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.