Freeforums.org New Ideas

[Dylan]

If you own a forum hosted by freeforums.org the chances are you have read there blog post as they are putting up a notice on forums that can only be seen by admins.The post is about some new features they are going to have soon.

You can read the blog post here
http://blog.freeforums.org/whats-next-f ... forumsorg/


Thoughts ?

 

[Murder he Wrote]

Interesting blog post right there, and from a former support team member's point of view, here's what I think.

Premium Service: If done correctly, it could be one of the greatest things that hit freeforums. Successful forum Administrators on free hosts are always looking at ways to expand and improve the community, and many are willing to provide financial backing to support this - however not everyone has the ability or confidence to do so. It will be interesting to see which features and MODs they make available to the premium members as opposed to free members. I'd say it's important they find the right balance, as if they pay too much attention to their premium brand, they run the risk of damaging the organisation by neglecting the free users.

Simple Admin Panel: Great idea, and couldn't agree more with Division. phpBB3's Admin Panel isn't at all user friendly for those new to the "foruming" world - basic tasks such as setting permissions are turned into daunting formalities. Forumotion's revamped Admin panel has made their network a unique selling point, and its simplicity has attracted a lot of members. By introducing their own version of a Simple Admin Panel will significantly ease the fright of their phpBB2 members intimidated by the upcoming forced upgrade to phpBB3. Also, it will attract more members from other free hosts such as InvisionFree or Proboards...who crave the poweful features phpBB can offer...however are intimidated by the Admin panel.

Make Money:...everyone wants money, and I feel if this is done correctly it could turn into a quality selling point for FreeForums. My initial thoughts were something like an improved community chest whereby instead of receiving credits for a domain or ad-removal, you can actually redeem the cash from your members. However, I remembered back in my days of being support team jackal and division were negotiating with Google various ways they could implement an Ad-revenue sharing platform, so there may well be a late come back for that idea. Thing is, FreeForums are big into surverys at the moment, and I hope for their sake they don't plan on implementing this kind of money making strategy for their users. I can see it being something like "complete these 3 surveys and get paid on a commission basis". Sounds crazy, however I think it could still be a real possibility. It will be good to see what ideas they do come up with though, because if they pull it off they'll become the first free forum host to actually provide members with a money making platform...something that'll be a huge advantage over all of their rivals.

More Mods!: Well, the more the merrier. There are some great MODs for phpBB and by adding more they're only increasing their stickability. The more features available to the users, the more people they'll get wanting to be hosted on their network. However, vBulletin has been criticized for stuffing it with far too many features and I hope that for the user's sake they don't pack in too many useless MODs.


Believe it or not, I think FreeForums has a bright future. If they play their cards right and sort out the occasional uptime / slowness issues I strongly believe they have the capacity to once again become the internet's best free host.

 

[Nebulous]

Freeforums is a joke. Most of the things they wrote in there are probably lies, thats what they are good at. -roll-

 

[P®od]

theezy, thats not very helpful to the topic -🙁
I don't think that is even a helpful opinion.

Anyway, I like FreeForums because as much as theezy reckons thats true it isn't. Recently a member of FreeForums posted a topic about getting an Arcade mod installed. Not long after the mod was tested and installed and now being used on my forum. Theezy, FreeForums has come along way. You obviously haven't had a lot to do with them. So i think that is a VERY misleaded judgement. Unless im wrong and you have had a lot to do with them 😛

So yes iCrazy these new ideas sound excellent. But the simple admin panel won't be much use to advanced users obviously, But i think that if an admin is in a rush then it will be great for a quick fix here and there. I'm interested in future mods though mostly.

 

[Subz]

FA and FP used to be on freeforums but they upgraded to their sister site which for hosting is quite bad but everyone learnes the hard way.


i've never used a free forum host really so I don't have an opinion on them and can't say if they are good or bad.

 

[Nebulous]

theezy, thats not very helpful to the topic -🙁
I don't think that is even a helpful opinion.

