

As I got older, I appreciated the computer again and became active on the internet because of gaming. The reason behind this as I wanted to enhance my gaming. I wanted to get better at Halo 2 at the time and was also looking for steady people to play with. With this, I found a new niche I’ve never experienced before, forums. I first went on Geezer Gamers and due to the age difference and how our interests changed over time, I moved on to Gamingvidz.

The popular communities helped mold my decision that I wanted to create my own community. The reason behind this is the fact I became close the community and saw areas to improve. Naturally, I attempted to do work on these sites, but the administrators became very difficult to work with (Ironically, I became the same way, but if someone gave me ideas – I’d listen). Although, with much work – I became staff. With that, I started a name for myself using photoshop as my guide. I branched out onto many different forums gaining access to their staff. What I didn’t realize until one discussion, I didn’t really have any power as staff which was the opposite of my intentions. At one point, I thought I had an opportunity to go good as I became head staff and eventually an administrator, but as I quickly learned: Nothing is good unless you own the site.

What I Learned

I learned a lot over those few years as you can tell. You need to have your own forums to actually make progress with them (as well as a lot of other traits). It takes a lot to own forums and such and I will go into detail through out this blog and such…

About My Forums Now.

So I currently own The Best Forum Ever. I’ve had it for two and a half years as of the 15th of December. It doesn’t feel like such a long time, but it has been. Lately, I haven’t focused much on my forum as I thought it was fine by itself. I was incorrect. Despite the fact that my forum is two and half years old, has 24,704 threads, 386,786 posts,and 5,340 members, a dedicated staff, the total traffic went down 30% compared to last year. Also, I haven’t made any money since I updated the skin which was quite a while ago. All that said, I am making a change. I am starting to become more and more into my websites as it is what I enjoy. I love making websites and doing for others. I love my community and wouldn’t change it for the world. I have even been asked many times to sell out. I always refuse despite the amount of money they offer. Call me stupid, but I am dedicated to my board.

My plans with the board is to completely upgrade it. I’ve noticed lately that the forum has been acting a bit sluggish and I know for a fact it isn’t my host or my internet connection. I have realized that this is because of three reasons:

1. My board isn’t optimized any more (this is the sense that I’ve done all that I can based on what I’ve learned from a lot of tutorials and personal help)
2. My vBulletin is quite outdated. I am running the 3.8 series. The current vBulletin is 4.1. I would update, but the current vBulletin is very bloated, flawed, and full of problems. Also, the look of it isn’t quite what I expected and in my eyes quite ugly. Even if I were update, I would need a whole new skin and my current person refuses to work with it because of how problematic it can be as with each new update, the skin breaks.
3. My plugins have become too much. At one point or another, they were all useful and great. They improved my forum tremendously, but like anything, my forum evolved and grew. The average member age has increased a bit. With that, the once useful plugins aren’t so useful anymore.

I also have to figure out how to bring back traffic. I’ve never kept secret my method of traffic because of the sheer fact it is common sense. I do understand there are many ways to get your name out there, but I don’t partake in those methods. It is funny because when I first started getting big, I would have at least ten instant messages a day asking how I did it and how I can help them. To each of those people, I said the same thing: My only way of advertisement is WORD OF MOUTH. This is really the only way I have ever actually received traffic. Now, when I say word of mouth, there is a little more to just going to your friends in school and telling them, but once again, that is for another post and if you keep reading my blog, you will learn that.

What I Am Going to Change

Traffic

As I stated before, traffic is down a whole 30% from last year. I can not stand for that which is why I am doing all of this change. I hate the fact my forum isn’t as popular. I must admit, the only upside about it is the whole community is like a family. While this is great and all, a family only stays together for so long. I want to stay for a long time and to do that, I need more active members. So, what I plan to do is a few things.

1. I don’t have much money, yet, but a few member contests is always good. Even if it isn’t for monetary value, a VIP membership always works or a title and/or trophy.
2. Get the community together in a few projects such as an all day post-a-thon where they rack up spam posts in order to gain a title.
3. Email all the members. I do have over 5,000 members and many of them did enjoy the site at one point or another. Why not remind them that The Best Forum Ever is still around and being updated.
4. Ask some of my Administrator friends and other friends to help announce my re-opening (I don’t know what to call it).

As for Plugins

I am getting rid of almost all the plugins. Over the last few years, I learned that while plugins may be nice and all, most people don’t really use them for the most part unless they are fully integrated. Once again, I will write more about this as I can go on and on about these subjects.  Basically what I am going to do is remove almost all plugins from my website. At one point, I was running everything including a whole point system, arcade with a ton of games, and a ton of other shit. For the updated version, I am going to use a few template edits to make everything look good such as drop-downs and anything else I feel that is needed. SEO plugins will definitely be added. I got to keep my Search Engine Optimization to the max. Finally, I will add any anti-spam plugins that I feel that is needed. It is such a huge issue. Anything else will be based on a case-by-case basis. I want to keep it as close to the original script as possible.

