Coming Soon: Front page and forum integration.

David_Schroth

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I just fired off payment to get the front page integrated with the forums. What this means is the discussion threads for front page news and reviews will appear under the content and be kept in sync with the forums. Your same user credentials will work on both the front page and the forums. Hopefully this will increase forum engagement over time, assuming this integration works.

For those curious, forum traffic is about 10% of the unique visitors to the front page.
 
Since most of the staff and users are transplants from “that other site”, would there be a logical or financial benefit to trying to integrate?

Granted some are banned from the other due to a little over zealous tyranny so maybe not. Haha. Idk if he’d ever let it go, but he also doesn’t want to manage it so if going to good hands, maybe y’all could claim that user base for your own.
 
stickx911 said:
Since most of the staff and users are transplants from “that other site”, would there be a logical or financial benefit to trying to integrate?

Granted some are banned from the other due to a little over zealous tyranny so maybe not. Haha. Idk if he’d ever let it go, but he also doesn’t want to manage it so if going to good hands, maybe y’all could claim that user base for your own.
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Integration of our front page and the forums will hopefully increase forum traffic - those that end up commenting will then have forum accounts and hopefully create a feedback loop that helps grow our regulars.

As far as "claiming" the other site's user base, it's simply not ours to claim. If they want to head over here for our adventure, then great. I don't expect there to be any opportunities to integrate and quite frankly, the only integration that would make sense for the long term health of this site would be an acquisition (of which I'm fairly sure would never happen even though I'm open to it).
 
I often wondered about the relationship between there and here. It always seemed a bit odd the way that other place just closed up shop - it was a fairly valuable brand to just walk away from. It may not be anyone's story to tell here.

I'm ok with a clean slate - there are a lot of positives to it, although it certainly takes a good deal of sweat and determination (and no small amount of luck) to get it up and running smoothly.
 
David_Schroth said:
Integration of our front page and the forums will hopefully increase forum traffic - those that end up commenting will then have forum accounts and hopefully create a feedback loop that helps grow our regulars.

As far as "claiming" the other site's user base, it's simply not ours to claim. If they want to head over here for our adventure, then great. I don't expect there to be any opportunities to integrate and quite frankly, the only integration that would make sense for the long term health of this site would be an acquisition (of which I'm fairly sure would never happen even though I'm open to it).
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I get that. Just figured it would be worth mentioning. I figured acquisition there would be inevitable anyway at this point, I’d rather it be taken over by someone with experience and more interest than just making a buck. (Of course it’s not anything close to mine to suggest, just a point of view from an end user). Getting that would probably also net some contacts and credibility to drive growth. Idk.

Sorry. I’m not against the direction this site is going on it’s own, it just feels like an extension of another and that’ll make it hard to survive and just as hard to differentiate. I very well could be alone and very wrong in that feeling.
 
Forum webserver is now serving files from AWS EFS instead of AWS EBS as part of this integration. Please post if there's any forum sluggishness (it may improve as caching of the files kicks up. The main website will be moved to EFS next, but likely overnight when traffic is lower.

stickx911 said:
I get that. Just figured it would be worth mentioning. I figured acquisition there would be inevitable anyway at this point, I’d rather it be taken over by someone with experience and more interest than just making a buck. (Of course it’s not anything close to mine to suggest, just a point of view from an end user). Getting that would probably also net some contacts and credibility to drive growth. Idk.

Sorry. I’m not against the direction this site is going on it’s own, it just feels like an extension of another and that’ll make it hard to survive and just as hard to differentiate. I very well could be alone and very wrong in that feeling.
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I don't think an acquisition is in the cards, period - he's had plenty of offers and turned them all down. I think it's more important to him to not see 2 decades of his work jump the shark, much like Tom's, Anand and many others have.

From an industry contacts perspective, we're doing pretty well - the guys have maintained the relationships that they have and we've formed new ones. One of the primary reasons I was at CES last week was to make new contacts. From a credibility perspective - we've simply got to earn that with consistent content. Traffic is climbing month over month and we're also doing some things differently than they were done before (and the content struggle is real - 6 months in and I feel like we're still figuring out pacing).
 
This works pretty well. Though I would change or add one thing. Whenever you click to post it starts to refresh the page. But unless you're watching for that it could just feel hung and cause a repeat of the clicking the post button. Perhaps have the button change to 'Posting' once done until the page refreshes?
 
Grimlakin said:
This works pretty well. Though I would change or add one thing. Whenever you click to post it starts to refresh the page. But unless you're watching for that it could just feel hung and cause a repeat of the clicking the post button. Perhaps have the button change to 'Posting' once done until the page refreshes?
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I wish I could do that - I'll add it the question to the dev's list, but I'm guessing it'll be a request that doesn't get prioritized by them (as this cost a whopping $300 including install, and has an annual support payment of $60...)
 
Grimlakin said:
This works pretty well. Though I would change or add one thing. Whenever you click to post it starts to refresh the page. But unless you're watching for that it could just feel hung and cause a repeat of the clicking the post button. Perhaps have the button change to 'Posting' once done until the page refreshes?
Click to expand...

Ok, thought about this some more - this isn't integration related but it's Wordpress related (as when you comment on the front page, it's using the native WP comments engine which then replicates to the forums, leaving a copy of the message in both places), so there may be some other mod available to fix this. The other side could be due to the slow server response times that I've been fighting - if we didn't have a 3-4 second page load speed, then this shouldn't be an issue as well. I see three paths on this -
1. Switch to a faster WP theme (that seems to be the root cause of the speed issues, but it's a great theme as far as layout flexibility goes)
2. Find a WP plugin/mod that will accomplish this functionality.
3. Figure out how the integration's option to embed the XF thread into the page works (already asked the dev about this a few days ago).
 
