Take More Risks

I’ve been having a look at the Zend PHP framework for a project we’ll be carrying out over the next few months and I must say I think it’s a lot better than I initally thought. Over the last 3 months I’ve done zero development work because I’d run into such a rut with CakePHP. It was if I was developing the same application over repeatedly! It’ll be cool to actually learn the Zend Coding Guidelines off-by-heart and start afresh with a different outlook towards development. The problem with much of this stuff is that about 1,000 different technologies seem to pop out at you at once and it can be seriously overwhelming.

Anyway my aim is to create something basic with it over the weekend. I’ve a few ideas. Well I’ve more than a few, but you know me!

Forum Development

Spent a bit of today reading through Lee Dodd’s In The Beginning series geared towards forum development. He makes some very interesting points and I came to some new conclusions.

• It’s important to set some goals before establishing a forum. Will I be running it for the community on a long-term basis or am I looking for a big-pay out within a year? It’s pretty important to be honest here.
• You shouldn’t let General or Off Topic discussion be the main focus of the forum, otherwise it will eventually wane it. The forum should preferably be based around a niche which will spark sustained debate from it’s core members.
• vBulletin is definitely the way to go with long-term projects.

All of this has got me thinking about Implicit Gaming and why exactly it failed. It’s now obvious – how many general online gaming sites are there out there? The figure’s probably in the thousands. Implicit Gaming offers nothing special enough for it to stand out amongst it’s competitors.

I think in the future I’m going to refrain from buying any more forums until I have a bit more experience with running them. When I took over IG, I had little to no experience as an Administrator. I think it would be better if I actually expanded my knowledge as an admin whilst the site itself is expanding organically. Which reminds me, I have a spare vBulletin licence over on the Drunken Hero forums. I was half expecting those forums to magically generate themselves by feeding in a lot of traffic from the main site but it obviously isn’t working. I still have a great deal to learn about all of this.

I’m kinda intrigued by the way I’ve seen David use the vbAdvanced module to generate a site wrapped around a forum. It’s seriously cool. I need to find a new niche to base it on or use an existing niche and it approach it from a different angle. I have a few ideas, but first I’m gonna read Lee’s site a bit more and study how his forums are laid out. I’ve found in the past that you can learn a lot more by analysing how someone implements their ideas – rather than just reading their blog!

So I’ll use the vBulletin licence for another site and install phpBB on Drunken Hero instead. I’ve no timescale for this yet. It should be by the end of the month.