Hello, hello, hello

[tfat]

Is there anybody out there?


Or, is this board dead?

[Eric Z]

As we go marching toward winter it is natural for the traffic to slow down and folks not to be thinking about squirting as much. Even with that I find the lack of traffic disheartening.
The squirt community is the size that it is and I don't think there are heaps of squirt boaters out there that don't know that the messageboard exists. I've been hosting it here at this address for 14 years or so.
I am not on Facebook and don't ever intend to be so I don't know to what degree people are participating in discussion there rather than here. If there is more interaction happening there due to some added functionality I can continue to work on the board and add that functionality here (like perhaps making embedding videos easier). It is hard to justify putting that work in front of other life tasks though if the board itself isnt being utilized. If the board is getting used I am happy to keep serving the squirt community. I just need to know what folks would like to see added.
I was thinking about having something weekly to spark discussion like digging up some nostalgia items like a scan of the old New Wave catalog, or an old AW cover, or pictures of things from events during the beginning of the sport. We could even set up Reddit style AMA's with notable figures in the squirt world to answer user questions.

If the board is not being used because it is not what the community would like it to be then lets discuss what would make it better.

[spin.cycle]

yeah i was wondering why it's so dead. the idea about discussions, etc, that you brought up sounds like it could bring in traffic. and Facebook's the evil empire anyhow

[kduchow]

Eric,

Part of the problem may be that the old page was

index.html

and the new page is

index.php

I had the old page bookmarked and when I went there I get a 404 Not Found error. Lots of other people may get this and assume it's dead. I went back to the root of the domain and managed to find the new board. It's probably worth putting up an index.html page that simply redirects to the php page.

Kirk

[Eric Z]

good thinking. I set up a redirect page tonight.
if you go to /index.html you will now get a page with a link to the new url.

This could potentially cause problems though. Since there is now both /index.html and /index.php in the root folder of /messageboard the server could serve up the .html instead of the .php page when someone enters angstkayak.com/messageboard

I need feedback on if people are getting directed to the .html instead of the .php page when they type the url http://angstkayak.com/messageboard.

Anyhew, probably not a big factor in the traffic. Any variant of "squirt messageboard" will have the new page in either the first or second spot on a google search.
FYI- the board messages are hidden from search engines but the location of the board itself is not hidden from search engines.
There is an internal search feature here in the board to search for posts that is only accessible when you are logged in.

[LadyLuckIsNotaDude]

I think its also a matter of size of community. But yes sad to see the season come to an end in the southeast. It was much too short for me! Thanks Eric for running a good forum for us.