Thinking Of Expanding The Site: Questions

Yeah, Im not a huge Paypal fan either. It appeared to be the only practical way of doing this though. If anyone knows of a better alternative, please let me know.
 
I have an existing debt with paypal that i refuse to pay so it's not really an option. I can send you a check or m.o if you give me a po box # or address to send to as well.

I think you can do something with western union online. I bought some crappy halloweed outfit with it a couple years back but it was extremely expensive.
 
I got a good PayPal story. You're supposed to verify credit cards with them via small (like 13 cents) charges on them. Well I cancelled a credit card before verfying it with PayPal, and now they have my account frozen because of the unverified card. Customer service is totally baffled on this, like it's never happened before. So, if there's a separate option for making a donation here, I'll kick in some bucks.
 
I think this place should go with the blog format, like The Bostonist. At the end of every day have a quick wrap up of all Boston development/architectural related news.

Perhaps a section for upcoming events (T hearings, BAC, speakings of whatnot).

Photo section is a great idea, and a photo-a-day would work great with the wrap up section. One thing the Gothamist does is have a feed for new images put up on Filkr with the tag "gothamist". We could start a feed with "archBoston" and post the best one or something. We could have a photo gallery too but having everyone just uploading images to a server will cost a lot for server and bandwidth.

And in stead of a comments section for the blog have a thread for it so to better integrate the forums into the rest of the site.
 
Is there anyway to better integrate the wiki format into a regular webpage? I feel that if the site is going to expand it would be better to combine a new site with the wiki.

The reason I bring this up is I was thinking that a great section for the site would be an actual history of architecture in Boston. Robert A. M. Stern wrote a series of books about architecture in New York City, he just published the 2000 volume and I have a copy of the 1960's volume (it's gigantic).

The wiki already has pages for some buildings but there really isn't any information on them. What I envision is a site where you get the history of the building, information on famous architects of the Boston area, and information on the prevailing styles of the area. Someone here used to do an architect of the month thing which I think would translate really well to the wiki format. Someone could write up a brief history of the building and as more research is done more can be added; this is the basic idea behind the wiki. One way to cut down on defacing of the wiki would be to have a tight membership of known contributors who are the only ones with access . This way some can edit but the actually content would be viewable at the website, keeping the wiki a sort of behind the scenes engine.

The problem is that if we want people to come to the main page we should have a sections for these things rather than just a link to the wiki which would feel like a different web site and disconnect people from this site, even though they are technically the same. We bring the forums, wiki, and main site together so people don't feel like they are going from one web site to another, rather they feel like architectureBoston is just one huge site.

Just some thoughts.
 
Yeah, Van, I too like that idea. I think the Wiki can be a much better resource than it currently is. Ive been looking into it and it is possible to make it so only registered users can edit the wiki. Its a bit involved, but I dont think it would be a problem. The only thing I'm worried about is disc space and bandwidth. It would also mean abandoning the current wiki service. Id like a lot more input before I did anything though.
 
Just had an idea, for those who don't or can't use PayPal. Could you set up an eBay store? I've never sold anything on eBay but everyone I've bought from has taken credit cards, so I think ebay handles the CC transactions. Just a thought.
 
Patrick said:
will our old posts still be available after the switch?
Click to expand...

Yes they will. If there is anything other than a perfect conversion, it wont happen.

Also, I havent given up on the old, pre-crash forum. I do still still have all those posts, even if they have no user or title information associated with them. There is a very good chance it will resurface, albeit in a very raw form.
 
M. Brown said:
Have you looked into Invision Power?
Click to expand...

I have, and I was a bit turned-off by their business model. I chose VBulletin because it's cheaper, it has a larger community base, it has a longer history, and it has far greater interoperability with the other software packages that, most likely, will be used on the new site.
 
briv said:
Patrick said:
will our old posts still be available after the switch?
Click to expand...

Yes they will. If there is anything other than a perfect conversion, it wont happen.

Also, I havent given up on the old, pre-crash forum. I do still still have all those posts, even if they have no user or title information associated with them. There is a very good chance it will resurface, albeit in a very raw form.
Click to expand...

excellent.
 
I don't really have a preference as long as we still have a basic functional forum. However, I will say it took me a lot of effort to find this forum. I wasn't specifically looking for a forum on architecture in Boston. I was looking for information on all significant development projects around town at a time when they were all news to me (North Point, Waterfront, Boylston Square, etc). Searching around online, I kept stumbling on new projects I hadn't heard of- all this exciting development in Boston- until eventually, and I forget how, I stumbled on this forum, which of course has all the info I was looking for all in one convenient place.
Click to expand...

I ditto this entire paragraph
 
It would be sweet to have a quick edit feature.
 
Random request:

Can we get strikeout tags () on either the current or the new version of the board? Thanks.
 
Random request to all forumers, starting whenever:

could we make a more concerted effort to place news articles and general info on one topic in the same thread? For instance, we have the current thread on the BU dorm towers and then an older one from July that's buried back on the third page. I noticed when browsing around on the old Skyscraperguy forum that this "problem" was incredibly widespread and that this isn't anywhere near as much an issue here, but there's stil a few loose ends here and there. I suppose if we had a dedicated moderator they would just go ahead and merge the threads, but since we currently don't have one it's up to us to be a bit more vigilant.

Not to be a nitpick - well, yes, to be a nitpick - but dealing with development issues, where things are drawn out over a number of years, it's nice to have everything related to a specific project in one chronologically-ordered thread.
 
Great idea but I think this could be done easily with smarter forum software (which I believe is being installed) and tighter board moderation (not a slap at anyone!)
 
Dude, I agree with you on the moderation count.. we're not big or rowdy enough to need it YET. But if and when we do upgrade to vBulletin and get listed on google, there'll undoubtedly be an influx of n00bs and we'll probably need one then to keep 'em in line.

Who here wants to take the job, and get people to respect their authoritah?!
 
Thats not what I meant. I meant better moderation of the threads, like condensing two similar threads so to keep things simple. Thats all.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top