Forum combining

[Kasracer]

Why isn't VBForums.com, CodeGuru and whatever other forums Jupiter owns combined?

For example many sites like WMExperts and TreoCentral use one database for users and forums but each site has a specialized look, feel and forum layout.

So why wouldn't Jupiter combine forums? This would make maintenance much easier and we could have a set of consistent usernames, moderators and even banned users (rather than banning someone from each forum separately). Just seems to make sense to me.

I know it's doable since other companies do this but is it feasible with Jupiter's forums?

[dclamp]

I am not sure if vBulletin forum supports that though.

It may be more maintainable, but it is easier if all the sites have their own matinence crews

[Kasracer]

I am not sure if vBulletin forum supports that though.

I would imagine it does since WMExperts and TreoCentral share the same database but are displayed seperately on their websites.

It may be more maintainable, but it is easier if all the sites have their own matinence crews

Why is that easier? Consolidating all maintenance efforts sounds like a better idea to me. This way you run whatever maintenance once and you can even consolidate employees ().

In all seriousness if they were combined then you have 1 backup process, 1 backend, etc. Easier to maintain and even change (making one change no longer requires applying it in 6 different ways across severs; all servers are consistent).

[brad jones]

Different communities are different.


How is that for a profound statement? It, however, is true. Joe (jpnyc) who reports to me, manages all of the forums for internet.com. Within the developer space we have a dozen or more. It would be much easier to have them all as one mega-forum, but it would also be bad for some of the individual forums like this one and Codeguru.

Why bad?

Simple - A broader focused forum makes it harder for some members to connect. For example, if you tell Microsoft that you are an active participant in VBForums (a forum primarily aimed at VB guys), then they will consider a large number of posts here a cool thing and might even consider that as a reason to nominate you for their MVP award. If you say you are a member of the "internet.com mega-forum" it simply doesn't have the same "connection" or clout as being part of a primarily VB community does.

Additionally, a single forum would mean the same rules for everyone. While we use the same acceptable usage policy on all the sites, some of the features and subjective rules are maintained differently on some of the sites. This is based on the community. While you guys might not think it is true, we are a bit more lax with what people do on this forum than we are on some of the other forums. There are many people on this forum that have had short bannings that would have been permanently banned on forums like Codeguru. If we merged all the forums, chances are I'd go with Codeguru's policies over this one. That wouldn't be good for a few people here...

Does a PHP developer really care to skim through oogles of Microsoft stuff? If you merge all the forums, does PHP, VB, C++, C#, or something else get the higher lots? What gets the lower slots? How do you decide? (These are rhetorical questions, so please don't answer.)

Let's face it, most of us would rather be part of communities that we relate to. The more specific the community, the easier to relate and more importantly, the more likely we will stick around if we do relate.


From a technical perspective - We can't simply merge all the forums. We've actually looked at one of the key issues in relation to trying to create a single sign-on across multiple sites. Each forum currently has its own database. That means that each has its own member list. If you merge two forums, who gets to keep the ID if there is a conflict? This is a huge issue. It is one I think that could be overcome, but not easily. It is definitely one that will irritate a few people should we try to do a merge.

Overall, I don't see us merging forums. I think the result would be disastrous.

Of course, others disagree

Besides - I like the VBForums community!

Brad!
( comments in this post are the posters and do not necessarily reflect that of internet.com or Jupitermedia )

[dclamp]

out of curiousity, hwo do you know that they share a database?

[brad jones]

In all seriousness if they were combined then you have 1 backup process, 1 backend, etc. Easier to maintain and even change (making one change no longer requires applying it in 6 different ways across severs; all servers are consistent).

Some of our forums are very, very large. Making them larger would actually make many processes take even longer. Codeguru took many, many hours to upgrade. I'd hate to make it any bigger and increase the down time even more by consolidating more stuff into it.

Besides - we have Joe who likes juggling more than a couple dozen forum sites and upgrades.

As to the other sites you mentioned sharing a database - that would be easy to do. What isn't easy is to merge existing, separate databases of users into a single database due to the conflicts.

Brad!
(ditto on previous disclaimer)

[Kasracer]

Brad I think you missed my point (or perhaps I didn't convey it correctly). What I'm suggesting is a seamless experience for the user. For example my login could work at CodeGuru and VBForums, I could share ratings, PMs, subscriptions, etc BUT each forum would still be customized to show only the relevant forums. This would eliminate redundancy (multiple C# forums, VB forums, etc) as they would be combined into one. You reply to a C# question on CodeGuru that someone posted on VBForums.

Naturally you wouldn't want VBForums.com to look like CodeGuru and it's heavy C/C++/C# nature so you would customize the forums like WMExperts and TreoCentral in that each site would still have unique forums.

Also I don't see how processing time would be a big deal as this would allow you to pool resources. Let's say VBForums does an insane amount of traffic but some other site does very little. With combining forums you could cluster the DB and Web servers which would basically give VBForums some of the smaller forum's resources which makes everyone happy.

I think the disconnect was you were thinking that I wanted one forum to rule them all with the same forums, threads, etc but what I'm really after is a consolidated system that can pool resources, aggregate data and still have a different layout for each forum.

I also understand that this probably isn't feasible at all but I wanted to throw the idea out there. I like it

out of curiousity, hwo do you know that they share a database?

You register at one and your login works at the other. All of the posts are in those places as well. WMExperts and TreoCentral were just two examples though; they have several other forums that all sync up and for each forum they have customized the styling and forum display (so on the TreoCentral mostly Treo devices are displayed and near the top and WMExperts have mostly WM Device forums listed).

I believe it says so somewhere on their site but you'd have to dig for it.

[Kasracer]

As to the other sites you mentioned sharing a database - that would be easy to do. What isn't easy is to merge existing, separate databases of users into a single database due to the conflicts.

Perfectly understandable and why I didn't think it was very feasible but I still wanted to throw it out there.

[brad jones]

I think the disconnect was you were thinking that I wanted one forum to rule them all with the same forums, threads, etc but ....

Yep. Never mind.








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In truth -

I've talked internally about a single sign on across our forums. It is something I want! That would allow us to let people jump from one to another without additional logins.

We've messed with this a little bit and then backed off because it got a lot more complicated than we initially expected. We were looking at consolidating logins for some of our 'non-forum' sites as well. I do expect this will happen some day in the future, but not likely in the near term. One of the biggest hurdles is the one I described -- existing logins on lots of existing forums.

Brad!