Latest Club News from Bootie
- Thread starter Bootie
- Start date
Hi Guys
Time for another one of my 'Where we stand' posts.
Im happy to say the forum software is working fine and it certainly appears a lot more stable than it once was. In relation to the site we are actually quite a busy little site now with each week or two a thousand new posts being put on the boards. I think this is the most 'lucrative' we have ever been. The domain has been paid up for another year (gets renewed in October) and although the price of hosting is going up slightly in January it is not a problem as donations and my personal input more than covers costs so thanks to those who have helped out.
Another thanks goes out to the competition designers out there. It is your hard work and passion that keeps guys coming back here. Keep it up.
Regarding the current CM ladder I have been working with Christian Soldier in the background to make a fully automated ladder which basically mirrors that adopted by the Blitz. We are still fine tuning it but once we have it fully tested I will put it to you guys whether you want a change or not. Zarazas ladder is fine by all accounts but I have absolutely no input in it and Im a bit of a control freak and start to stress when people mail me asking questions about the ladder and I have to refer them to Zaraza. The ladder I am working on has me currently inputting all scenario size and information into the database and by god there are a lot of scenarios out there!!
If it works AND you want it we will push it out across the board and incorporate the style into other ladders. CS etc.
As the FGM grows I may look to set up a management section with interested members being given exclusive rights and roles within the club to aide me and POS. We have coped well up to now but we've been holding it up for a long time and if we spread the workload it'll give me and POS more time to post and game. Its just an idea at the minute.
Regarding membership we have been implementing the post within 90 days or get booted / no post in 3 months get you cut and it has kept us at a level of about 80+ members at any one time. It would be nice to have a bigger membership but we more than hold our own against the bigger sites. The Blitz for example has 8,000 members... I doubt if there members are as active as ours.
Be sure to invite your friends and opponents to the FGM as we always make them more than welcome.
Well enough for now... I got work to do on the site.
Time for another one of my 'Where we stand' posts.
Im happy to say the forum software is working fine and it certainly appears a lot more stable than it once was. In relation to the site we are actually quite a busy little site now with each week or two a thousand new posts being put on the boards. I think this is the most 'lucrative' we have ever been. The domain has been paid up for another year (gets renewed in October) and although the price of hosting is going up slightly in January it is not a problem as donations and my personal input more than covers costs so thanks to those who have helped out.
Another thanks goes out to the competition designers out there. It is your hard work and passion that keeps guys coming back here. Keep it up.
Regarding the current CM ladder I have been working with Christian Soldier in the background to make a fully automated ladder which basically mirrors that adopted by the Blitz. We are still fine tuning it but once we have it fully tested I will put it to you guys whether you want a change or not. Zarazas ladder is fine by all accounts but I have absolutely no input in it and Im a bit of a control freak and start to stress when people mail me asking questions about the ladder and I have to refer them to Zaraza. The ladder I am working on has me currently inputting all scenario size and information into the database and by god there are a lot of scenarios out there!!
If it works AND you want it we will push it out across the board and incorporate the style into other ladders. CS etc.
As the FGM grows I may look to set up a management section with interested members being given exclusive rights and roles within the club to aide me and POS. We have coped well up to now but we've been holding it up for a long time and if we spread the workload it'll give me and POS more time to post and game. Its just an idea at the minute.
Regarding membership we have been implementing the post within 90 days or get booted / no post in 3 months get you cut and it has kept us at a level of about 80+ members at any one time. It would be nice to have a bigger membership but we more than hold our own against the bigger sites. The Blitz for example has 8,000 members... I doubt if there members are as active as ours.
Be sure to invite your friends and opponents to the FGM as we always make them more than welcome.
Well enough for now... I got work to do on the site.
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2010
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I wish I could help somewhat, but the language is a problem for me ... :noidea:
A
AirborneBob
Guest
If you need any help on the scale modeling threads let me know..I would be honored to help! (its my other passion/vice)
Z
zaraza
Guest
It's good to hear everything is working ok
I wish i knew about new ladder, so i don't have to plan what to do with current one, but that;s the life...
P
PoorOldSpike
Guest
The domain has been paid up for another year (gets renewed in October) and although the price of hosting is going up slightly in January it is not a problem as donations and my personal input more than covers costs so thanks to those who have helped out...
