Chet Waffle - Serving Two

Discussion of history's greatest guitar player.

Chet Waffle - Serving Two

Postby Randy Finney » Sun Feb 20, 2011 8:58 am

I shouldn't be having a second helping of waffles but, what the heck, it is Sunday.

It is not my intention to criticize or offend those of you who have worked so hard on setting this board up. Believe me, I know how finicky and labour intensive this can be! In fact, I was inspired by the New Chetboard Format to launch my own Forum a few months ago. The forum I started in no way competes with the Chetboard so, for goodness sakes don't think I am trying lure anybody away from the Chetboard or to start a new one! My board is a geographically local, private members board, and would be of little interest to anyone who doesn't live in Toronto.

As I said, I was so impressed by the elaborateness of the new format for this board, I set up my own board with a virtually identical layout. Problem was, my members didn't think much of it. I came to realize that the level of involvement needed, or at least implied, by such a layout was beyond the commitment many were willing to make.

I spent many hours attempting to manipulate the phpBB software (the software the Chetboard uses), to be more immediately inviting while maintaining the level of elaborateness. Finally, I gave up and began searching for another solution. What I found was the SimpleMachines software. This is much simpler and more inviting than anything I was able to achieve with phpBB and, at the same time, is capable of handling the same level of hierarchical complexity as the Chetboard.

Now, as I said, it is primarily a private board for members of FingerStyleGuitar.ca only but, as a Guest you can at least view the "Events" discussion, and get a general feel for the layout.

Also, I have just finished setting this up in the last few days so, there aren't many posts as I have not yet told my members that it is live. The center column can be set by the Administrator to be a default display of a list of "Recent Posts" or "Recent Topics" and this list can be as long as the Administrator allows it to be.

Have a look at it . Do some of you find a format like this more inviting or intuitive? Do you think it is different enough, in a positive way, to ask poor Tom to take on the headache of giving it a try for the Chetboard?

As I said, I personally have no problem with the layout of the Chetboard. Nor am I 100% convinced of a) posts on the Chetboard have actually declined and; b) if they have, that the new layout has contributed significantly to this decline.

The URL is: http://playyourguitar.ca

Randy
Randy Finney
 
Posts: 181
Joined: Tue Aug 17, 2010 8:44 am
Location: Toronto, Canada

Return to Mister Guitar, Chet Atkins

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 22 guests