literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Having your own forum is sort of like being God of your own universe...

Today, I change the status of all the forums, so that a guest, who is not registered, can only see certain things... and can only post down in the spam area...

Those of you who are members/moderators may see this by simply logging out, and then viewing the forum as a guest.... try to post, and you should be told to log in.... except for down in the SPAM section... and those are automatically pruned after 7 days.... or I could shorten that to 2 days....

It is a long learning curve for me.....

I have greated a hidden GROUP for the Goats (not so nice members...)

and another Group for the Sheep (the nice members, not necessarily moderators...)

So, when someone joins by registering... well i must experiment with all this.... then.. if they look ok, i can place them in the SHEEP group, and they can see and post to all the good stuff (but that is not making them a moderator). If they become unruly... then I only have to move them to the GOAT group, and they will be very limited in what they can do.

But, if the are truly penitant and reform.... I could put them into the SHEEP Coral again. So, I dont think I will have to bann so many people....

Now, since I am monkeying around major time with the underlying laws of the universe.... do let me know if something does not work right for you... I may be a God, but I do not have Papal infallibility when adminstering ex cathedra as magisterium....

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

I spent today, Sunday, doing several things. I slept last evening until midnight. I have been awake ever since, spending most of my time on this. At around 3 in the morning, I realized from a comment made by Tech Support, that I am not allowed, per TOS & Conditions, to have a lot of hidden private forums... because myfreeforum.org depends upon Advertising income from hits made by unregistered guests reading.

I have a yahoo egroup with over 1500 of my own posts, essays, dialogues.

I started working from last week, backwards, posted everything of value here. I really need to get away from egroups, and get everything in a forum, and also, have a better backup. Egroups have no form of backup export.

I am aware of the problem of clutter. As the weeks go by, I shall be attempting to rearrange things.

Thanks for your patience. Meanwhile, some of you may choose to sign up for your own free forums, and start learning the ropes. There is no reason in the world why each of us cannot have our own forum. Just remember the TOS (terms of service) and Conditions of myfreeforum.org and make as many forums as possible visible and readible to unregistered guests.

Thanks to you all for your patience and participation.

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Thans for all your help. I subscribed to the site Wednesday, and by Sunday had 24 members and almost 500 posts. But the posts are from the archives of my own writings over 8 years. Many are in a yahoo egroup, which is not a good thing, since there is no way to backup archive.

http://literarydiscussions.myfreeforum.org

I worked 20 hours over this weekend, posting interesting articles worth saving from my egroup. I am most anxious not to lose all this hard work.

Which is why I would appreciate your reviewing my site, to assure me that I have totally complied with TOS and Conditions.

At some point, I will probably elect to purchase your hosting plan. Or, a different way to backup is to purchase from you the site on a CD possibly, in the event of some emergency.

It would have been better for me to SAVE each egroup post to my hard drive before posting to my forum this weekend, but I was in a rush, and I wanted to see how much I could get done, and also, get some reactions.

I do see some potential for a site such as mine, and such search engines, to get into the search engines and draw some traffic for you. And as you perhaps alread sense, I am a gung-ho crusader about encouraging others to get a site, if only to learn administrative skills. So perhaps these recruiting efforts of mine will also benefit.

Please be candid in your comments regarding my site, regarding its conformity to your requirements, as I do not want to invest countless hours only to find out that such a forum cannot be a long term thing for me. I have one member in Kuala Lumpur, a woman, and a man in Singapore, who have been devoted readers for a few years, and they may elect to become admins, to keep some of my writings alive after my death. I am interested in the possibility of memorial sites. I asked my web site host, but they do not accept any payments of years in advance, but only for the current year. But I imagine there is a market for memorial sites, especially for peole who write a lot. Thanks in advance for your time and assistance.

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

I have taken at look at your site, and it seems quite wonderful. In their free forum we intend to keep all our sites going for as ever as ever can be. e.g. if you paid to remove advertising and the payment lapsed, the site would simply revert to being a free site with advertising.

We are happy to accept any instructions on what should happen to the administration of a site after death.

As for terms and conditions, we are really not heavy on these. A forum has to work pretty hard to break the conditions, apart from the one on guest readability which is an easy trap to fall into.

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

It was a week ago, I think, that I subscribed to this free forum and started putting it together.

I shall not have much time until Friday and the weekend to respond to some of the good posts that you all have made here.

Let me know if you need or want something special. I am also most happy to one of you who ardently desires to create your own forum. My time and energies are limited, so I hesitate to say that I will help anyone because I might suddenly get 50 requests. I am even thinking about creating a second forum where a number of members from here would all be coadministrators. Perhaps such plurality of power (hey I just made up that phrase... at least I've never seen it before), such plurality of power would be inviting pandemonium and discord.

Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Several members (out of that vast, thronging multitude, requested that the main Forum index page be slightly less infinite.

So, I did some deleting and combining.

It IS possible to make forums hidden, and assign them to a group, and allow member to join that group, IF they want to see those forums. But since this is a free forum then I must abide by the TOS & Conditions of our host, myfreeforum.org, and make as many forums as possible readibly by public unregistered guests, because costs are defrayed by income from advertising, which is driven by page hits.

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