Cory

I think I work Sunday, but I posted my plan for Saturday above. I'm so happy my great-grandma is alive and well, she has been a great inspiration to her family and shows true love to each and every one of us.

I'll be advertising the site on my board itself via affiliate when it is made and when a user bar advertisement is also made I will probably add it to my signature on three different forums I frequently visit. :)

I have two sets of announcements on my board: a pinned "minor announcements" thread for less significant changes and new announcement topics themself for more significant changes. When it comes to very major changes, I will likely send out a bulk email regarding the major update to inform many users of the latest changes. I often request feedback before making major (and sometimes even minor) changes to the board to get a feel for what the user base wants to see.

I think offering incentives is always a must these days where it's hard to find volunteers for the sake of being a staff member. They don't always have to involve real currency because there are many means of incentives you can offer. Incentives do indeed encourage staff members to participate in the community and make them feel more valuable for doing so. Since 2018, I've had about three different staff members who have retired now. I'm flying solo with nearly 2000 members registered. If I were to ever offer staff positions, I would try and offer the best incentives I can to make them feel interested and to value their workmanship.

True, knowing someone personally and acting silly with them on the forum when you may not act that way otherwise can feel inauthentic. But you can always clarify that you know the person personally so people won't feel that way.

It does seem that way and I think people treat it as such, but for the most part, it's still a social media site where the masses follow. It doesn't have the "tight-knit" community feel that a forum has due to its massiveness and the fact that people come and go on the site more frequently.

I believe only two people I know in real life have joined my message board. I no longer speak to either of them, but one of them posted for a short period on my message board and he made a comment about cooking steaks and I made the comment back that his steaks sure are tasty. It feels fake to talk to one another like that when you know them in real life, but people should be able to take the hint that you know them personally if you do talk to them that way.

How long have you and Al your wife been together? 🤭

I once created a new board solely for general discussions when I had all these forums/topics on my original resource board in the first place and then I ended up moving general discussions back to my resource board due to not receiving much traction on the new board. Suffice it to say, many general discussion topics from this move are now in the trash can and are only visible to staff members, so my board had to get a "fresh start" in producing general discussion topics. A fresh start is not necessarily a bad thing, but I think the move overall was a bad idea when the general discussion topics were perfectly acceptable on the resource board.

Retaining activity, in general, can be tough, whether posting or member log-ins. I have nearly 2000 members and sometimes I don't receive daily posts unless I'm the one posting. My member log-ins have been slowly dropping for a while, at least off and on where sometimes I receive little log-ins, and other times I receive a decent amount. I ordered content bundles from two different forums and will receive 40 new topics on my board soon, so hopefully, that'll pick up the activity a bit.

Did you build forums as a child? When I was saying child I was thinking between 5 - 12 years of age. 😅

A 15% discount would be 425 credits.

It was one of the worst times of my life being bullied so much due to having a large degree of social anxiety and shyness on top of that, so I was a lot of people's punching bag. What did you enjoy doing the most when you were a child?

Another 8-hour overnight shift to attend tonight. I don't mind the one overnight shift we work a week. Unloading the truck can be exhausting sometimes because it's so fast-paced, but I like stocking the freight. I'm going to my great-grandmother's birthday party on Saturday, I think she's turning 93.

Was your experience in high school good or bad?

I'm pretty non-creative when it comes to thinking of unique thread ideas. Since I run a resource board the primary threads I want to create are resources. I usually depend on posting packages to bring fresh threads to the board for users to engage. How many threads you make daily can be dependent on your niche and how active your board is. If I owned a general discussion forum, for example, I would worry about creating more threads daily.

I'm flying solo with nearly 2000 members. 😅 Granted, my board is not very active in posting since it's a resource board where people mainly come and grab resources on the go and leave. General discussions are the least of my worries, I like to keep building up the resources as much as possible for other Jcink administrators. It would be nice to have some coders/designers to build up the resources with me, but I'm managing fine on my own thus far.

Yes, a (sub)forum with the votes to the left of the topic could work well. What's the point of allowing multi-voting, though?

How old were you when you had your first kiss?

Technically, you posted this yesterday, but I'll pretend it was today. I had to wake up at 3:00 AM to drive out of town to a different store than the one I work at to be there at 5:00 AM. Suffice it to say, I took an hour nap when I got home. Our district manager bought burgers for all of the employees, so that was nice!

I think this is commonly said by older people. I've heard it said countless times online and offline. Probably because the older you grow, the more busier you become. Time flies by fast when you stay busy. I'm 34 and it does feel like we celebrated Christmas not long ago.

Don't give your hopes up. The topic I referred to was created in 2010.

Merry Halloween, everyone!

I only have three channels on my Discord server: General, Support, and New Resources. New Resources is the primary use I have a Discord server for so people can be notified when a new resource is released. The General channel is there to talk about whatever, but most people ask coding-related questions. I have a support forum on my board for support and the Support channel on my Discord server is for people who seek a quicker means of support. Whether a Discord server is right for your forum or not all depends on its niche. If your forum starts to migrate entirely onto the server, it may as well be your forum. If your forum can benefit from a Discord server, such as my reasoning for having a New Resources channel for live notifications, then it may be well to put it to use for your forum. I try to think of "general" channels like a chit-chat thread you would post on your forum where it is for more insignificant comments than quality conversations.

I tried Facebook on about 5 different occasions and either deleted or deactivated my account every time I used it. I feel like many people on social media seek instant gratification and validation through the use of likes, and comments that praise them, and use them as a popularity contest. I even felt like I sought instant gratification when I used Facebook. Many social media sites are massive, so you are more likely to run into toxicity, trolling, flaming, and more. If Facebook starts to cater to an older audience, it may continue to do so as people grow older. I don't necessarily see it going away. I think if a majority of the younger generations prefer other social media sites then it may continue to see a decline in activity because more younger generations are often attracted to the masses that social media vibe gives off. They seem more likely to "follow the crowd" than older people.