If I understand that right mate, you have to make a once-a-year payment to VBully every October.
How much is it?
Here's an idea- On the Home Page include a couple of sentences near the 'click to donate' button saying-
Current domain fees (due every October)- £XXX
Current amount donated- £XXX
You can update the 'donated' figure every month or so.
That way, members will be able to see at a glance how much cash you still need to make the October deadline, and dip in their pockets to help.
At the moment we're completely in the dark all the time and don't know whether to donate, because for all we know you might have enough already..
It's good to hear everything is working ok
What plans do you have with the current one?
If I understand that right mate, you have to make a once-a-year payment to VBully every October.
How much is it?
Here's an idea- On the Home Page include a couple of sentences near the 'click to donate' button saying-
Current domain fees (due every October)- £XXX
Current amount donated- £XXX
You can update the 'donated' figure every month or so.
That way, members will be able to see at a glance how much cash you still need to make the October deadline, and dip in their pockets to help.
At the moment we're completely in the dark all the time and don't know whether to donate, because for all we know you might have enough already..
The domain fee isnt expensive but its important to renew or someone could step in and nick it if we didnt renew.
P
PoorOldSpike
Guest
The domain fee isnt expensive but its important to renew or someone could step in and nick it if we didnt renew.
'Hosting' and 'Domains' or whatever its called is all a mystery to me mate, all I know is that members would like to be kept in the picture about how much cash you need to keep the FGM show on the road.
To answer your question properly is quite hard. The costs of running a site day to day is minimal. The hosting comes in at about £20+ per month. Not sure what its going up to in January so your looking at about £200-300 a year to host. The vbulletin software so far has cost me upwards of £300. This is the software that runs the forum and site. Other costs incurred by my running the FGM are things like paying for a yearly Photobucket account, costs of postage and packaging for all games awarded to members, trinkets to keep my wife of my back etc. So quite hard to put a finger on an exact price. Also the more funds we have the more professional FGM will look and become. In the next year or so vbulletin will be updating all their forum packages with a new version so Im looking at a bill of £200 plus to pay for that. A member injected a bit of cash recently which has basically gone into a war fund for future software upgrades etc. I hope this explains a bit of what goes in to keep FGM ticking along.
It's good to hear everything is working ok
Zaraza, nothing is set in stone its just Im always looking for ways to improve upon what we have. The improvements I would like to see in the ladder area are...
1 - The ability for me to be able to interact with the members in relation to queries etc.
2 - The ladder to be hosted locally.
3 - The cross platform viability of the ladder.
4 - A new scoring system which reflects the Blitz ladder which I believe is one of the best out there.
To this end I have been dabbling with Google Docs. I didnt realise it before but it suits all our needs perfectly.
It is still a work in progress but the advantage of Google Docs is it lets you place there documents within web pages. The form for submitting results auto updates the spreadsheet which in turn is updated on the website.
These are all drafts.
The result submission form.
Which will auto transfer into this on our spreadsheet.
Which in turn transfers it to the ladder.
And it also saves details to our scenario database.
This type of ladder is easily transferrable to other genres so we can have a ladder system that covers various games here. None of them manual and all very easy to manipulate.
Z
zaraza
Guest
I thought i could use holidays to introduce some changes when season 3 begins.
But, if this suits your needs, that's ok with me
But, if this suits your needs, that's ok with me
P
PoorOldSpike
Guest
Hmm...last time i played on the Blitz ladder their system penalised the loser.
The FGM ladder doesn't penalise losers, in fact it gives them a point, so in that respect it's better than Blitz because here the only way is up, NEVER down..
However, now that the FGM ladder's been running for a full year and we've had plenty of time to see its 5 pts win/2pts draw/1pt lose system in action, I personally think giving losers a point is maybe being too generous.
I mean, suppose somebody plays 20 games in a 6-month FGM season and wins them all, he'll score 100 points.
And suppose somebody plays 100 games and loses them all, he'll score 100 too!
So how about this for an idea- modify the FGM scoring so that the loser gets 0 pts.
That'll mean he still won't drop, but at the same time he won't go up either, which seems a fair and sensible compromise..
I still post results at the Blitz. The ladder there does not penalize the loser. It just gives the winner more ladder points than the loser. Seems fair to me.