So I'm assuming most of you have read the current situation with eagle. I think its a good idea to delve a little more into it.

HISTORY

Eagle started this site back in June of last year. He contacted me and a few more if we were interested in writing reviews and putting them up. Eagle enjoys writing and his goal was always to write at least 50 and hit the Tomatometer. At the same time, he wanted everyone else to have a chance too. It was never to actually run a complete movie website.

Ofcourse, the invasion came just 1 year ago and plans changed. Eagle never really got his chance to write too many reviews as most of his time went into designing and just keeping it up to date. I got a surprise in November when I woke up to find IM messages informing me that I'm admin. I only thought it would be best that if eagle is trusting enough to give me a position from where i can potentially fuck up the entire board, i should only offer my help back to him and take a part in sharing some of his burden with the main site as well. In the beginning of this year, i started helping eagle out with updating the site and later, took more control over managing the database as well. With our final look and feel revision, we automated some parts of the site but sadly, due to one issue or the other, never got around to automating the entire thing. Our budget in this respect was limited so we decided to create whatever CMS we wanted ourselves. Eagle was always incharge of the look and feel, and i was more in charge of stuff happening in the background.

We always wanted the site to be more than what it is. Unless its some paid advertising that was not intrusive (pop ups or flash pop ups or intermediary pages), we never wanted any ads on the site. But we did want the site to become big. We managed to succeed in some respects. In others, we failed but didn't stop trying. Till July, all was according to plan. After that, things started falling apart.

Eagle knew before hand that my August was going to be terrible. I had to cut down my help with the main site. Eagle on the other hand had a few frustrations at that point, but mainly with the forum. We all know the incident that took place. I asked eagle to take a break and leave. He was to return in september. In the meantime, my computer crashed, the website itself went down, there was even a small hack incident and eagle realized that school work and social life was keeping him too busy to work on things. The main site, was essentially lying dead for a month, something i wasn't happy about and the fault rests with no one but me and outside circumstances. Eagle's break was a bit hard on me, mainly because both of us knew that between the 2 of us, he has the eye for what looks good and what doesn't due to which, making any images was too difficult for me. anyhoo, we managed and we put a deadline of October to start getting back to the site. We owed some publicists reviews and we missed 1 or 2 of them.

October came. My participation with the main site increased again. Eagle and i communicated more. He was going to make his return and he did. He played around, tried a few things but it is my opinion that his heart at this point was just out of it. There is nothing wrong with that. It happens to all of us and for him to just continue would have been fooling himself. He no longer wanted to manage the site and thus, the finances either but his predicament was that he couldn't just kill it. He knew my own investment into the site and i think he did the most honorable thing. Without hiding behind anything, he was upfront with me, explained the situation and offered to transfer the entire thing to me.

I'm in no mood to kill the site. The forum is just a forum to me. There are millions of them. But the site is part of my life. The site is fueled primarily by the forum so hence, both become important. I have spent a lot of time on the website, contacted tonnes of people when i could to publicize things, spoken with studios and such. To give up the entire thing in a moment by something like having to pay some dollars a month didn't sound like a smart idea. Once its dead, its dead. There is no recovery for it. There were quite a few issues to work out but my answer to eagle was clear. I would take over all of it. Eagle has the option to return anytime he wants to. But till then, the site will be under my ownership. Its control, ownership, and contact addresses will be transferred over to me, as well as the payments.

This is whats happened to far.

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WHERE WE ARE NOW

Many people run a site on their own. It can be done. But I would be kidding myself if i thought i could do it. I simply do not have the time nor resources to handle everything. Being in Canada, certain marketing aspects become even tougher (while some become easier). I do not wish to run this entire site on my own. I've also been upfront and told eagle that I do not have the financial resources to keep paying for the site. Eagle was kind enough to foot the bill for next month.

I've already spoken with a likely candidate to run this site with me and have ownership on the site. For many reasons, I will be retaining "name" ownership for the site "site being under my name once its transferred to me", agreements with the server people and other stuff but once and if things are finalized, I will get into a proper agreement with the 2nd person.

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Whats in store for the main site

I've looked over it. Certain things are a mess. They have to be taken care of. I would first like to apologise to the contributor team, espicially DP07 and Scott V. They never fail to send me their articles on a weekly basis but I haven't been able to put them up. As far as the updates go from now on, I'm on a three fold plan.

Step 1 (Short Term): Update stuff myself but more deligently.

Step 2 (a bit longer term): I've been working on this and was successful. I'll allow the contributors to upate the site themselves by uploading the relevant files. This is not a solution for everyone as it requires some html knowledge and the use of certain software for page creations. But it should still speed things up.

Step 3 (Long term permament solution): Worked on this for quite a bit and finally make it happen.I will be allowing the users to upload images to the specified directory. Then allow them to just post their writings and click submit. This should automatically create the page, fit it into a template, create the proper file name and place it into the right directory. It would require minimal html knowledge (such as paragraph tags and image tags) but really, this should be simple)

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I also plan on giving away free things from time to time over the main site. This should attract more people to drop in, if only to register for the prize. I'm hoping to start on this in about a week's time.

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A little work needs to be done on the right and bottom right panel of the main page.

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Have the news updated regularly. This ofcourse, will be the toughest part.

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Automation of primary pages pictures and text.

At this time, I can rest in peace and then maybe work on completely new things like the game and international box office.

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Whats in store for the Forum.

