There are some good things that a forum could achieve. For one thing, it’s much easier to look through old posts (this is especially important on a discussion board like this, where there are many good posts that essentially get lost)
However, a forum with a Proboards URL is going to deter a significant number of people.
However, a forum with a Proboards URL is going to deter a significant number of people.
I was not aware of this. I made a proboards forum because it was free and I have used one before, so I know a little about how they work. It’s probably too late to switch to a different host service without confusing everyone deeply. Can you still explain why it would deter people, so I know why not to do it again?
Hm, well, Proboards is pretty much the “lowest common denominator” of free bulletin-boards (in other words, it has bad signalling value). Most of the time when people see a Proboards message board, they’ll think that the board is most likely a low-quality board. Because most Proboards forums are low-quality (even though theoretically, there could be high-quality ones—although the high-quality ones almost always end up switching to an independently hosted server or vBulletin. Not that it’s necessarily a good thing—I’m surprised why there seem to be no good discussion boards centered around Proboards)
Given the lack of activity on the proboards forum, I don’t think a switch to vBulletin would confuse all that many people. And it would probably look better.
There are some good things that a forum could achieve. For one thing, it’s much easier to look through old posts (this is especially important on a discussion board like this, where there are many good posts that essentially get lost)
However, a forum with a Proboards URL is going to deter a significant number of people.
I was not aware of this. I made a proboards forum because it was free and I have used one before, so I know a little about how they work. It’s probably too late to switch to a different host service without confusing everyone deeply. Can you still explain why it would deter people, so I know why not to do it again?
Hm, well, Proboards is pretty much the “lowest common denominator” of free bulletin-boards (in other words, it has bad signalling value). Most of the time when people see a Proboards message board, they’ll think that the board is most likely a low-quality board. Because most Proboards forums are low-quality (even though theoretically, there could be high-quality ones—although the high-quality ones almost always end up switching to an independently hosted server or vBulletin. Not that it’s necessarily a good thing—I’m surprised why there seem to be no good discussion boards centered around Proboards)
Given the lack of activity on the proboards forum, I don’t think a switch to vBulletin would confuse all that many people. And it would probably look better.