surfco back pedal ?

the forum vanishes again
undone by an hours work by Phoam and free forums ?

Spastics !!
we bring em the advertising dollars and they treat us like spam

what we need though is people finding out about this forum, 1 person can change the world but its much easier with a couple hundred.

well originally I put this forum together as a sample to show surfco of what we wanted, thinking perhaps that they weren't forum people and weren't aware of the kind of features we were after.


And I had a spare few hours I wanted to distract myself from what I had to be doing last night.

But if some want to come over and use it for real, I guess thats fine, but I am sure surf.co.nz will always have lurkers and posters over there.. once they get their forums sorted.

phoam wrote:well originally I put this forum together as a sample to show surfco of what we wanted, thinking perhaps that they weren't forum people and weren't aware of the kind of features we were after.


And I had a spare few hours I wanted to distract myself from what I had to be doing last night.

But if some want to come over and use it for real, I guess thats fine, but I am sure surf.co.nz will always have lurkers and posters over there.. once they get their forums sorted.

This forum is great, and who ever doesn't swap from surfco isnt worth having.

thing is phoam, they didn't seem interested in what anyone said. almost everyone was pissed about the changes and made constructive criticisms to no avail.

then once you showed them what the majority wanted, they took it as a threat, spat the dummy and started to delete posts with links here...in my mind thats just childish. the mature thing to do would be to firstly thank you for going to the effort and then maybe actually take on board what you had suggested.

then admin comes back and starts giving the speil and making promises (insert desperation emoticon here)...i mean, how much input did they require? you did this in a matter of hours(well done btw) and they can't do anything in 4 days?..poor form.

i'm no techy but i think a good portion of their daily site hits would be the BB? and like others said, those hits will effect advertisers and eventually surfco's pockets.

seems to me like they have bitten a few fingers of the hand that feeds them.

i'm quite happy to read/post this forum and i have little doubt a good portion of the others will sign up.

good onya
:thumbs up:

Bionic tARD wrote:

phoam wrote:well originally I put this forum together as a sample to show surfco of what we wanted, thinking perhaps that they weren't forum people and weren't aware of the kind of features we were after.


And I had a spare few hours I wanted to distract myself from what I had to be doing last night.

But if some want to come over and use it for real, I guess thats fine, but I am sure surf.co.nz will always have lurkers and posters over there.. once they get their forums sorted.

This forum is great, and who ever doesn't swap from surfco isnt worth having.

wow! look how easy it is to quote!

look at these great smileys!!



I wonder if I can say Penis....

amazing.

I can even say penis.

Well done phoam!

In the apparent snap of a finger you've pulled together what half a dozen guys working round the clock for a week couldn't manage.

I don't think its fair though to make a comparison like that though groovn

because they are coding their forum from scratch, whereas this forum is fairly easy to set up, most features here are standard, I just added a few bits, and customised some others.

try typing sh!t though
or pen!s again

got a few tricks up my sleeve

male organ

dayummm!!! lookit you!!

But see it IS a fair comparison.. because for a surf magazine to "code their own" with so many robust and "canned" forum options out there is just a waste of resources.

Is coding a core competency of a surf mag? Is that the greatest use of talent - as determined by the output and value it will create for surfco or its readers? I'd argue, hell no.

but enough griping about their stuff up. This tidy little place will do nicely.

groovn wrote:

Is coding a core competency of a surf mag? Is that the greatest use of talent - as determined by the output and value it will create for surfco or its readers? I'd argue, hell no.

I stand corrected if I am wrong.
But I believe that they need to code their own forum, so the hits/statistics for the forum are included in the hits for the whole website.

It is these hits that are presented to the advertisers as a traffic readership popularity thing, which enables them to secure money for advertising.
This in turn allows them to run the swellmap service, which is now subscription free.

So it is a business decision, I am sure if they were able to include hits from a forum like this, they would have installed one, but I understand that traffic from one of these would not be able to be included?

They do have to run a business, and I understand their need to do things they way they have with the forum.
Other big international surf websites and mags would not need to include hits from their forums because they have a big enough readership.

nah, that's not accurate mate. They can easily roll their bb stats into their overall website stats. Very common.

ahhh well, hey for whatever reason they've decided to go a route that by all accounts was a bit foolish. Yep, they're a business. And that's exactly why I judge them pretty harshly for;

not considering their customers wants and needs
not bothering even to inform their customers of upcoming changes
making changes that don't make business sense

Admin post above, had the wrong hat on, this is difficult with two usernames!
I'd make a bad troll person.

well, I think that they will install a few new features over there, and get it almost right, enough to keep the loyal suck asses happy.

The analogy is like this:
We had a decent house with some comfy old sofas at the old surfco forum, some wanted a more upmarket one with leather sofas.
They then suddenly they gave us a shack with shiny walls and took away our furniture.

They will then develop it till its like a cute little shiny cottage with an outhouse & some bar stools, but it may never be the decent house it once was.

Maybe thats just what some people want

groovn wrote:

not considering their customers wants and needs
not bothering even to inform their customers of upcoming changes
making changes that don't make business sense

I have to agree, what was the point in bringing in the new format half arsed. The best thing would of been to go to the people that make the forum what it is and ask what they like, what they dont like and what they think could make it better, then work on it till its 100% then launch.

great analogy phoam!!!

and bionic, exactly.... the "smart approach" would have been to solicit some solid input, then develop, test, hone and then launch.

Very amateur move to just drop a bomb of unfinished crapoloa out there as their live site and work it from there. Not just the forum either, the whole site is jacked.

But, phoam's probably dead on. They'll beaver away on it until it becomes a semi-gloss little upscale beach cottage for the masses and BAM!!! you'll have a soulless lookalike of every other surf site out there.

Congrats boyz.

would a good analogy be Microsoft vista ?