The Script and Skin

This is the main part of my issue. First off, I want to say that the script and the skin come hand in hand as they relate immensely. Anyways, I thought long and hard about this and how everything would work out. Lately, I’ve watched Internet Brands go down the tubes (not go out of business) with their latest version of vBulletin. Now, I am not saying it is terrible because how can a company release complete shit after they raised their price and all…right. Many would disagree with that statement, but that is neither here nor there. Either way, I learned about a new forum script (which at the time when I learned about it, it was unreleased) that was made by ex-lead developer, Kier Darby and ex-vbulletin developer, Mike Sullivan to create XenForo along with the help of ex-Jelsoft business manager, Ashley Busby as their business manager. For those who live under a rock or don’t know much about forum software, vBulletin (well technically Internet Brands) is suing XenForo over allegedly did the following:

“The suit is simple, the post from vBulletin reads. “We claim that Kier, Mike, and Ashley have infringed and violated contracts they signed with us to gain unfair business advantage. As such, Xenforo’s software unfairly stands on the shoulders of more than a decade of development by Jelsoft. Internet Brands owns this intellectual property.”

I do not believe a word of this, but I don’t know all the facts besides what I’ve read and I felt it was a bit odd as the lawsuit came a day before XenForo released their software for beta. Fishy if you ask me, but I am not one to pre-judge.

• Lawsuit from vBulletin’s point of view

• Lawsuit from XenForo’s point of view

• Information/Discussion found on Google about XenForo vs. vBulletin

• Information/Discussion found on Google about vBulletin vs XenForo

Either way, lawsuit or not, I bought XenForo. Originally, I bought it for a totally new project that I’ve had in the works, but as I played with XenForo more and more, I started to love it. I first fell in love with it on their official site where it was the only place to use it since it was an unreleased beta, but after having it in my hands, I knew it was correct for me. It was a culmination of the realization that I really don’t need any modifications anymore along with finding out the modifications I truly rely on are being made or already made. I would also need a custom skin as I do not settle for any less, but as for now, I can always customize a free script to make it my own. That is how The Best Forum Ever actually started. Then, I got a free one from my friend Vince for helping him out. Unknowingly to me, that was ripped and is found on vBulletin warez sites if you want it.

As for the script itself, it is still in beta. At first, I was absolutely reluctant to even think about converting The Best Forum Ever to a beta script especially one that had bugs (which was expected…it is beta). Now, XenForo is in Beta 5 and I am considering about making The Best Forum Ever a XenForo forum by new years. Now, before you say to yourself that it is still a beta, what are you doing? I realize that and how close it is before RC version and Gold version appear, but the time it took to go from Beta 4 to Beta 5 was about a week…give or take a day since I am not on top of it. That is a HUGE difference compared to the other betas. This means that there are hardly any bugs and nothing I really have to worry about. If I do, it will be fixed and I don’t have to do much modifying to make it all work. If they want their blogs back or want a blog or I want a homepage CMS/blog, I can always install WordPress MU and it would link to XenForo since there is a modification for it.

Speed is an issue as I’ve mentioned before, this is all the proof I need that XenForo is much better than vBulletin: Server Load VB > XF & Joomla – Proof Is Everything. I know that everything will be much better on XenForo speed and loading wise seeing the huge differences.

Plus, I recently read this comment on my forums:

“If I could like that I would. We need an effing like button on here.”

I realized after playing with XenForo, you would know there isn’t a traditional reputation system, but a like system similar to Facebook. My staff knew this as I opened a beta version of XenForo to them. By the way, my staff was ecstatic about it and absolutely LOVED it with the exception of one member. Having all of this go through my head, I knew it was time to move my forums.

What Now?

As you may realize, there is 20 days left in the year. In these 20 days, I plan to move The Best forum Ever over to XenForo with a skin ready and everything setup. Since I don’t have the plugins to really worry about, I have everything going pretty easy. I’ve found a lovely skin that I plan on customizing. Here is the essential breakdown on what I have to do.

1. Download XenForo
2. Download the Skin
3. Edit the Skin to make it look nice
4. Fix the forum setup on vBulletin now to make it all ready for XenForo
5. Install XenForo plugins that only deal with SEO/Anti-Spam
6. Set up all the settings and stuff beforehand
7. Clean out the server from all the junk and useless shit
8. Back up the database
9. Immediately after turn off the forum
10. Upload the files
11. Transfer over the database
12. Clean everything up
13. Open

I may be missing a few steps (including the get traffic parts), but that is the gist of everything. My goal…before or RIGHT after New Years. I let my forum down with TBFE v3 and this is to make up for it. This time around, I don’t plan to hype it up. The staff know I am working on it, but no details…that is until they read this blog post/twitter message I posted. We shall see!

After this…Bundiez Network and Steal the Internet!

PS. Hope you like the new theme. I refused to blog until I had a new one because I was stubborn/bored/loved this skin too much.

PPS. Here is a picture of The Best Forum Ever currently so I don’t forget to take one so I am able to do a comparison. Also is a picture of The Best Forum Ever when I first opened. Notice how I had no idea to take a proper screenshot back then.