This is a good forum especially for that price. I hope you can do the plugin route and simply have it say posting for a second or disable the button after you press it while the page reloads.
 
David_Schroth said:
I don't think an acquisition is in the cards, period - he's had plenty of offers and turned them all down. I think it's more important to him to not see 2 decades of his work jump the shark, much like Tom's, Anand and many others have.
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You would be correct, sir. I turn away all offers to purchase HardOCP and HardForum IP (still turn down nearly daily offers to buy HF). Never was about money, ever. Looking back, I "should" have sold off when Sharky did, but that would have denied me a lot of great experiences and friendships in an industry that I love. No regrets, I made the right decision, as that decision very much enriched my life through our community.

I wish you guys the best here at TheFPSReview. As you know, I left almost all testing hardware with our reviewers so they could move along into any new endeavors should they wish to do so and not be starting from a totally blank slate. When I left the review game, I had no intentions of coming back, and it hurt my heart to walk away from the HardOCP team. It was the biggest decision of my life and took a big toll on me, but I needed to do what was right for my family. I have no ill will for any of the old HardOCP team. I love what you guys are doing here, but there are reasons for me leaving the review game, and since leaving Intel after a very short employment, there are reasons for me not coming back and kickstarting HardOCP again. Godspeed on the long form written review front, brother!

I know I got a bit dickish with you on our last email exchange, and I will extend my apology here, but I just needed to get my head away from all things HardOCP at that time. I was dealing with a lot of issues and was in an "eff you" state of mind. (It's not you, it's me!)

While almost no other website did what I did when it comes to content and forums, I always wanted each to be a separate entity. I did this for the simple fact that the community would still have its forums should I want to take HardOCP offline, or if I just imploded HardOCP one day with bad decisions. I just never wanted HardForum to be HardOCP. I owned HardOCP and the community "owns" HardForum. I never wanted HardForum to be exposed due to HardOCP decisions. That said, the lifespan of both went on just a tiny bit long than I thought those would. :)

Also, I would like to say "thank you" for not abusing your posting privileges on HardForum when it comes to promoting your site, it is very much appreciated. All of you are still very much valued members there, and that comes through with your team's etiquette. I very much like your review roundup threads in HardNews on embargo days. And yeah, I would put my site first too when I linked all those reviews.
 
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FrgMstr said:
Also, I would like to say "thank you" for not abusing your posting privileges on HardForum when it comes to promoting your site, it is very much appreciated. All of you are still very much valued members there, and that comes through with your team's etiquette. I very much like your review roundup threads in HardNews on embargo days. And yeah, I would put my site first too when I linked all those reviews.
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You know what Kyle, I think it would be interesting to have you write some opinion pieces on what is going on today compared to your experience over the decades. I've been a HardOCP and HardForum follower so long that I remember when there wasn't a forum! Regardless I'd love to see some articles from you on that front. Perhaps posted on this site IF that is something everyone wanted to do.

I imagine those discussions could be interesting... and this forum isn't quite the wild west that the hardforum is.

Banned on hardocp on my original nic for giving you crap when you first started taking advertising in the forum. ;) Gotta pay for the magic juice that makes the forums run somehow.
 
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On another note... Wordpress just suffered a big hack! Make sure you're stuff is ok!!
 
Grimlakin said:
You know what Steve, I think it would be interesting to have you write some opinion pieces on what is going on today compared to your experience over the decades.
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Yar, I wouldn't mind hearing some old war stories about having to deal with that bully Kyle!
 
FrgMstr said:
As you know, I left almost all testing hardware with our reviewers so they could move along into any new endeavors should they wish to do so and not be starting from a totally blank slate.
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This was quite helpful for us and probably saved me thousands in startup costs (though, there were still thousands of startup costs incurred...). Thank you again for it!

FrgMstr said:
I know I got a bit dickish with you on our last email exchange, and I will extend my apology here, but I just needed to get my head away from all things HardOCP at that time. I was dealing with a lot of issues and was in an "eff you" state of mind. (It's not you, it's me!)
Click to expand...

No worries there - your reply did seem a bit out of your usual character. Still willing to fly out to Dallas and buy beer if you're interested.

FrgMstr said:
Also, I would like to say "thank you" for not abusing your posting privileges on HardForum when it comes to promoting your site, it is very much appreciated. All of you are still very much valued members there, and that comes through with your team's etiquette. I very much like your review roundup threads in HardNews on embargo days. And yeah, I would put my site first too when I linked all those reviews.
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I can also say that for those that are out there promoting our site, we're not asking them to do it (though, it's always nice to see support in that way). The embargo date round ups were always on the front page prior to the shut down and something I figure is of value to the community members (and someone will end up doing it, if I don't first!). Though, I'm tempted to see about hiring that prolific news poster that's been generating threads over there... probably can't afford him...

Grimlakin said:
On another note... Wordpress just suffered a big hack! Make sure you're stuff is ok!!
Click to expand...
There's a new one every week. Typical formula is

1. Find critical vulnerability in an infrequently updated plugin used on tens to hundreds of thousands of sites.
2. "Report" the vulnerability to the authors.
3. Authors either fix or don't, doesn't really matter.
4. Write clickbait article about WordPress suffering a big hack due to this vulnerability (that may or may not be patched) that only relates to sites running that specific plugin.
5. ...
6. Profit.
 
Yea I saw it in passing and wanted to make sure we were all good here. Of course we're patched. We are the IT people that take that **** seriously and live and breathe the world of IT.
 
On another note..... whomever did that with my account on Hforum thanks. Now I just need to get my post count back up and resub on the old account again. lol. :) (Just lost like 5k posts and thousands of likes lol. )
 
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