I’ve prowled the net/web/whatever you call it these days and have paused by message boards and wonder why the heck so many are not designed like this one?
The SDMB opens up to let you read all messages, is easy to work, is actually monitored by people who actually show up more than once a year, has easy to access profiles and notifies you via e-mail when you have a reply.
The latter alone keeps you from dropping in every day to check.
Plus it determinedly eliminates all Spam. You can be a saint or jerkoff here in perfect contentment within several different formats.
I hate those boards where all you get is a list of topics and have to open them one at a time, and then open the replies one at a time. It’s cumbersome and annoying. On those where you must register, you fill out a profile and such, but they don’t e-mail you if you have any replies. Some have a surprising, and unmentioned, little amount of reply space. Like, you can write a book, post it and when it pops up, only two paragraphs made it out of 6.
Some sites, not run by regular people but some well off ones from TV shows and cities, clog up with Spam that stays there forever!
So, why don’t more places use a message board like the SDMB? I suggested to a few that they should and given them links, but been ignored. Is the format for the SDMB real space consuming and complicated? Those other range from being plain when opened to highly decorative and I would think the latter would use as much space as the SDMB.
My guess is that more places don’t use the UBB/VBB format due to:
(A) Cost. I don’t recall off the top of my head what the UBB software costs, but it’s not cheap. For a larger company, it might be okay, but unless you’re REALLY into Cleopatra 2525, you probably don’t want to invest that much cash into your Cleopatra 2525 website. Yes, I know there’s also a free trial version, but I’ve also used it and most of the UBB features you know and love are stripped off of it, making it about the same as any other board.
(B) Technical issues. UBB might not be what everyone wants to install because either they don’t have the server to put it on or else because they just don’t know how and don’t want to mess with it. You have to have access to the server you’re setting it on, so it’s not like you can add the code to a free account like GeoCities or use your ISP account.
There’s plenty of free boards out there for one to set on their site. Some good, some not so good. My own site at http://www.watershipdown.org uses Everyone.net’s message board which is pretty good for the low traffic it receives. Not quite up to UBB standards, but it does allow you see all the replies at once, have multiple forums and some other features. My old message board, by some place I don’t remember the name of, was the “click to see each reply in the thread” type which I didn’t much like, but it was free and easy to get set up.
To me UBB was the only format until i saw this board… i actually prefer this muchly now… it just has a better feel to it…
I dont even tbother with other type msg boards… theyre just too damn annoying (or maybe its the people on them ;))
Ive tried setting up UBBs too and its actually not hard at all… its a LOT of work to customize everything but if you can follow simple instructions setting it up takes less than half an hour and is pretty much a piece of cake.
I would imagine it must take quite some work to manage it tho… mine only has some 60 users but still theres plenty of stuff to look after and take care of… i wouldnt wanna run a 10.000 members one…