Future of the forums - MusicianWages.com

Tagged: bbpress, forums, gravatar, musician forum, upgrade

This topic has 20 voices, contains 29 replies, and was last updated by Lisa Brown 322 days ago.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 30 total)

1 2 →

Author	Posts
Author	Posts
September 30, 2010 at 5:06 am #6737
David J. Hahn	<p>Hi all – </p> <p>I just want to get a informal survey of everybody that's using these forums. I'm noticing more spammers lately, which is a drag to clean up. But if everyone is really getting something out of these forums, then it's worth it. </p> <p>And if people are really getting a lot out of these forums, then maybe we should upgrade to a better platform. </p> <p>So two questions:</p> <p>1.) Do you find these forums valuable?<br /> 2.) How often do you visit these forums?</p> <p>If no one answers below I'll know my answer!</p> <p>If you're not using the forums more because we've got a ghetto forum platform, let me know that too. I'd love to get some honest feedback. </p>
September 30, 2010 at 4:17 pm #7352
Joe Stone	Hi David, I usually check these and my other less active forums once a day or so. I personally don't mind that it's not hugely active. But as an admin on several other fora, I know getting people to use a forum is a chicken-and-egg problem. This makes the spammers an even worse problem. What I did on some other fora that I run was to install an "anti-bot question." This requires everyone registering to answer a question. The questions are simple questions that anyone acceptable to the forum could answer. For instance, on a forum for fans of a certain musician, one of the questions they could be asked was "what instrument does Rob play?" This dropped the spammers to zero, even though I was sure that some were humans. I guess they could not be bothered with trying to find out the answers.
October 1, 2010 at 4:23 am #7353
timeforsax	When I've posted something, I come everyday to the site. If not, I come every two months and check the posts and articles. I would suggest keeping the forum up. I think it's helpful.
October 1, 2010 at 5:35 pm #7357
David J. Hahn	Cool – I'm glad to hear that. We're using bbpress as our forum software. It's billed as sister software to WordPress, but so far I've found it pretty disappointing. Adding an avatar and things like that seem to be difficult. Maybe we just need to upgrade the design. We've been talking for months about upgrading the design of MW generally. We commissioned a logo and we need to add that, etc. As soon as I get a stretch of time off I think I'll tackle that. That's a pretty big project, but I'll get to it eventually. I think there's a plugin for adding a question to posts, I'll look into that. Thanks for the feedback.
October 2, 2010 at 5:10 pm #7360
brian	Hey david. I love this forum! It's designed for exactly the kind of person I am: an aspiring composer, musician, performer, etc. I do wish there were more people and more information. But I'm already extremely grateful for the invaluable information I've already gotten here. Thanks!
October 6, 2010 at 3:15 am #7365
Ron	1. Yes, I find these forums VERY valuable! 2. If I'm gigging a lot, I probably visit once a week but if I'm in a slump, several times a week. Once I read something groundbreaking, I magically find myself with more work! The platform seems to work for me, but I could never get the picture uploader to work quite right…
October 8, 2010 at 12:10 am #7367
Andree-Ann	Dave you know I'm in love with this forum. It does have a pretty ghetto plateform but that certainly won't keep me from visiting. I usually visit 2 -3 times a week. My only 'problem' if I may say so, is that alot of people ask questions but never try and give some input to other people's questions. We always see the same people answering and I'm sure there are alot of people that would have great things to say to many of us. Also, there seem to be alot of questions on cruiseships that are very similar… but then again, thats nothing that you can fix, just my own two cents :)
October 9, 2010 at 3:09 pm #7369
David J. Hahn	Andree-Ann – Well said as always. I feel the same way. I especially wish there was somebody else that could answer the cruise ship questions. Most of the content on this site about cruise ships was written in 2004 or 2007. It's been forever since I was on ships or cared much about that kind of gig. I will say it's nice that the cruise ship questions end up here rather than in my inbox (as they used to), so at least there's the illusion that someone else might come along and answer them (or read them and not ask the same question). It'd be nice to attract more pros to the forum to share their experiences. AllAboutJazz.com has a good forum that musicians talk on, as does MyAuditions.com. There's also a great forum at Generally, it seems like sites that cater to a specific instrument or specific musical style seem to attract pros to their forums a lot easier than we do. I think it'd be cool to have a better platform – maybe that would help attract more people. Or not? If we upgraded we'd lose all of the previous posts and we'd all have to sign up again.
October 9, 2010 at 3:16 pm #7370
musicwoman	David, I just found this forum. I am happy to see it online and will continue to visit it. Question, why, when I try to upload my avatar does it return me to the forum page? This must be a glitch. Thank you, JC
October 11, 2010 at 11:59 am #7371
Joe Stone	I know the Music Player forums get a bit of traffic for their magazine-related areas such as Keyboard Corner (affiliated with Keyboard mag) and Guitar Player. However, their more generic forum areas don't get much traffic at all. The only exception that I know of is when Craig Anderton was moderating one area. David, I think your best bet is to have regular articles that get out there and generally bring traffic to the site. I wish I could recall how I found this place so I could tell you what worked for me. Depending on what the new software was, there might be a way to import the old posts. In this case, you might need a two step process, where you export the posts to another format and then import them to the new forum. P.S. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that doesn't care about cruise ship gigs. ;~)
October 11, 2010 at 1:25 pm #7372
Andree-Ann	The thing is that there are tons of articles already written on cruise ship gigs and honestly, they are pretty good – ive never been on a ship but i can pretty much imagine every aspect of it just by reading those dozens of articles. The way to make this forum work would be to make it more of a community rather than having all of us asking questions and dave answering everything…the dude knows things but im sure we can all bring different information to the table. Stupid random example but when I was a teenager and completely obssessed with Guns N Roses, I used to go on these GNR forums and websites, and everybody was posting stuff, everybody had something to say because it felt like more of a group of friends 'hanging out' than a forum where you can get an answer to your question without putting too much effort. Know what I mean? I don't if thats something we can actually change or try to bring out more, but I feel like it would make a world of a difference if all the members contributed a bit and felt more like equals rather than having you and cam answering everything…
October 13, 2010 at 12:20 pm #7373
Joe Stone	That's one of the reasons I try to reply when I can. Never having had a cruise ship gig nor wanting one, I can't reply to those questions though. Starting "conversations" might be a good idea.
October 16, 2010 at 9:49 pm #7377
bilco	I find the forums valuable. They seem to be oriented more towards cruise, theatre and other gigs where sight reading is a must and I pretty much a by ear or chord/numbers chart club and private party player, but I still find value here and would hate to see the forums disappear. I don't see any problem with the platform of the site at all. Thanks, Bill
October 19, 2010 at 3:52 pm #7381
jcmuzik	I'm a new member, and I enjoy the site very greatly as a resource. But what would liven up the forums would maybe be more members? I do not see many recent posts, and I'm not sure everyone is aware of the forums or has something to say. And I'm also not too knowledgeable about other music forums or communities so I cannot compare. But it is a good start.
November 3, 2010 at 2:32 pm #7390
mjflute	A few years ago, I used to work on a website that used the Seditio platform. If you're looking for a new website engine, I'd recommend them. http://www.neocrome.net/ We used to be able to set up a lot of moderation features that helped control spamming. I've never used bbpress, though, so I don't know if I could compare the two. Seditio requires some php knowledge.