Community Interview: Cory
Without a doubt you have seen our Moderator @Cory around. He's a great guy, providing many free resources like skins and codes for Jcink Forum Software. He's the owner of jCodes - Of course I had to send him some questions for you all to read.
Concerning Admin Junkies:
What's your reason for visiting Admin Junkies?: I am a forum nerd at heart and I love engaging in conversations about forums and running them.
Favorite forum: General Web & Forum Discussion
Is there enough to do within the community? Yes
What would you like to see in future themes: Perhaps different layouts and not your typical color schemes.
Do you like the choice of themes in the selector?: Yes, they are quite superb.
Which theme do you use?: Mere
Services you would like to see: Perhaps some type of unique repository you can submit resources to for different forum software.
Other comments: Keep up the good work!
Without a doubt you have seen our Moderator @Cory around. He's a great guy, providing many free resources like skins and codes for Jcink Forum Software. He's the owner of jCodes - Of course I had to send him some questions for you all to read.
My name is Cory Roberts, I am 32, male, and from Granbury, TX. I am currently unemployed due to quitting my last job due to struggles there and I am now looking for a new job, with my most recent interview being at Discount Tire. I've only been in the retail and food industry, so if I got hired this would be a whole new thing for me. Most of my life has honestly been spent behind a computer and iPhone screens, where I do forums, coding, technical support, and gaming on the computer. I just piddle mostly on my iPhone doing whatever I can to keep me busy when I'm bored.
I would say my greatest strength at being a webmaster is my ability to run boards that help and encourage people to become webmasters as well by offering technical support and coding assistance. I've been doing this for over a decade.
My greatest accomplishment would probably be being a self-taught coder. Unfortunately, there is so much I have yet to learn, but knowing what I currently do I can achieve my goal of running a message board to help with the coding knowledge I do have.
I just viewed the first board I ever remember registering on and I've apparently been using message boards since June 2004, so I've been a part of message boards for nearly two decades. I started out registering on a few sites to trade Yu-Gi-Oh cards, being a big fan of the anime and TCG at the time. I asked on a Yu-Gi-Oh message board how message boards were created and I was recommended various links, including InvisionFree, which looked like the easiest forum software to operate at the time, so I went with it. I created my own Yu-Gi-Oh message board and it had a semi-successful run, but I started admiring helping people on the official support board when I started learning more and more about InvisionFree, which led to my coding and technical support journey. The resource board I owned on InvisionFree was eventually converted to ZetaBoards.
It was known as Big Boards, an InisionFree/ZetaBoards resource forum. The last Wayback Machine lookup I can find for it it had 36,322 posts and 3,152 registered members. I'm pretty sure it still grew after that too!
At the closure of Zathyus Networks, I needed somewhere to start a new coding journey seeing as coding has mostly been my #1 hobby over the years.
I use Jcink, I went with it because it was most similar to the Zathyus Networks platform, it looked pretty simple to manage a forum on the software, and it looked like it was in need of some major coding resources because most of the boards on Jcink are RPG boards. Jcink is based on an older version of IPB and it is a lot more secure and has a bountiful of features compared to InvisionFree.
I don't really have many goals for my forum aside from consistently building up the resources and continuing to offer support and fill requests. I don't really see much more I can do with the community aside from that, since that's what we're primarily all about.
Not as often as I used to because no one really gives me ideas for new codes to create and I get burnt out converting skins from time to time. I try to stay active, create occasional content, and keep the forum alive overall, but I think as long as people continue to log in then they are apparently using the resources we have available.
Not necessarily an expert, but maybe between intermediate and an expert since I've been using forums for nearly two decades. There's always more to learn and I've never had the chance to be a staff member for an actual forum software on the official board. I'd always like to keep building my coding knowledge, learn more about SEO, and think of more unique content to create.
I like the board to be fully set up from the get-go before opening up the site and for all the settings, features, and layout to be properly set up. I generally keep everything that needs updating updated for the betterment of the board. I'm somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to certain aspects of the board, and not such a perfectionist in some other aspects.
Leaning more towards their personality, because popularity doesn't dictate if someone could make a worthy staff member or not. You can be celebrity popular and not have that good of ethics or morals, or the experience some others may have, so the personality definitely plays a strong role in who I would choose for staff, I think.
On Jcink, I primarily depend on signature advertising as I post on the official support board weekly and I'm currently the non-staff member with the most posts on the board, which I accumulated in less than 4 years. On InvisionFree/ZetaBoards, there were a lot of forums that allowed you to post advertisements on their board generally based on your post count, but on most Jcink boards it's a little different where most boards require a link back through guest posting and I don't really feel safe allowing guest posting on my board. I depend on search engines to bring in some traffic too, but the last I checked, my search rankings are pretty horrible. Sometimes affiliation is an option too, but I don't highly depend on it.
I don't make money from my board since it's all done as a hobby, but I try and keep the traffic flowing by offering superior technical support and coding expertise to those in need. But, the biggest selling point for my board would be the resources, particularly since I don't allow guests to view the hundreds of resources we have unless they are registered members.
Concerning Admin Junkies:
What's your reason for visiting Admin Junkies?: I am a forum nerd at heart and I love engaging in conversations about forums and running them.
Favorite forum: General Web & Forum Discussion
Is there enough to do within the community? Yes
What would you like to see in future themes: Perhaps different layouts and not your typical color schemes.
Do you like the choice of themes in the selector?: Yes, they are quite superb.
Which theme do you use?: Mere
Services you would like to see: Perhaps some type of unique repository you can submit resources to for different forum software.
Other comments: Keep up the good work!
