HI...I just want ask...

[TGAM123]

How old is this forum???

[jro]

Hmm, there is a story for Peter. Since this forum is actually made up of a number of other forums, I am not actually sure. I originally came from a forum called LinuxFoo.org which started around 2002, but then it was called TinyMinds.org

Aww..the memories

[beezlebubsbum]

Woot, Tinyminds and Linuxfoo ftw!

[jro]

Yeah, I forgot beez and I go all the way back to TinyMinds. Wow, that was a while ago.. I remember mcangeli telling me about starting that site when I just happened to be in an IRC channel at the same time as him. I decided to check it out, wrote some articles and the rest is history.

How about you beez, how did you get started? If you can remember

[beezlebubsbum]

If I remember correctly, I was at Uni, and I didnt want to attend a lecture, so I went on the computers and looked for some Linux sites. Stumbled across Tinyminds, and moved over to Linuxfoo when the announcement went up at the Tinyminds forum. Good times, good people too!

[peter]

The forums on linux home networking started about a year after I started the site originally so late 2003. The forums grew and grew.

Then they began to fade. I wasn't sure whether that was because of the dot com decline, the novelty of forums wearing off in general, new more interesting places on the web to visit like Facebook or the original membership starting families with those competing responsibilities.

I also thought linuxhomenetworking.com as a domain limited the appeal to only home Linux users so I registered the domain openfree.org and moved the forums there.

I also thought that by increasing the content on the site that it would attract more visitors and I began to buy a few more forums and merge them into this one. I chose forums that looked like they hadn't been upgraded for years and things went well.

When I integrated Linuxjunior.org, things changed. A core group of members didn't like the fact that the forums had been sold without their consent, to one with ads on it. They had originally been a part of linuxforums.com and had created linuxjunior.org when that forum was bought by a corporation. After things settled down I decided to integrate a Microsoft forum. Not so much to create a behemoth forum with lots of content, but to get a broader base of users who preferred Linux but also used Windows. The core group of about 20 Linux Junior members really didn't like that, thought it was a sell out and left permanently to create linuxvillage.org which is now defunct.

None of the members of the other forums seemed to mind, or never voiced their opinion. In fact I think most of the forums were on life support and most of the members had already lost interest in the concept.

I still have ads on the forums, to help pay for the hosting cost of my server and I have learned that ads are an impediment to posting, so now logged in members don't see them at all. I do make small profit that is totally attributable to the main site. On the forum side, I would like to donate a large portion of the ad revenue to a Linux or computer charity that accepts Paypal so I can easily set up a recurring payment. If you know of any, let me know.

I may still add another forum to this one to try and get more members, but based on experience, you just get stale posts and no additional participation. Organic growth is best.

I'd like to hear how you think we could get more life in the forums. I could create a facebook page / group, but I don't see how that would make people want to visit the forums more.

[jro]

I agree with you totally on the last paragraph Peter. Organic growth is best when it comes to communities. People need to find that common thread, it keeps them together. Myself and beez came from LinuxFoo as we said previously. The Foo was dying a slow death as it was, mcangeli was focusing his efforts on LinuxTracker at the time and the Foo got the sloppy seconds of his time. No offense to him really, LinuxTracker is a great idea and I use it to this day to get Linux torrents, but the forums are essentially dead there.

I think creating a group page on Facebook or MySpace that points back here would be a great idea. Don't try to develop anything there, just get them linked back here. It would be pretty cool if you could integrate Facebook user/pass creds into this site so people wouldn't have to register to use the site. They would still have to go through an intermediate step to setup their profile here but not a full registration. Just an idea..

[TGAM123]

i would be so happy if you can put link to my site too ... http://klubkobra.itisme.eu

[beezlebubsbum]

Maybe the forum days of the foo are over? The whole web 2.0 has really changed the internet scene. I don't know how we can get things busier around here I would embrace a busier environment, and would love to do my part to make things pick up a bit!

[jro]

There were never many people posting at the Foo, I don't think at any time we had more than 7-10 regulars. We really tore up the forums though, some evenings I remember (we really needed to get lives) we would see how many posts we could put on a thread...Hmm now that I think of it, I bet those old threads are on this site now. I will have to see if I can find them..