Mike
Administrator
Hi everyone. My name is Mike. I'll soon be the new owner/administrator of this site. I just wanted to introduce myself and let you know what all I have planned for the site, going forward.
I've been building websites for over 20 years now, going all the way back to the angelfire days. Most of you will have no idea what that means...just know it's been a long time.
I started dabbling with forums about 11 years ago, mainly as a hobby. Turns out I love to code websites, and especially forums. I've owned/operated several different forums throughout the years, and helped others with their forums for even longer. Before now I've had just one forum for the last few years and recently decided to take on a few more. I was actively searching for a forum to acquire when I discovered this one was available for purchase. Since I also happen to quite enjoy marine life and aquariums, I figured this site would be a great fit for me. So, after a bit of back and forth, and a great deal of help from a friend of mine (@Shaggy), I was able to acquire this one.
My immediate plans for this site are fairly simple. We need more activity! However, before we can get that we've got to have something worth showing up for. So, I'm going to be spending some time to upgrade the forum software to a newer version (it's been about 5 years since the last update) that will have a few more goodies. I'll be completely re-writing the Species Database from scratch to make it 1) easier for members to contribute to and 2) easier to upgrade with the rest of the software in the future. Then I'll work on converting all the Showcase items into a member's build forum and removing the showcase completely. That will be replaced with a new media gallery that folks can use to upload photos to. Don't worry, you'll still be able to upload photos into the forums, too, if that's what you like to do. For the articles, I'll be adding an article section to the forums and converting all the current articles into that.
I'd like to start up some fun things to keep folks engaged, too, such as a aquarium of the month, bringing back the photo of the month contests, etc.
If you have any suggestions on things that you'd like to see added, or done differently, here please let me know. I'm looking forward to meeting some of you and working with you all to bring this site back to life.
I've been building websites for over 20 years now, going all the way back to the angelfire days. Most of you will have no idea what that means...just know it's been a long time.
I started dabbling with forums about 11 years ago, mainly as a hobby. Turns out I love to code websites, and especially forums. I've owned/operated several different forums throughout the years, and helped others with their forums for even longer. Before now I've had just one forum for the last few years and recently decided to take on a few more. I was actively searching for a forum to acquire when I discovered this one was available for purchase. Since I also happen to quite enjoy marine life and aquariums, I figured this site would be a great fit for me. So, after a bit of back and forth, and a great deal of help from a friend of mine (@Shaggy), I was able to acquire this one.
My immediate plans for this site are fairly simple. We need more activity! However, before we can get that we've got to have something worth showing up for. So, I'm going to be spending some time to upgrade the forum software to a newer version (it's been about 5 years since the last update) that will have a few more goodies. I'll be completely re-writing the Species Database from scratch to make it 1) easier for members to contribute to and 2) easier to upgrade with the rest of the software in the future. Then I'll work on converting all the Showcase items into a member's build forum and removing the showcase completely. That will be replaced with a new media gallery that folks can use to upload photos to. Don't worry, you'll still be able to upload photos into the forums, too, if that's what you like to do. For the articles, I'll be adding an article section to the forums and converting all the current articles into that.
I'd like to start up some fun things to keep folks engaged, too, such as a aquarium of the month, bringing back the photo of the month contests, etc.
If you have any suggestions on things that you'd like to see added, or done differently, here please let me know. I'm looking forward to meeting some of you and working with you all to bring this site back to life.
