by
alex
Community Interview: Webster
Webster is a co-admin on @Nebulous his forum Offtopix – He also owns his own forum Conversations II after he had to restart over since the closure of InvisionFree & Zetaboards.
#1 Hello! Thank you for accepting my interview request. Can you tell me and the community more about yourself? Who are you, what’s your age, gender, where are you from ?
Name’s Webster; I got that nickname when I worked in the grocery business years ago and it stuck. I’m 47 years old, male and reside in Western North Carolina.d.
#2 – What is your greatest strength being a webmaster ?
Balancing time online w/time offline; I’ve seen too many people who spend all their lives online and don’t have a life elsewhere.
#3 – What is your greatest accomplishment ?
Still being alive after my various health problems the past several years. (And no, I won’t go into detail here).
#4 – How long have you been on forums in general? What’s the history behind you?
First forum I ever joined was an F1-related motor racing forum back in May 2005; I was there about 5, 6 years or so and pretty much ran its’ North American Motorsports section.
#5 – What’s the most successful forum you ever owned?
Probably Conversations II just on sheer longevity alone.
#6 – What has inspired you to start Wober back in the day and after a long offline time re-brand it to OffTopix?
I wanted a place that was a combination Cheers and Grand Central Station, a place where you could see both casual visitors, regular forum members and those interested in specific topics all together, both interacting w/others and within their own groups.
#7- How did you act to IF/ZB’s closure ? Did you have to start over ?
Hated it, with a passion. Why? Because frankly the group that bought Zetaboards out, Tapatalk, had – as far as I knew at the time – had a crappy reputation and the forced merger only exacerbated it because it wrecked a lot of boards (not just mine; anyone who did forum themes/skins on ZB got shafted as well).
#8- Can you tell us more about the software your site is running and why you have chosen that software?
We’re currently on Proboards; the reason I moved there after the merger was that, like Zetaboards, Proboards is a turn-key platform in which you don’t need to know a lot about the inner workings of the platform in order to run a forum. You just need to know the basics and be willing to listen to advice as things come up.
#9- Where do you see your forum heading in a couple of years? What are your goals?
Probably along the same lines as stated in #6 above.
#10 – How often do you work on your forum, creating new content, adding news, doing back-end stuff?
On the front-side, pretty much everyday. On the back-end, not much; as long as things are working and everything goes as it should, I usually don’t worry about the back-end.
#11 – Do you consider yourself an expert webmaster? Are there aspects that you’d like to know better ?
To the first part, no. To the second part, yes.
#12 – Do you like to have each detail set-up the way you want it and have everything go perfect? Or are you more laid back and fix a couple settings and let things fall into place on their own?
The latter, most definitely the latter.
#13 – Do you pick staff according to their popularity on forums, or their personality?
I have one rule for staff: can you do the job of being a moderator/admin/staff member? If you can, we can work on the rest; if not, then it doesn’t matter.
#14 – How do you advertise?
Usually I’ll place the C2’s forum link (C2 is how I colloquially refer to Conversations 2) in my signature; most forums I’m on typically allow that. If there’s also an advertising area (like the one over at Forum Promotion, for instance) I’ll advertise there as well.
#15 – How do you maintain your traffic/income and keep members entertained?
By adding content on a regular basis and keeping to a consistent set of rules for forum etiquette; too many boards in my opinion love to play favorites, particularly if its’ something btwn. staff and forum members. I’ve left boards for that reason alone; I tend to have the philosophy that staff (admins/mods) should be approachable and shouldn’t be exempt from the normal slings and arrows of forum conversations except when they’re acting in their capacity as a mod or admin.
