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Cooperider
Active Member
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TEAMBAJA
Member
Well personally I'm here for da boats.
Hard to tell with that list of games under your name!
Let me rephrase...
The main reason I'm here and the main motivation for creating the site was for discussing boats.
The arcade is a fun feature, but it isn't meant to be the main thrust of the site.
Hopefully in time things will grow as they did with the Check site. It took years to build as well.
I guess the only unfortunate thing is that more of the people who suggested and supported the idea of building and having a sister haven't site haven't gotten involved. At least so far.
Forums are funny that way though. They're like a snowball that rolls along picking up snow slowly getting bigger. And as they get bigger, the faster they grow.
The main reason I'm here and the main motivation for creating the site was for discussing boats.
The arcade is a fun feature, but it isn't meant to be the main thrust of the site.
Hopefully in time things will grow as they did with the Check site. It took years to build as well.
I guess the only unfortunate thing is that more of the people who suggested and supported the idea of building and having a sister haven't site haven't gotten involved. At least so far.
Forums are funny that way though. They're like a snowball that rolls along picking up snow slowly getting bigger. And as they get bigger, the faster they grow.
Cooperider
Active Member
I was there, I'm here.Let me rephrase...
The main reason I'm here and the main motivation for creating the site was for discussing boats.
The arcade is a fun feature, but it isn't meant to be the main thrust of the site.
Hopefully in time things will grow as they did with the Check site. It took years to build as well.
I guess the only unfortunate thing is that more of the people who suggested and supported the idea of building and having a sister haven't site haven't gotten involved. At least so far.
Forums are funny that way though. They're like a snowball that rolls along picking up snow slowly getting bigger. And as they get bigger, the faster they grow.
My forum was kind of a lucky shot, a third of my members the first month then gradually growing after that. Almost 300 now. A get together in the works. Little by little the place is getting there.
Chris, you did a tremendous job putting this site together. Now the membership just has to catch up with how good it is. But more and more its growing too. Right now, its a nice place to get away from the bigger board.
Cooperider
Active Member
Chris, I've got a Tic-Tac-Toe game over on my site, that gives me flashbacks to the movie "Wargames".
TEAMBAJA
Member
Sometimes the bigger boards like Offshore Only is like talking to yourself. If you dont have 1/2 million dollar boat, forget being noticed.
Very soon I'll have pics of this years Poker Run boat. I promise you an awesome boat!
Hey Guys,
Yes Coop, you were there and supported the idea and are here. And I appreciate that.
In the big scheme of things, whatever goes down is all good with me.
The truth is that it took us four or five months on the Check site to get it to where it was active on a daily basis. I remember after two months we had something like a dozen members - maybe less actually - and when we moved to the old Eve board there were still only about 20 members or so. So the bottom line is that it takes a lot of time, work and luck to start a site up from scratch.
Also, there were lots of considerations that led to the decision to go ahead and start up a second site.
1) In the latter half of '06, there were a number of fairly active members on the Check site that bought non Check boats. And many of them more or less posted sign off messages on the board after their purchases. A number of the messages, (some which were private and some which were public) brought up the fact that many of those who were leaving wished our site was an all brands site, but because it wasn't, they were moving on. Most of the members also mentioned us having a unique vibe that they really liked.
What was a little disappointing though however, was that many of these same members also mentioned that they didn't feel they had a place on our site any longer with their non Check boat. Not even in the open boating forum. I guess the general consensus seemed to be that we were a pretty loyal Check group and not really accepting to non Check owners. Personally, I don't feel that way. But whatever, "it is what it is", as the saying goes.
2) At the same time, there were rumours and whispers about the health and on going viability of Checkmate. And given that, if something was to develop negatively with Checkmate, I wanted to provide a place for our C-Mate members to go, if they decided they still wanted to hang with their old pals from the Check site.
3) It was becoming evident in late '06 that we were going to have to upgrade servers and to do so, would require a change of hosts. The hosting move was something I was already working on when the discussion thread started about starting a second site.
4) A second site can act as a development site in that it provides a nice place to test out new features and test out upgrades when they are required in a less pressured environment. In this case, it also allowed us to give our new server a shakedown and test it out before trying to move the Check site on to it.
