At the beginning of January, I made the decision to build a discussion and resource forum for online community administrators.  There were many reasons behind this decision.  Firstly I felt that the existing sites did not have a true community feel and, while they say all the right things, they don’t actually practice what they preach and rarely actually run in the manner that is recommended for having a smoothly-run community.  Secondly, I was an administrator on a long-standing administrator resource forum for six years and, after putting that site before my own regularly – so much so, mine all fell by the wayside as I simply didn’t have the time to dedicate to them – I decided that I was fighting a losing battle.  I had too many occasions of online meetings were items would be discussed, agreed and then never put into action and so the members of the site suffered (unless of course they had purchased some kind of sponsorship, then the world is their oyster).  I spent years sticking up for this site owner – whenever someone criticised his methods, his actions, his attitude.  I backed his decisions, covered his back and the thanks I get?  I logged on yesterday to discover my premium membership had been revoked and all my pm’s had been deleted.  I haven’t bothered asking why, I don’t particularly care since I didn’t purchase the premium membership and the pm’s didn’t hold anything of any note, so all it did for me was show the pettiness of the site owner and proved once and for all that I was right to get out and try and build something that actually cared about the members and not the revenue coming in from it.

So Admin Extra was born.  With the help of a fantastic team – who went above and beyond the bounds of friendship – we had the site online and live within three days with a custom skin (thanks Shelley!) lots of fantastic content and within a few hours a great bunch of members who seem as eager as us to develop a place where there is an actual community as well as resources and information.  We’ve now been live for 43 days, have over 1,000 threads and are coming up to 10,000 posts.

We have some absolutely fantastic interviews with well-known names -

• Paul M (vBulletin.org administrator)
• smackLAN (Transverse Styles owner)
• Lynne (vBulletin.org moderator and Support staff on vBulletin.com)
• Patrick Clinger (ProBoards)
• Nexialys (vBenhancer)
• Olivier Turbis (SkinBox)
• Floris Fiedeldij Dop (wetalk network)
• Jeff Lewis (co-founder of SMF)

As well as interviews, we have some awesome graphics (some of which are exclusive to Admin Extra).

• Forum Button Packs
• Rank Packs
• Status Icon Packs
• Smiley Packs
• Miscellaneous Packs

We also house a graphic requests forum where you can request designs to your specific needs.

And that’s not all – we also offer forum software Addons, Tutorials, Articles and Styles.

Our MarketPlace area allows you to post any sales, advertisements for staff, contents you’re running on your sites, post exchanges and Link/Affiliate schemes – all for free.  There are no limits on how many posts you have to make to access this area, nor do you have to have purchased any of our membership subscriptions to make use of them.

Our priority is to offer a resource community that is focused on what our members need to run their own online communities and, I think, so far we’re achieving that very very well!

Thank you for reading   Any comments are appreciated!

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There’s been so much negative information being bandied around about vBulletin/Internet Brands of late that I felt I would add my voice and revisit my initial post regarding the upgrade to vB4.

In an article posted by The Register, which to be honest I really begrudge linking to but without it my following comments won’t make much sense, it was claimed that IB has banned multiple paying customers from their support forums.  Granted, that was true, but the slant put on this article was that because they were banned from the forum (for ranting, abusing and generally being pains in the arses all ove r the place) they were not, at any time, banned from using the Support Ticket system which is the official means for getting support for a vBulletin forum.

The Register claimed that they contacted vB’s GM, Ray Morgan, who didn’t bother replying to them.  What they fail to add there is that they didn’t give him long to actually formulate a response to the claims being made and, you’d think, being a so-called reporting site, they would understand that you can’t just fire off replies without first taking in what’s being said.  There was absolutely nothing inexplicable about the bannings.   It was quite obvious the reasons behind the bannings was due to the amount of disruption these particular customers were causing on the forum.  So trying to paint these people as innocent is completely and utterly wrong.  They also quoted figures relating to the fees charged by vB and are inaccurate about them too.  The actual pricing can be found HERE.

It amused me that The Register didn’t even bother to try and see the other side of things.  They could have contacted any number of happy vB customers for the alternative view of the way things are going.  But that wouldn’t have achieved the response they wanted at all, of course, but I’m pretty sure they’ll be disappointed anyway as they’ve really done nothing more than make the majority of vB customers look derisively upon their article and the “anonymous” people who’ve complained to them.

Moving on from the idiocy above, IB released vB4 beta 1 on their own forum a week ago.  There was quite a lengthy downtime while they ensured everything was working correct and, as is the norm, there was a multitude of rumours flying around over the reasons behind it.  I won’t claim to know what was going on behind the scenes, but once the forum came back online everything was in place.

It’s actually been nice watching the changes that have been made to the forum over the past week in response to comments/suggestions from the customers using the support forums.  And who’d have believed a single week could have evolved vB4 to such a large extent.

I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of the alpha/beta team and, while I cannot talk about what I know or have seen away from what’s visible on the forums currently, I would like to see it’s been an exciting time and I’m confident that there are good things to come!

My support stays with vB/IB and Ray Morgan and while I do think some situations could (and should) have been handled differently, I am of the view that IB is genuine in wanting vBulletin to remain the best forum software available and that the mistakes that have been made, have been done so because they are still finding their feet.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m looking forward to running vB4 on my forums.

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If you’ve turned up here looking for the random musings that I write – then you need to go over to Whimpulsive where my personal random thoughts reside!  From today (well, last week actually, as that’s when I put Azhrialilu dot Com back online) this site concerns itself with all things computer related  if that’s to your tastes, I’ll be happy to see you stick around

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