Re: Blogs for questions, blogs for answers

["David Neeley" <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Kevin McLauchlan opined:

"Probably you get what you pay for...

I am subscribed to several forums (fora?) for support of products, and for
other purposes. Many use phpBB.

It has its good points. Searching is not one of them."

With respect, I should say that is tantamount to saying:

"I have used Word. It has its good points. Numbered lists, master
documents (or name your poison" aren't among them."

Then using that as a reason that *all* content creation applications
are similarly flawed.

Of course, that is a less than optimal analysis.

It took ten whole minutes to find a comparison matrix and then to look
over a number of bulletin board products. (matrix:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software )

>From that list, I reviewed the website of several that appeared
promising. One of the most promising, although proprietary, would
appear to cost $32:
http://www.woltlab.de/products/burning_board/index_en.php

At first blush, Burning Board appears to have *every* element we might
desire: flexible email notification for those who desire it, powerful
archive searching (based on a MySQL database), export of new messages
as a "newsletter" that could be sent to those who wish it, integration
with the existing TECHWR-L website for ease of access--and a great
deal more.

What I like about a properly implemented forum is that permanent
resource threads can easily be created and maintained. This list
contains a wealth of knowledge among folks from whom I, for one, am
constantly being enlightened. Why not capture that knowledge for those
who come later--and for those of us whose memory may occasionally be
faulty?

Using this bulletin board format can solve many problems, while
keeping the administrative overhead low. It also would enable many
additional features--such as the ability to have up-to-date profile
information for members. That might, as an example, empower list
members to include current resumes for use by TECHWR-L advertisers
seeking employees--increasing the commercial viability of the activity
considerably.

I suggest you glance at the features and, perhaps, play with their
demo a bit. As you can imagine, there are many others out there--but
this one certainly seems worth investigating.

David
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