Ok, I've got a major announcement. Plans are in the works for a new high-end message board system. Its way better than the current boards and has many new features. Recently I jumped hosts (for the upteenth time) and this one comes with a phpbb feature included (
http://www.phpbb.com). The one downside is that the board will be part of the site meaning if the site is down, the boards will also be down. But that really doesn't happen that much. Here are a few important items I would like to point out and discuss here.
-as the current system, there will be two "catagories": one moderated and the other unmoderated
within each category will be individual forums - in other words, groups of topics - check for more on that below
-registration will be mandatory (free of course) so no more anonymous posting (although you can choose any user name, within reason, so its still somewhat anonymous - unacceptable user names will be deleted
)
-with the additional features and hopefully increased traffic because of them, comes more admin responsibility/maintenance. So I am calling on some volunteers to be moderators for the moderated forum. Anyone interested, let me know. There is some trust necessary here so I will chose those I know and trust
-the current forum will locked and linked to, so old messages will not be lost forever but will no longer be open for reply
-and quite importantly: NO MORE ADVERTISING!!!
the objective is to create a forum that will be the best looking, organized, and active tennis-related forum on the web!! Ok, maybe that's shooting a little high but it should be a big improvement.
some of the features will be
-stickys for keeping important topics on top
-number of posts and ranks listed for each user
-a whole lot of smilies to choose from (there are smilie packs out there somewhere, if anyone knows where I can get those, let me know)
-add your own sig
-no pictures can be uploaded to the site but they can be linked to, thus showing up in the posts (although, I think this forum supports that too)
-private messaging system
-some other things I'm sure I am not thinking of at this point
in this thread, discuss some of the topics you would like to see grouped...here is what I am thinking so far:
moderated:
Announcements
Corrections/updates
General Discussion
Message Board Requests
Unmoderated
Pro Tennis
College Tennis
Juniors Tennis
Women's Tennis
Anything Goes
Perhaps it will be easier to come up with ideas once the forum is up and you can visualize. The new forum should be available shortly. I will keep you posted.