Coffee House Expansion

[MartyMcFly]

Well, more a Geek Lounge Expansion actually. I have spent a bit of time on a few other IT / Tech related forums, and whilst they may not match the community here at Daniweb, they do have a bit more "Off Topic" discusion forums. Personally, I think the Geeks Lounge should be split off into a few forums as follows. (Note these arn't my suggestions for forum names, just ideas for content, I couldn't think of any good names). In no particular order;

News and Internet Discussion - There are quite a lot of posts which constitue a hyperlink as the subject for a following discussion, and I think they should have a seperate forum. The ease of posting and amount of stuff out there, means that so many of these posts are out-weighing normal posts within the Geeks Lounge, and the good stuff, (in my opinion, don't start on me), may be missed.

Thread Games / Quizzes / Competitions - Quite a few of these too, and since the old competition forum was abolished, (I think), might be an idea to include with this, and start a few off again.

Daniweb photo gallery - With so many people having camera phones, and digital cameras, the amount of this media is really increased. There are people from all over the world visit this forum, and a forum for people to post pictures of themselves, (if there vein), their pets, their PCs, their office, where they live, Wow, such fun.

Geek Lounge - That leaves the lovely Geek Lounge pure for Geekish pleasures, and enjoying the Daniweb community at it's best.

Well, I don't know how much people rate the importance of forum hang outs, but I think they are key to a good community, just look at the Music thread in the geeks lounge, to see how many people have made a post who arn't regulars in the Lounge, just showing how many people keep a watch of what is put in there. It also means that some people visit the forum more than just when they have a problem.

One last thing, I notice that if I don't visit the site, for about 24hours or less, the number of new posts is more than one page, which is a good reason to have some expansion imo.

Anyways, what do people think?

[cscgal]

News and Internet Discussion - This is where our Blogging feature comes into play. Currently our blogs serve as the perfect place for IT news ... members can name their own blog, categorize entries, members can comment on blog entries, it's all searchable by username or category, and there are multiple RSS feeds available. Additionally, moderators have the ability to mark well-written blog entries as featured where they appear on our homepage.

Thread games / quizzes / competitions - We had a Contests forum for nearly two years and it proved futile. No one submitted any contests other than blatant spam such as: "My forum is running a contest where if you post 50 times I will give you $5" ... Clearly, another contest forum isn't going to work unless / until the idea is revamped.

Photo gallery - Currently members can submit a profile picture which appears in their member profile and also on their blog page. I'm afraid that offering more elaborate photo albums at this time will take DaniWeb from less of a technical authority into more of a MySpace, which isn't necessarily the direction I want to head. Perhaps a "post your rig" photo album or such ... but a photo album for members' pets doesn't really scream, "This is a technical authority for professionals! What you read here can be trusted."