Anyway, I like FreeForums because as much as theezy reckons thats true it isn't. Recently a member of FreeForums posted a topic about getting an Arcade mod installed. Not long after the mod was tested and installed and now being used on my forum. Theezy, FreeForums has come along way. You obviously haven't had a lot to do with them. So i think that is a VERY misleaded judgement. Unless im wrong and you have had a lot to do with them 😛

I was with them when they 1st opened and with them for a long while until I couldn't stand it anymore and switched hosts. I know all about their shady practices, lies and corrupt behavior. As far as being helpful, who is asking for help here in this topic?

 

[P®od]

-😉-
Never mind theezy, Maybe you had a bad experience. I must have missed that bit -8)-

 

[Dylan]

theezy, thats not very helpful to the topic -🙁
I don't think that is even a helpful opinion.

Anyway, I like FreeForums because as much as theezy reckons thats true it isn't. Recently a member of FreeForums posted a topic about getting an Arcade mod installed. Not long after the mod was tested and installed and now being used on my forum. Theezy, FreeForums has come along way. You obviously haven't had a lot to do with them. So i think that is a VERY misleaded judgement. Unless im wrong and you have had a lot to do with them 😛

I was with them when they 1st opened and with them for a long while until I couldn't stand it anymore and switched hosts. I know all about their shady practices, lies and corrupt behavior. As far as being helpful, who is asking for help here in this topic?

Lets stop talking about the past and start talking about there ideas.

 

[Gimgak]

Well their ideas do seem to look good, hope that some of them are added. I myself haven't used them but I've visited sites hosted by them, looks like everything seems to work and isn't to slow

 

[Nebulous]

theezy, thats not very helpful to the topic -🙁
I don't think that is even a helpful opinion.

Anyway, I like FreeForums because as much as theezy reckons thats true it isn't. Recently a member of FreeForums posted a topic about getting an Arcade mod installed. Not long after the mod was tested and installed and now being used on my forum. Theezy, FreeForums has come along way. You obviously haven't had a lot to do with them. So i think that is a VERY misleaded judgement. Unless im wrong and you have had a lot to do with them 😛

I was with them when they 1st opened and with them for a long while until I couldn't stand it anymore and switched hosts. I know all about their shady practices, lies and corrupt behavior. As far as being helpful, who is asking for help here in this topic?

Lets stop talking about the past and start talking about there ideas.

LIke I said, its probably a bunch of lies. Thats me talking about their new ideas. There is no way they would ever share money with their "customers" why do you think they have TWO banner ads on all pages? They are greedy. Thats twice as many ads as most hosts use. I bet their new admin panel will have some sort of ads on them. Lol. Sorry if I am sounding harsh but thats just my thoughts and me being realistic. This isnt a praise-freeforums.org topic anyways.

They can add more mods, thats always a good thing. But people should use a paid or free web host for their forum. That way they can add whatever mods they want and make all the free backups they want.

 

[P®od]

Well there ideas seem like they are aiming high so i hope they can get going asap. It's great that they are trying to encourage growth to by deleting inactive forums.

 

[Lee Lawson]

I wouldn't mind FreeForums if they removed Hosted by FreeForums.org that just annoyed me on a old forum i worked on.

 

[Midnight]

my old forum was hosted there, there probaly the best free forum i would say. they have good support and i personally think they have a bright future ahead. adapting to one of your own hosts isnt easy and im sure that freeforums.org will continue to grow

 

[Mudjosh]

I would also agree they are the best. Their staff and former staff *looks at Christian* are great.

My biggest thing is that they like to keep the support staff to a minimum. I still haven't figured that one out.

I would have guessed for a company that prominent (Or at least used to be that prominent) they would have a larger support staff.

But anywho, they are looking for someone else to help out. Finally.
---

These ideas are pretty well rounded.

