Whoever wrote the software behind these Tigerforums message boards must be very proud... It is, by far, the finest message board presentation I've ever seen, and trust me, I've seen many. Congratulations on a job very well done.
I personally like the format of the paid LSU site (I never mention one site's name on a rival site). But that's just a matter of taste. I do like the system for posting images here--you don't need a Fotki site or anything like that.
Thanks Rex. I wish I could take all the credit but the forum software is VBulletin with a lot of customization and hacks by yours truly. Glad you like it.
Brett, even though you didn't write the software that powers the tigerforums.com site I know that you must spend a lot of time and effort working on it. Not to mention paying for the hosting and bandwidth used. It must be a labor of love for you because I don't see anything other than the Tigerforums Store where you sell T Shirts and a few other items that would give you a financial return on your investment in time. labor and money that would even begin to allow you to break even. I can forsee the time when you might be forced to start charging for membership. I wouldn't mind paying a modest fee (say $20 a year) but if you were to start charging you would lose a lot of members. With the number of members you already have there are a lot of eyeballs looking at the site every day. There are a lot of affilitate programs that you can sign up for online that will pay you either by the sale or by the number of unique clicks you send to their sites if you would place a few banners for those sites on the Tigerforums pages. Not that I want to see more ads on Tigerforums than there are on a NASCAR drivers jumpsuit but I know you have to pay the bills
Thanks Bengal B. I appreciate the kind words. Yes, TigerForums.com is a labor of love. I'm a huge Tiger fan, part-time graphic artist, part computer nerd and really just enjoy the process of building the site and watching it grow. It's been really satisfying watching it grow from 3-4 people into more that 1300. To address your other points, even though I have the TigerForums.com T-shirts for sale, I don't make a penny from them. They are priced at the CafePress.com minimum price. I just have them available for TigerForums.com fans that love the site and want to spread the word. My costs are the cost of the software and the hosting/bandwidth for the site. I do put quite a bit of work into the site but it's just my hobby. I don't get paid for it. It's all for the L-O-V-E! As you've seen on the new menu, soon I will have links for LSU products. I'm in the works of finding a quality source for LSU products. This is only to provide members a convenient way of buying products as well as possibly helping to defray costs. I may also find some business sponsors. I'm really glad you like TigerForums.com enough to pay a fee but as I've stated in another post, TigerForums.com WILL NEVER CHARGE A FEE to post. Someday I may have to beg for donations to keep the site going if it becomes too expensive but it will always be open to everyone. Thanks again for the compliments and everyone's support.
There's one other thing I just realized is great about this. I was out of town for the weekend and it's easy to catch up on FSA--the best threads stayed up top instead of scrolling down to page 7 or 8.
