• http://blog.fanfilmsforum.com
• http://blogs.fanfilmsforum.com
• http://blog.amateurfilmsforum.com
• http://blogs.amateurfilmsforum.com
• http://filmsblog.org
• http://filmsblog.net

Only the first one works 100% correctly right now.  My virtual hosts file and dns aren’t quite syncing up correctly — should be fixed eventually.

By that, you should take this as a very serious effort on my part.  I want this to be a success.  The next thing I must do is figure out how to correctly style the MU entry page such that it’s a self explainitory advertisement of what it does, and such that it incorporates content from the various other blogs.

I’m looking at other free blog portals to get some idea of how they do it.

Theme wise I’ll need to come up with something that will work both as a blog portal, a login page for the users blog, and as a forum theme for invision power board — no small task.

Once I get the main page design working, I’ll create a post that allows users to request new themes, and try to explain to them that I’m but one person so it takes a bit of time.

Each theme will need to have a way to tie into the forum and vice versa.  The whole point of this is to tie these two components together.    This will be the part that comes last as it will take the longest — likely coming after release.

The main blog will have many categories that replace the functionality of the former wiki.. Tutorials, instructions, ideas and the like will each live on the new blog.

I hope to make the main blog a virtual classroom on all things film making in order to bring folks in, as such a very thorough tagging system will need to be implemented and used.  (Lucky for me WP has a great tagging system.)

I also hope to make it so that any tag-cloud feature and any search feature will search across all blogs.  I think this shall be easy, and may already be done.. not sure.

Note to self:  wp-signup and home.php will need to be the same design unless I can get the dns virtual host thing to settle down..

Over the years I have started and stopped several projects for the forum. Most of them looked good on paper, or even half way through production but just didn’t pan out for one reason or another. The latest attempt was at making a film repository and voting system that was similar to IMDB but specifically for amateur/fan films. As of right now that project is on hold – likely forever.

For many years the forum in and of itself has done very well with out much additions. But it’s not a blockbuster domain and traffic is moderate to be sure. At this point we only get about 45k hits a month which really isn’t very good, but just fine for a small community like ours.

I have been noticing a slight decline in the visitation of the site over the course of the last year. The odd thing is, my Unique hits per month is actually going up, a lot. That’s good. That means new folks are showing up, but the over all total is going down, which means a general lack of repeat visitors. It’s an odd situation to be honest.

What this implies to me is that it’s lacking in content or atleast a reason for people to come back more than a couple times a month. The issue is, I don’t have the time to create the kind of content required to keep folks rolling in and enlisting people on the forum to do that job for me, especially for free, doesn’t really seem a good idea because they have lives and don’t have the time to do it either.

I need a way to bring more traffic to the site, and do it in a “work free” way. I think I have an idea that solves that nicely.

First of all it’s coming up on time for a new theme for the board. It’s starting to look dated and needs a new look. With that new look I’m pondering giving forum users their own blogs.

What I’m thinking of doing is encorporating a MultiUser version of WordPress such that any user that wants it, can create his own blog about his film project and experiences. They’d have complete control over the blog, it’s content, what it looks like, how it behaves, the files associated with it, etc..

It would most likely live at http://blog.fanfilmsforum.com/{users blog name}/ .. These would be free individual blogs — Since the traffic to the site is primarily associated with fan films, most likely these blogs would be about peoples films. However I wouldn’t enforce that.. if you want it about something else that’s fine.

I would need to figure out a way to tie in the forum, some link that ties directly back to the forum or maybe my ads on the page or something.. Something minor and unobtrusive that doesn’t piss folks off..

This would give the site a new outlet for content that is user created. This means people like myself wouldn’t have to dig for new content on a daily basis and I wouldn’t have to beg my users to do it for me. Instead users who actually wanted to do this would do it of their own accord. Plus it’s a way to give back to the community and give those folks who want it a free outlet for their own creative juices.

This is still very much in the idea and planning phase. Thoughts and opinions are very much welcome.

Additional Information:

• Main blog will be at http://blog.fanfilmsforum.com/  Anyone with a forum account and of a certain rank will be allowed to post.
• Anyone can have a blog and the address will be http://blog.fanfilmsforum.com/{users blog name}
• The main blog will pull blog entries from the user blogs
• With this, redesign the forum to show a blog feed like a widget on a side bar or something

Hard parts:

The only thing that seems remotely challenging is making wordpress and IPB play nice with one another. I don’t think it will be hard, but it will be time consuming as I’m not 100% sure about some of IPB’s DB calls.