I recently resigned my admin position from a popular admin community that will remain nameless in this post. The reason for that will be clear in the end. Since that time many things have been bothering me about these communities with the exception of one. They refuse to join in any sort of alliance with each other that could and more than likely would benefit them all. Instead each has there own variation of the rule that you can not link to other admin forums.
One community, the one I resigned from takes this to the ridiculous. Not only can’t you link to any other admin community. You can’t mention the name of the admin forum and in most cases the admin forum name is replaced by “another forum”. There are also rules at this not to be named admin forum that disallows staff to have any sort of like community. If you do have a webmaster community you are prohibited from having a link directory that will include links to other admin forums or have any forum that is geared to forum admins. This was in the thread in which I resigned. This is ridiculous. There are other reasons I resigned and the no link policy as well as the owners short sightedness when it comes to bringing the forum into the present are the two that broke the camels back for me. This nameless admin community is still languished in 2003 and the owner is too short sighted to do anything about it. His reasons? He would lose his designer and programmer. Then why do you own a community if you can’t do these things yourself or at the very least can’t find someone familiar with the new improved software do them for you?
I for one am glad this admin community is not going to move into the new era. All the rest of the admin forums are in the same boat with the exception of one. They are all vbulletin centric with little to no discussions taking place about other software. They are basically all covering the same topics about the same software. This is also the main reason why these forums have these nonsense no compete rules. This puts off users of other software. Just take a look at Admin Addict, Admin Fusion and the nameless forum to name a few, I’ll let you figure out the URL to the nameless forum for yourself, and you’ll see much the same thing with a different wrapper.
The admin forum scene was so bad that I had considered starting one myself. Instead I kept my eye on a new one, Admin Extra. While they started out on vbulletin and had the same familiar faces signed up I got a sense that the owner knew where she wanted to take the site and knew outdated software wasn’t going to get it there. Admin Extra made the leap to 2010 in one fell swoop. In doing so Admin Extra is already starting to jump ahead of the other admin forums. Already you’re seeing people show up that use other software. Sure the same familiar vbulletin people are there, but, there is a nice flow of new faces bringing new perspective to the admin forum world.
While the forum to remain nameless and the rest of the admin community world languish in the past with outdated software and enforce archaic to the point of idiotic rules for staff Admin Extra has forged ahead and I predict that within the next year will be the defacto leader in the admin forum field leaving the nameless admin forum and the rest in the dust.
If I owned an admin forum I would be worried right about now. Your days are numbered. Admin Extra saw the future and grabbed a hold of it and as a result is heading to the top. All the others will be yesterdays news, if they aren’t already, in a short time.
Wow, you must really like AX. I like it, too. Lisa (Azhria Lilu) is down to earth. I’m not sure about the IPB jump, but I wish her well.
I was a former admin of Admin Fusion, but after 2 years of new owners’ BS I started a new board with James. We call it the Forum Admin Dojo, (a place to learn).
Good luck to you, Bob. I’m kinda sleepy, the Sandman’s comin’!
-Dave aka PandaMarketer on AX
Nice reference. I didn’t know what to take of it in the beginning since it started out the same as the others. After being a member for a couple months I realized that ADX would be different and would be what an admin community should be.
Great post, Bob. I always wanted to be staff at the nameless forum but, in the end, I’m glad I never went for it and decided to go with Admin Extra instead. It was a much better choice in the long run.
You used the ‘nameless forum’ as a tag. Didn’t know you were staff there btw. The design *is* outdated, but I do not think that IPB or another forum software is the way to go for them. There are heavy customisations to the way the software works, I do believe that they once beta tested for Zoints, all the revolutionary new ideas Zoints had at the time for the software are still in action on the ‘nameless forum’..
While Admin Extra was an overnight success, it was partially because of all the failings of your ‘unnamed forum’ which drove most the members who now frequent Admin Extra to Admin Extra. I’m not trying to take away from what Lisa and her team (which I was privileged to be a part of) have achieved, it’s nothing short of amazing to have this much success in such a short span of time, however I think you’re putting too much stock in the power of IPB as a forum software to make or break the forum.
