JackT wrote:Hey Brian, how long did it take you to set up this forum? Did you start working on it after the official forum was closed?
I think it's working out well so far. It's early yet, but people seem to retain interest in the bunnymen underground even with the official forum available.
Well I already had villiersterrace.com established for a few years. Back in January after the whole bunnymen forum was lost once again. I toyed with the idea of starting my own forum. So I setup a phpbb forum and customized it and made some tweaks. Nothing really that difficult or time consuming. Most of it is automatic scripting. I never advertised it or made a link to it. I'd seen other fan forums come and go so I figured it would not get used. Somehow some spammers were signing up so I deactivated it and forgot about it. When bunnymen.com shut down their forum I just reactivated and made some minor changes and sent e-mails to the Seven Seas mailing list and sent e-mails to all the people who had e-mailed me over the years about villiersterrace.com or the bunnymen. I also posted a message at the Glide forum. I was actually surprised to see the amount of posts and support from a lot of the regular posters at bunnymen.com, you know, the ones that keep it alive.
You are right, it is early yet. We'll see if people continue to use it.
Since Oct 18th:
Number of posts: 325
Number of topics: 35
Number of users: 39
BTW, I really don't feel as though I am trying to displace the official forum, not that you said that. i just wanted to be clear on this matter. I like to think of it as an alternative or an enhancement if fans want to discuss things that may not be kosher over at the official site. I thought Ian's court case in Scotland was worthy of discussion. I think the quality of Ian's voice is worthy of discussion. I think criticism of the forum and the band itself is worthy of discussion. The forum is for the fans and the critics, not the band IMO.