So, given all that I think it made sense to take the plunge and develop our sister site. I hope in time it will slowly grow into it's own little destination, with it's own unique persona and content.
But the reality is that it takes a lot of time to start up a site from total scratch. Starting from scratch is a lot different than starting up a site fueled from an existing site's member base which has become divided and disgruntled with their current board. And we've seen a couple of examples of that over the last year or so with a couple of sites.
The question in those cases is...
...what happens once the anger and frustration subsides?
Let's face it. It's easy in life to get all motivated to do something when you're all pissy and have a bee in your bonnet. But what happens when all of that is forgotten and you're now dealing with your own challenges and frustrations? That's when the work starts and the glory ends. So one would hope that the basis for starting the community is more than just opposition to something and that you started your site to stand for something in it's own right.
As I've mentioned to Coop privately, 99% of the communities on the net are run at a financial loss. Yes, there are exceptions to that rule like OSO, but they are few and far between. And many of those sites took years and years to become what they are and to become capable of earning their keep.
So the bottom line (to me at least), is that if you start a site, it better be based on your own love of something. Because the site itself is going to be quite a bit of work - so it better be a labour of love!
If you start one for other reasons, or based on big expectations of making money, glory or whatever, you'll most likely be disappointed in the end.
Just my .02 cents.
Yes Coop, you were there and supported the idea and are here. And I appreciate that.
In the big scheme of things, whatever goes down is all good with me.
The truth is that it took us four or five months on the Check site to get it to where it was active on a daily basis. I remember after two months we had something like a dozen members - maybe less actually - and when we moved to the old Eve board there were still only about 20 members or so. So the bottom line is that it takes a lot of time, work and luck to start a site up from scratch.
Also, there were lots of considerations that led to the decision to go ahead and start up a second site.
1) In the latter half of '06, there were a number of fairly active members on the Check site that bought non Check boats. And many of them more or less posted sign off messages on the board after their purchases. A number of the messages, (some which were private and some which were public) brought up the fact that many of those who were leaving wished our site was an all brands site, but because it wasn't, they were moving on. Most of the members also mentioned us having a unique vibe that they really liked.
What was a little disappointing though however, was that many of these same members also mentioned that they didn't feel they had a place on our site any longer with their non Check boat. Not even in the open boating forum. I guess the general consensus seemed to be that we were a pretty loyal Check group and not really accepting to non Check owners. Personally, I don't feel that way. But whatever, "it is what it is", as the saying goes.
2) At the same time, there were rumours and whispers about the health and on going viability of Checkmate. And given that, if something was to develop negatively with Checkmate, I wanted to provide a place for our C-Mate members to go, if they decided they still wanted to hang with their old pals from the Check site.
3) It was becoming evident in late '06 that we were going to have to upgrade servers and to do so, would require a change of hosts. The hosting move was something I was already working on when the discussion thread started about starting a second site.
4) A second site can act as a development site in that it provides a nice place to test out new features and test out upgrades when they are required in a less pressured environment. In this case, it also allowed us to give our new server a shakedown and test it out before trying to move the Check site on to it.
So, given all that I think it made sense to take the plunge and develop our sister site. I hope in time it will slowly grow into it's own little destination, with it's own unique persona and content.
But the reality is that it takes a lot of time to start up a site from total scratch. Starting from scratch is a lot different than starting up a site fueled from an existing site's member base which has become divided and disgruntled with their current board. And we've seen a couple of examples of that over the last year or so with a couple of sites.
The question in those cases is...
...what happens once the anger and frustration subsides?
Let's face it. It's easy in life to get all motivated to do something when you're all pissy and have a bee in your bonnet. But what happens when all of that is forgotten and you're now dealing with your own challenges and frustrations? That's when the work starts and the glory ends. So one would hope that the basis for starting the community is more than just opposition to something and that you started your site to stand for something in it's own right.
As I've mentioned to Coop privately, 99% of the communities on the net are run at a financial loss. Yes, there are exceptions to that rule like OSO, but they are few and far between. And many of those sites took years and years to become what they are and to become capable of earning their keep.