Some mods will be aware as well as a few members that I did not wish to continue with admining these boards. I not only wanted a break but didn't want any part in its decision making. In may or june, eagle and i interviewed some likely candidates for taking over as third admin and relieving me of most duties. Things didn't work out but we did appoint a head moderator. That didn't work out as we can see (and no one is to blame. real life has precedence over the forum). Then eagle left, other issues came about. I still do not wish to admin the boards.

I'm hoping there will be a bit of change with the forum admin and mod situation soon. This will be discussed with the mods very shortly. I will have to remain an admin only to update certain things on the site (i want to get the polls and top news thing working again).

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Thats really it for the moment. If anyone is worrying about money, dont. The problem should be in control right now and thats how i'd like to leave it. I know its a long read and if you got all the way till hear, I thank you for listening.

Have you considered blog-like software for automation?

Thanks for keeping invested in the space both of you two. Eagle for all your past work, and your desire to keep this place for us even when you're tired, and bABA for taking over. I'll do my best to help get things going again, so let me know whenever you need anything I can provide.



Haha! No joke. I went to a tehcnology training session two days ago, and afterwards I asked the same thing. Something light, like blogs on personal pages maybe, and then just easy link to front page? I don't know. The stuff you were talking about bABA, sounded better, but alot more complex to install. I don't want you to die during Ramadan with no sleep or drink or food and still working and also having to do this. Do you know "computer people" on the forums that would be willing to help?

Yea. Looked into it. Would have required an entire change in the design of the current site. Our current news service thing runs off a seperate CMS platform and is full stand alone system. I looked into using that for the rest of the site but things just weren't working out. I think i'll design the entire thing myself now. Might not be the most efficient one but hopefully good enough to make it work and simple enough to allow people easy access and updates.

Thankyou bABA.

this place will be just fine.

Thanks for writing that and keeping us informed, baba. Although my programming skill is mainly focused on Java, I can help writing code whenever needed.

Hmm .. I'll let you know if i'm getting stuck someplace. i'm good at creating logic behind the code and the code itself as long as its something i'm familiar with. the minute i run into unfamiliar terrority even with a language i'm accustomed too, i'll stare at the computer screen for hours.

I suggest BJ and BKB for mods, they are opposites and can balance things.

btw thanks.

Can't help out much except for writing, and nagging people via pm about weird *special* forum at top of the page *hint hint*

But I'm working on my Good Night and Good Luck review right now!

Is it important for you to have the review up right away? if not, we'll use your review to perform the first test next week. I'll teach you to upload your own stuff. if i can get you to do it, i'll be very happy.

I'll be sending you my "MirrorMask" review tonight Baba.

sounds good.

Whatever you like. I'll just post it in the critics section now before it expands this weekend. As to the main site, you let me know when, where, and how, and I'll do my best.

I'd go with blogging software, even if you have to ditch the news crawl or other stuff. I also don't understand why there's so much wasted space on the left and right, why the title of the site is so small, why the headlines are so tiny. I could be just "oh everything's perfect" but then that wouldn't help you any.

the right side is defeinetely wasted space.

hmm .. which titles are you refering to. maybe we can fix that.

I suggest a box office game (but not like bom derby game) like a daily game or something (okay the daily came from lees movie info)
I would like as I said before a more movie sounding site name for the website so more people could come here. (although if we keep it the same everyone could come and we will get people with no intrest in movies but are intrested in lets say Russian poetry (no I'm not making fun of it I'm just using an example))
Maybe have movie pages with grades that people can give them.

overall your doing a good job Baba!

How about setting it up so members can donate money (or bodily fluids) to the cause?????

Everything other than "X3 trailer description". Which btw should be something like "X3 Trailer First Look!"

Giving advice is a touchy thing because on the one hand I don't want people to just do what I say, that would make me feel weird, but on the other hand I think some ideas are worth weighing and considering.

I dunno, if it was me i'd look at a site like the hugely popular drudgereport and realise that the lesson from that is people don't care much about how pretty it looks, what they want is blazing headlines with clickable links to take them to something interesting even if it's to another site.

I'd also suggest putting links to other movie sites on your front page, even if it's down below or off to the side. That would make it an attractive homepage for people to have as their start page. There's pros and cons to this last idea but it's something to consider.

by the way, on my screen there's about 2 and a half inches of blank space on both the left and the right of the main front page.

Hmm ... I see. well ..
lets see. If i can get the news rolling, I'll check to see if the basic size of that entire bit can be made bigger and more links can be put in as well as made bigger. Making them bigger, in general, shouldn't be an issue at all.

Hmmm. I used to advocate that, but now that I think about it, its 1. unreliable, 2. unprofessional, and 3. (most importantly) means everyone will feel they have more say and if someone is repremanded, like warned or banned, than its unfair since they might have paid. They'de not only be mad they pitched in finacially, but also, it really woulnd't be fair to have taken their money and not let them use the priviledges it allows. Like paying taxes...and getting no services in return. Leads to very bitter people.

Dunno if that's everyone logic, but that's mine, so I'll put it out there.

also dont want to end up collecting more than required. i'm not one for calculating how much i owe who.

Well, I can understand the problems. If only there was some way to do it as an extra service (like BOM does it) - even if it was something really stupid and simple. That way the donation would not be in any way shape or form related to the forum. The extra feature could be a small amount of hosting space (for pics), or a blog page, or something not even related to the forum.

A few of us (myself included) paid at BOM without expecting (or getting any) special treatment of any kind in the forums. I think it could work.

you guys also paid to get a little more off the main site.

i'll keep donations open as a last resort idea. till then, dont worry about it. hopefully, something will work out.

I volunteer to be in charge of donations!