Freeforums has started to work on organization and customization. I have looked at their revised profile network and I used to wish they could release that as a mod on the phpbb3 network. I doubt they ever will. They are not only redefining phpbb free forum hosting.. They are redefining phpbb3!

If they keep this up, I believe the dev. team will be talked to in the future on joining the core phpbb dev team. (Though with phpbb's team from what I read from their modders, I doubt this would ever happen.. 🙁 )

 

[Murder he Wrote]

My biggest thing is that they like to keep the support staff to a minimum. I still haven't figured that one out.

FreeForums have a tough recruitment policy, whereby they only choose the best members of the community who apply. Reason being in a support environment the size of FreeForums who could get 20 support topics within the space of an hour there is no room for mistakes. Additionally there are some fairly nice advantages to being staff which they don't announce to the public.

Their staff and former staff *looks at Christian* are great.

Hmm, well I'm not in a position to comment on how well I did personally, however I do know there are growing concerns amongst several members here and at other places that don't confide in the current support team.

but they upgraded to their sister site

LunarPages isn't their Sister Site. They are partners with Lunarpages and get paid on a commission basis for every free forum they move to lunarpages' hosting platform (I think).

 

[Victim]

They might be the best now in your opinion, but they certainly wasn't the best 6 months back. They were liars and very greedy, a lot of people left FreeForums when it all came out about them.. But, i guess it has all died down now and no new members of FreeForums know about it, which would probably be the reason why you don't think the host is absolutely awful. In my opinion, forumotion is much better, you can select who can see the ads (guests, members or everyone) and forumotion is MUCH more customizable.

Sorry for going off topic but i just thought I'd express my opinion on FreeForums.

 

[Murder he Wrote]

I don't think it's right for members to be calling them "greedy" at all, I had an interesting conversation with Aaronium one night who told me and Liam about the kind of costs involved with running a forum network on that size...and let me tell you it wasn't cheap for them. So you have to understand why they had to put advertising on the network...which actually helps significantly.

At the end of the day if they didn't put advertising on the forum then there would be no FreeForums. Same applies for every free forum host. Yes, they had a reputation for lying / deceiving users a while ago but they seem to be over that now.

I still stand by my previous post, whereby if they sort their occasional uptime / slowness issue they can become one of the best hosts again.

 

[Victim]

I don't think it's right for members to be calling them "greedy" at all, I had an interesting conversation with Jackal and Aaronium one night who told me and Liam about the kind of costs involved with running a forum network on that size...and let me tell you it wasn't cheap for them. So you have to understand why they had to put advertising on the network...which actually helps significantly.

Yeah, understandable, but is there really a need for them to display so many ads on forums? Surely they don't need to display that many ads to cover the costs of the servers. A lot of free forum hosts display ads, which is completely understandable, but they don't display as many ads as FreeForums. I think that is why we all calling them greedy.

 

[Murder he Wrote]

Hmm, I think they're being fairly reasonable with what ads they serve. When they first put advertising on the network I remember there being two banner ads and those inline kontera text ads...which I agree was far too much.

Personally, I don't think two banner ads is too unreasonable seeing as they keep the "Hosted by FreeForums.org" part to a minimum, unlike some hosts such as MyFreeForum which seem to be screaming links to various upgrades - even to their guests. Additionally, Admins don't see Ads and Admins can also choose whether staff see ads so at the end of the day it's not overly bad.

 

[Nebulous]

I find it funny that you are defending them when not to long ago you were a part of a anti freeforums.org forum based on mocking them and making public their shady practices. Wonder what's got you changing your tune all of the sudden?
They have twice as many ads as other hosts that are FAR larger than they are. Greed has a factor in that. If they are running google ads and if google is actually paying them, then they are making a nice chunk of money with nice profits. Google pays quite nice. I know I would have made over $150 in just one month from ONE forum. If they actually DO share the money with their users, which they have said before (and that never happened) I will be shocked. Whoever gets an actual pay check from them in the future, be sure to come back here and post about it. ~razz~