So the bottom line (to me at least), is that if you start a site, it better be based on your own love of something. Because the site itself is going to be quite a bit of work - so it better be a labour of love!
If you start one for other reasons, or based on big expectations of making money, glory or whatever, you'll most likely be disappointed in the end.
Just my .02 cents.
Cooperider
Active Member
Chris, I've just seen an example of the disgruntled membership deal in the last MONTH. Look at what happened with HotBoat.com The new owners started banning people that talked bad about advertisers boats, or just started stupid threads, meaningless posts, big signatures, just about anything. THEN just shut the whole place down.
Then in comes performanceboats.com they scramble to get their forums up and running, and the member roster grew like an explosion.
Have we gone yet?
Then in comes performanceboats.com they scramble to get their forums up and running, and the member roster grew like an explosion.
Have we gone
yet?
TEAMBAJA
Member
Ive never even heard of that one. Is Scream and Fly still around? I never really spent any time there.
175checkmate
Super Moderator
S&F is still around and growing. Sorry to say its turning into OSO for O/B guys, if your not really fast, then to bad for you.
I agree with Chris about these addicting forms we call home. The mate board was a real surprise. When it first started we would joke as to how big it would get. I remember saying I would Be happy with 100 members. LOL, missed that by a little bit.
Chris does a heck of a job with both board. It helps that he can type fast. LOL
I agree with Chris about these addicting forms we call home. The mate board was a real surprise. When it first started we would joke as to how big it would get. I remember saying I would Be happy with 100 members. LOL, missed that by a little bit.
Chris does a heck of a job with both board. It helps that he can type fast. LOL
Thanks for the kind words about both sites guys.
Yeah, Hotboat is one example for sure and one of the ones I was thinking about.
I would think it would be pretty hard to get that many members to join up to a new site, that quickly, any other way. But Hotboat not only dropped the ball, but they basically called it their own and then went home with it. So you've got ten thousand or so disgruntled and displaced members to start with, which kind of helped in the case of performanceboats.
The other site I was thinking about was Party Boat. It seems like for whatever reason the Baja forums became a little divided and Party Boat was the result. They had the same kind of enormous growth right out of the shoot as well. I think they're in a slower growth phase now.
It's unforunate to see communities become divided and then split up, because in the end I think it just leads to weaker communities. But that's life I suppose.
Gus is right, when we started up the Check forums there were no expectations whatsoever. None. It was just a small group of guys who were posting about Checkmates. And everything we did was in response to what seemed to be needed at the time.
When we needed a place to store photos, we moved to the Eve board. When we needed more bandwidth and storage space we moved to vBulletin and a new host. When we needed a way to organize all the brochures and pictures we added a gallery.
So this site was just a continuation of what we've done all along.
But in the end, there are really no expectations. Everything is just born and motivated out of a love for boats and the water.
Yeah, Hotboat is one example for sure and one of the ones I was thinking about.
I would think it would be pretty hard to get that many members to join up to a new site, that quickly, any other way. But Hotboat not only dropped the ball, but they basically called it their own and then went home with it. So you've got ten thousand or so disgruntled and displaced members to start with, which kind of helped in the case of performanceboats.
The other site I was thinking about was Party Boat. It seems like for whatever reason the Baja forums became a little divided and Party Boat was the result. They had the same kind of enormous growth right out of the shoot as well. I think they're in a slower growth phase now.
It's unforunate to see communities become divided and then split up, because in the end I think it just leads to weaker communities. But that's life I suppose.
Gus is right, when we started up the Check forums there were no expectations whatsoever. None. It was just a small group of guys who were posting about Checkmates. And everything we did was in response to what seemed to be needed at the time.
When we needed a place to store photos, we moved to the Eve board. When we needed more bandwidth and storage space we moved to vBulletin and a new host. When we needed a way to organize all the brochures and pictures we added a gallery.
So this site was just a continuation of what we've done all along.
But in the end, there are really no expectations. Everything is just born and motivated out of a love for boats and the water.
175checkmate
Super Moderator
But in the end, there are really no expectations. Everything is just born and motivated out of a love for boats and the water.
Well said. It's funny how things work out.