Growing the MP3Car Community.

[mookie]

Ok, here's my first draft of a semi-working example of what I'd want in the site:
http://carpcgallery.defiantlydigital.com/

Sorry for the long domain name, it's not designed to be easy to remember, it's designed to test things out.

It's just using the default PHPNuke theme, if anyone actually ends up using this for anything I'm sure someone could make a new theme. (I can in needed, but it's not my favorite thing to do)

Features:

• Picture Gallery (not fully working yet)
• Forum
• "Miles from" feature previously discussed
• Sections for Guides, Reviews, News, and Annoucements
• Wiki

To Do:

• Get the picture gallery to work like I want (When you sign up for an account, it creates an album that you can use to upload install photos, etc)
• Add the ability to view users that are withing x miles of you
• Add support for metric system to "miles from" script
• Add a calendar
• Probably a lot more...

[Bugbyte]

I like it. It allows the users to be more interactive - post your own stuff, write reviews, write FAQ's, all kinds of stuff. The "just posted" feature is nice, too.

Keep up the good work!

[liquid_smoke]

I would love to see to see this site grow, and dont mind any adds that are put up as a result, long as they are revelant adds, like lcd screens, computer parts ect, anything related to what we do here. I dont think it would be hard to find paying adverts either, we are "the" carputer community with 13k members according to the forum stats, which im sure will hold a lot of weight. Im actually suprised with 13k members this place isnt a zoo
But a overhall is due, i basicly only vist a few forums because even those are massive and hard to find info. We have a lot of very smart and creative people here, time to start putting our potential to work more effectively.

[kiltjim]

I agree with alot of the opinions already posted.

I think that the forum needs an overhaul, but I don't think we need to start with the ads. Maybe something down at the bottom of the page, or something on the homepage, but nothing else.

I would like a place to host a gallery, but not if its gonna cost me. Maybe limit the content on the gallery to content. Like you could only have 2 or 3 pictures of you car, but like 10 pictures of your computer. Or something like that. Maybe have a tiered limit based on post count.

Reviews would be nice. I read the reviews on other sites, it would be nice if they were all in the same place.

FAQs, or How-tos all in one place. If the overhaul would happen, maybe get someone who knows each category really well, and get them to write the mother of all how-tos for their expertise.

And I really agree that we need more moderators. Maybe a moderator for each sub forum, appointed by expertise. Maybe a sub-moderator, or something. We could have a whole chain of power scheme in place. It would be nice to have someone to go to with problems in a specific forum.

Well, I'm gonna keep visiting, and posting, regardless of how it looks or is run. As long as it doesn't go to hell.

[mookie]

I like the idea of limited space for image storage.

One thing I've thought of is doing pay kinda like deviantART does it (if you can't tell, I really like the way dA is setup).
Have just about everything free to regular users. Then, have a subscription account where you get no ads, more image storage, etc (an @mp3car.com email address? hosting for your own page about your car?). But also keep it cheap enough that someone can buy a year's subscription and not have to starve for a week.

[Grayscale]

The site looks EXCELLENT so far! I've not always been a fan of web portals, but this is nice! Too bad I don't have any time, or I would write the whole site myself in PHP Aside from the forums that is. Too much crap.

Join the revolution mods! It will make the information exchange so much easier!

[mookie]

Thanks for the compliments. I, too, am usually not a big fan of "out-of-the-box" php stuff but I've found that when you're doing a large project that needs to be secure they're a nice place to start. I think the main thing that's driven me away from the in the past is seeing sites that just throw up the modules and such that come with it and they all look and act alike. But if you spend some time customizing things you can come up with something very unique.

[Yuriy]

Yeah, the "prototype" portal is what I was talking about
I think a small subscription fee (like $5 a month) as an optional feature would really give the admins some more resources to work with while still keeping stuff free. For those of us who would like a personalized page, like CarDomain, to host our carputer setups and receive feedback, that would be cool.

[GruvThang]

Quote: Originally Posted by frodobaggins

Just keep talking, he and the rest of us are listening.

It is hard to say this and not sound like an @$$, and I mean it with the utmost respect, but can "you guys" give feed back on what you do and don't see as possibilities/happenings for the site? Granted it was an unsolicited suggestion but letting us go on about things that are definately not going to happen is almost a waste.



I would like a spellcheck function!

[grepzen]

Frodo, you say you and the folks are listening...

any comments so far? anythoughts?

[Vorex]

IMO whatever they do needs to be secure, and nuke is not a secure base to start from...if you guys do decide to make some kinda improvements and need a php/mysql whore, feel free to shout my way...and as there are plenty of other php/mysql peeps on the forums willing to help, a few of us could collaberate on a new backend for the site...
Also, the use of the "prune" function might be good once in awhile for the forum search...

[W6-Ryan]

Quote: Originally Posted by Vorex

IMO whatever they do needs to be secure, and nuke is not a secure base to start from...if you guys do decide to make some kinda improvements and need a php/mysql whore, feel free to shout my way...and as there are plenty of other php/mysql peeps on the forums willing to help, a few of us could collaberate on a new backend for the site...
Also, the use of the "prune" function might be good once in awhile for the forum search...

nuke will 100% not be used right now we're looking at vbindex, vbportal, etc just the various vb based portal interfaces and we can of course add on any custom modules

Which btw, frodo I'll be IM'n you tonight to get that entire test env setup

[Vorex]

Quote: Originally Posted by techm3

nuke will 100% not be used right now we're looking at vbindex, vbportal, etc just the various vb based portal interfaces and we can of course add on any custom modules

Shweetness...

[SWC]

dont know when it happened but just noticed the frodo forum has a subforum for bugs and FAQ so changes are happening.

[frodobaggins]

Quote: Originally Posted by SWC

dont know when it happened but just noticed the frodo forum has a subforum for bugs and FAQ so changes are happening.

Benefit of my new priveleges