Old – > New ->

I am working on a lot of websites. I have a few new sites in the works. One is being designed slowly and surely by my friend Vince. I hope for the site to go viral and you will see me (if you check out my forums, twitter, etc…) post a lot about it coming up. The other isn’t officially released, but seeing as it isn’t something huge, I will write about it now without being very secretive.

The site that I am going to pre-release now (when you go on it, it looks ugly) is my image-hosting site. The reason I made this site is because my forum has an image hosting option. Unfortunately (well not really unfortunately, I am quite happy with what I am going to switch to), I am thinking about switching forum scripts. The reason is I am not quite happy with vBulletin 4 series as I don’t like the look and such. Plus all the bugs and all doesn’t make for quite a good forum script. Now, one might say why not stick with 3.8 series? The fact is that I love the 3.8 series and I been around vBulletin since 2.0 era, but only owned a forum since 3.5. Like 2.0, 3.8 and the whole 3.0 series is going to go EOL (end of life) which means no more updates for security issues. I do own a vBulletin script…two to be honest as well as two matching vBSEO scripts along with an assortment of premium vBulletin mods. I am not thrilled to be giving it all up since I paid a lot of money for them all only to get rid of it at the snap of my fingers. Although, I do not see myself doing much of anything else.

To get back on topic (I will talk forums in another blog post – most likely tonight or tomorrow), the site is: http://www.theimageigloo.com. Creative name thanks to my friend Mike aka Velocity on The Best Forum Ever. Considering it and the reason stated above, I immediately bought the name. With this site, I plan to run for my site. As for advertising and trying to get it big, it isn’t my main focus as it is just another image host. There are a billion damn image sites and I don’t want to dedicate a server or so just watching images and then patrolling the shit.  It’s just a shit load to do. I can go on and on about it, but no one cares and to be quite honest, it isn’t my main concert.

My besides my secret site, my main concern as of now is my network site and my forum. I realized that I have had a few domain names just chilling around and had nothing going on. I had plans constantly, but with lack of knowledge, lack of currency, and lack of will power to do so. So with that said, I had Bundiez, Bunziez, Steal the Internet, and Analaquarium. All of them…well half of them have been figured out so far. Anal  Aquarium is a site I just want to keep for sentimental reasons. Technically, it is the longest running site I own. It probably gets zero traffic, but I still love it because some of those videos are just so damn funny. Originally, I manually did it, but when I  lost everything due to my old host, I tried automatic.  Unfortunately,  I just need to figure out how to make the updates happen automatic.

As for Steal the Internet, I realized that it would be a cool name for my photoblog. What many people don’t realize is that I enjoy photography. I first started by taking pictures of my family and they noticed that my pictures turned out very well. Something about the angle and the lighting and the blah blah blah…bullshit stuff. So, the more they complimented my awesomeness, the more I wanted to do it more. Eventually, I received a Canon T1i and I love it, but like all technology, it likes to screw me over like a month later; Canon screwed me over by releasing the much better Canon T2i. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I love my camera and even if I had the best camera in the world, I wouldn’t be able to do what these two guys (from my forum) do: Donkey’s One Art Piece a Day Thread and Filman’s Photography. If you haven’t been on my forum or are just too dumb to check it out, you got to. Some AMAZING work done by both of them.

Now as for Bunziez, I want to keep it and make it into my clothing line. I’ve always wanted to do this as I love fashion. I, for one, are not the insane fashion person though. Lately, I haven’t even been matching as for example – my outfit from today was a Black t-shirt with graffiti that had different color shadowing along with my dark blue Under Armor shorts and my Timberlands. Yeah, I am a hot mess. I am comfortable. On top of that, I have no-shave-November going…you tell me how good I look haha. Anyway, I plan to make t-shirts in the near (or late) future and use this as my brand name.

The last site I had available is Bundiez. First off, I know it is similar to bunziez. Like wow, how creative am I? I was just a bumfuck who came up with one name and changed the letter to make another. Well, no…asshole. My friend Zack and I wanted to come up with our own type of vocabulary. Not really a whole language deal, but like a few words that would mean something to us and no one would know. Out of it, came Bunziez and Bundiez. Let me explain one thing. It is sounded as it is spelled. Bunziez is like bun (as in honeyBUN) and Ziez (like multiple letter of “Z” Zees) – to form bunziez. It means cool, awesome, amazing, bonkers, and any other synonym. Bundiez is like bun (as in honeyBUN) and diez (as in deez nuts are in your face, or like the unDIES, or even multipe of the letter “D” Dees). It means crazy, bonkers, wack, stupid…basically the complete opposite. Either way, I got off-topic and what I am using Bundiez is for my network site. I am going to list all my services, clients, and my own sites on there as well as update it (not frequently) as my sites update. Twitter feeds and stuff will be provided. The look of it seems great. I am just waiting for my friend Kai to finish up logos and such.

Besides that, I have nothing else to talk about for this post. I need to do this tomorrow. On that note, GO GET ME A DAMN INVITE TO FACEBOOK MESSAGES!

Talk to you tomorrow. Shooting for every day…