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admin

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Posts posted by admin


  1. Wrestling, Sports, Entertainment are the set ones for now...

    What about politics/religion/beliefs?

     

    What should the name for the etc column or cat. be? melting Pot? community jar? Soap box (from above)?

     

    I have a felling, if we have alot of writers, we will have a high turn over rate in articles, making someones article quickly decline, makinig us either have pages full of articles or more categories.


  2. Ok, I think we need to decide on some good general categories...

     

    Sports - NFL, NHL, Wrestling, etc..?

     

    Entertainment?

     

    Technology? - Anyone want to write or do stuff for this?

     

    The random/everything else category (Needs a good catchy name)

     

    They need to be general enough for future use, but defined categories, if that makes sense...


  3. We can discuss it here as well, however I don't think creating a sub forum with only certain users is needed. It’d take time to create a group, move people into the group, etc. I think letting everyone know what’s up and contribute ideas provides a more diverse ear for what they would like to see and contribute.

    I am still working on a staff type list of everyone intrestead as well.


  4. Good Points made above... I have been looking at a new domain name, since thesmartmarks.com is a wrestling oriented domain name. On the revenue side of things, lol good luck at trying to make this profitable or at least for a while. The few sites I know which are actually making money get ALOT of hits a day, several times what the forums get, that’s not my goal. Yes, it would be nice to cover server cost, but to operate a site this big and maintain things is expensive. The server is ours, the CMS is purchased and I haven’t upgraded in a while, because it broke the structure of the current site, but in the next day or two, I will create a separate sub domain of TSM for testing the CMS out. It’s pretty nice, simple, yet sophisticated software. One thing I HATE about so many sites on the web is popups, pop unders, etc. I like how the current main page has 0 advertising, and it'd be great for the new main page to have 0, we may incorporate a place for it to go in the future, but for thee few dollars it may make in a month, I don't consider it worth degrading the experience that same percentage. Yes, on the forums I have tried a few companies so far, and Google seems to still be the least intrusive, the Clicksor @ the rate it was going would make more money, but it’s annoying. Google just sits up top.

    Anyways, quality and the audience is some of the many goals for a new site.

    I would like to think of the new site as not as my own, but as the “peoples” in this case the writers and the audiences. Personal I have nothing to gain from the site, except the fact that its nice to read the articles, recommend to friends for articles written by writers who aren’t influenced by the outside influences and state what they feel. Yes, there is a line where stating things goes too far, coming from the forum, you all know who those people are. :)


  5. The articles on the site can be setup MANY different ways, I would imagine we will have an system setup which you can submit your articles, but an admin or someone else higher will have to approve it before it shows up on the main page or in whichever section it falls under. So it won't be like b l og s .

    Second, I think the idea we did before for columns or articles, where all comments are not on the site, but in the forums, the writers will create topics for each article in a section and all comments, suggestions, etc will go there, so the main site will not be cluttered with comments and such, maybe just a link to the particular topic on the forums.

    I got lots more to say, but i got to get some sleep.


  6. Wow, alot of great thoughts, ideas, and people all on the train now I think. Sorry that this post is so short, but..

    The CMS (Content Management System) we are currently using is excellent. All you have to do is design a page(HTML), insert things like $articles$ on it, and also stuff like $article header$, $article author$, $article date$ and use CSS or formatting to those $$'s and it creates HTML pages for your whole site using your template. Pretty simple, great for server loads, because no dynamic stuff is on every page, just simple HTML files and its also great for archive purposes, and reliability not requiring anything but the CGI/Perl backend, which is a nice script which Stephen Popick purchased for us. I need to install some upgrades, but would also like to make sure we keep current articles in some sort of archives or folder still listed as we have alot of great stuff.

    The blog type stuff, i would say stick to the forums, the main site to a certain extent will be blog style as I am thinking we will have 20-40 writers hopefully, all contributing to different categories whenever they want. We will try to arrange weekly or bi monthly writings for the writers which have something such as PPV events, or maybe Xbox 360 game reviews of the month/week/ or whatever.

     

    I really like where this is headed for sure, and btw The Czech Republic, those are pretty damn nice headers for 45 seconds of work. Where they in Photo shop? Or just MS Paint?

    I am working on compiling a list of people and categorizing them into categories based on talent… In a good way… I.E. Possible web/Designers/Testers (Computer Savy people who know HTML somewhat and such) | Writers, which I am not sure If I should break down into groups, I don’t think so, because just because you writer PPV reviews, I don’t want you not to be able to writer a music review or your thoughts about some world event.

     

    Once I get the list together, I will post it in the first post of the topic for everyone to see. I will be using forum names, however I would like to compose the list with e-mails, AIM, YahooIM, or MSN IM as well as a staff/contributors list, the reason the extra info may not be included, some people don’t like their e-mails and such listed publicly. I would agree.

     

    Anyways, this has ended up longer than I expected  Feel free to PM me, if anyone has questions about anything or has friends which are web-designers…

     

    I love it how half the time I am referred to admin-bot, lol. Maybe I need a new name on the forums? Or need to start using my real name when posting and such.


  7. I realize several of you are wanting to become writers, I have been very busy recently and am working on plans to figure out how all this will work out and run. It would be very nice to talk to a web designer about some modifications to the site since i would imagine we would need more categories and such for the site. Basically the overall idea, would be a site composed full of numerous writers, but quality will be the focus. It will not be your own major published blog. :)


  8. Lol, Shhh, what skins? [Waves the jedi hand]

     

    If you guys have some links to some good skins, for version 2.1.x please post them. I think the silver & vbulletin will be leaving soon. the ones you guys don't see are hidden, because either they don't work or on their way out...


  9. I don't believe its anything new to people, but when you order cable internet, you get cable TV. I noticed Road Runner, now charges (at least in my area), $10 extra a month if you get internet w/o cable TV service.

    Does anyone else have this setup? It’s not illegal or else, it wouldn't be offered. I have digital, which I pay for so I don't care, but a friend of mine, has had cable internet for several months now, but all of a sudden his cable TV has gone out, not sure if this is something new or now.


  10. Unfortunately some of the current skins will be removed soon, due to problems they cause; we will be adding new skins however, so let us know which you like. Feel free to post links to sites with skins you would like to see.

     

    Mike,


  11. I am sorry about the Clicksor ads, I did not realize they were highlighting words on the site and doing those little boxes. I have removed them. I am not planning or looking for invasive advertising, as I don't want to visit a site with popups and such, just as much as you all don't. The GoogleAdsense words up top, shouldn't be bothersome, they don't effect anything and they only take-up a little of the top of the page. However in the little time Clicksor ads were on here they made $0.88, for less than 24 hours, thats not too bad.


  12. First, if the server cost were covered, then we would have no ads.

    Second, the ads can generate up to $140 a month, from my experience on other sites. This one hasn't reached that, and I am experimenting which companies pay out more. Compare this site to others, and you tell me which look more cluttered, I am not using ANY pop-unders, only simple ad banners. One up top and one down below...

     

    If you want to pay the $120/ month server bill, let me know and I’d be happy to remove all ads, and you can become an admin. 

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