Take a look at the most recent members. Do you think they would have joined if the switch didn’t happen?
There is an untapped group of people that would benefit from what admin forums have to offer. Unfortunately vbulletin and the vbulletin fan base, which these forums tend to get as members, are disliked by users of other software.
Now that switch has been made those very same users that wouldn’t join because of vbulletin are now joining and posting. The tide is turning and IPB IMO is the cause.
I see 6 new members have joined since the switch (Screenshot), frankly the names all look unfamiliar and like spambots to me. I am on IPB forums and the vB forums and I like to think I recognise the more influential players in both softwares, and I don’t see any of them that have joined up yet. Matt Mecham himself even joined when it was on vB, so I doubt that the forum software has anything to do with whether a member signs up or not. I don’t visit a forum and go “Eugh, it runs PHPBB, I’m not signing up cos I dont like PHPBB”
Sorry, the site looks fantastic and they’re doing a great job and the IPS applications will add a lot more functionality than they had with vB, however I still think that you’re putting too much stock in the forum software.
Can’t we all just get along
btw Bob, looking forward to an update on this post
http://bobschwarz.com/forum-seo-vbulletinvbseo-vs-ipb-with-seo-urls
hope all is going well
That’s the problem Brandon. They all can’t get along. TAZ refuses to forge any sort of relationship, which I believe would be beneficial to all, with any like communities. This never made sense to me. What harm can it do to exchange links with other admin communities?
I’m afraid to say I’m not sure I agree with this article, because I’ve never really seen Admin Extra quite live up to its potential. Not saying it’s a bad site, I’m a fairly active member there, but it seems like most admin sites, it started out drawing the same members found at most admin forums. You know, the ones which make every admin site seem like a vBulletin school reunion. I’d say that’s why sites like Admin Addict died, because they didn’t offer anything new, just a bunch of members who conveniantly tend to join every new site the clique became part of.
I’m going to hazard a guess that the unnamed admin forum is the one with the initials ‘TAZ’, correct? I can see what you mean by said forum going downhill, it seems a lot of the more intelligent discussions have to much of a degree died out over there, and I’ve seen quite a few… fluff posting users show up recently who say maybe a sentence in badly done English and exist just to have a link to their site in thei signature. I guess like Sitepoint and Webhosting Talk.
The bit about the no links is ridiculous though. I guess I can see logic with not allowing links to competing sites on the forum itself, allowing them seems a bit like opening the way for your competitor to send ‘not quite spamming’ members to promote their site, and I guess they might be worrying (likely incorrectly) about an effect on page rank. It’s also probable that they’re just trying to stop their regular members knowing about said other sites, because let’s face it, the worst thing for an overly harsh regime is to tell people about some place with less ridiculous restrictions. Not saying you can’t find these sites easily, but I see to some degree why people wouldn’t allow links to competitors.
But not allowing people to have links on their own sites to competitors? I never heard that, and it ultimately seems like they forget that they DON’T OWN the sites of their staff. It’s none of their business what their staff link to on their sites, especially if it’s just to a competing forum which is perfectly legal.
Oh, and I never heard anything about vBulletin fans being seen as annoying by users of other forum software, where does this sentiment come from? I know I’m not personally liked by a lot of contributors to the fan communities of ANY forum software (presumably because I think that bad, useless content and poorly done mods aren’t popular/are pirated because they’re useless junk), but I’ve never heard of an outright hatred towards vBulletin fans in general.
If you read through the IPB, phpBB or any other forum software community you’ll see the hatred of vbulletin users.
vbulletin users are considered smug and condescending. Hell you could sense that in many of the threads at vbulletin.com for example. The plugin makers are even more so.
I haven’t noticed that attitude on the Invision Power Board forums when I checked just now. The standard disdain for the software as all fanboys tend to have towards their enemies, but I haven’t seen any bashing of vBulletin users. Any example topics or anything?
I’d give you one example that I read and participated in yesterday, but, it’s been deleted and not because of what any of us that replied said. The vbulletin user was like many others and was very demanding and arrogant in his replies so it was deleted. I’m sure that more was posted bashing the guy after I last replied and it more than likely turned into a vbulletin v IPB thread.