Rebuild DigitalPoint ?

Hey I was just wondering why one of the biggest webmaster sites is just a vbulletin forum?

Why not rebuild it into custom community script like myspace, facebook or sitepoint and have webmaster related functions on it.

You could probly integrate this forum into the script.

It would obviously take alot of time, money, planning and people to do this but it would be better I think.

 

Probably one of the reasons (beside all the useful tips and helpful members) is that it is a vbullentin forum LOL

Anyway, I agreed it is a good time to change!

 

sitepoint is just a rebuilt vBulletin forum as well. and I think you will find that sitepoint is run as a business, and digital point is run as a community forum and is much better for it.

While certain aspects could be revised, I see no need for a wholesale change to the way things are.

 

I know, I'm not saying copy sitepoint, myspace and facebook.

It would be good to come up with something original.

If you look at all sites that are worth millions of dollars, they do not use a turnkey script.

If you rebuilt digitalpoint it would take it to the next level and make it worth alot more.

 

1. The servers wouldnt cope
2. Shawn wouldnt pay for it, he already paid for the servers.

 

One of the reasons DP is so successful is due to this very vBulletin interface. Going with something like facebook etc. would just make it childish and time pass rather than a professional forum of webmasters!

 

Well that's why you would need to plan the website so it was professional and not childish.

I agree facebook and myspace are childish, I don't use the sites.

I like the idea of having a member profile that you can customize. It would be cool if I had digitalpoint.com/aguila and I could display my portfolio, services, sales, rep, sites and much more.

 

I know where you are coming from, the only alternative that I know would work along the lines you suggest is ning, check out these sites that I created using it: www.stroodconservatives.com and http://forum.costadelpoker.info - both are "forums"

The reason why DP wouldnt work as this is that it
1) gets FAR too much traffic for ning to support,
2) people are really comfortable with its useability and interface
3) its really quick and streamlined as a forum
4) people just dont like change

so while ning would support the features you mention it wouldn't be appropriate, other forums are not as fully featured as vBulletin, and nobody is going to pay a five or six figure sum to have the forum rebuilt into a standalone program that hasnt been stress tested to the level of traffic that vBulletin can handle.

 

DigitalPoint is better off being a vBulletin forum.

 

DP is big but not big enough to warrant a change to a custom thing. Its a big webmaster community but not a big community in general; there are some huge forums out there.

 

What digitalpoint actually needs is to be reasonably fast all the time. Almost everyday there are points where it is so slow that I just don't bother browsing any sections at all. I imagine I am not alone on this so as a result the forum is getting smaller since less users are willing to wait 15 seconds for pages to load.