Crowdfunding the creation of the next version of LFGSS

waste? education man!

Fair points, and that's the kinda application I was hoping to support.
I still think a certain degree of discoverability
should be maintained but it shouldn't come at the expense of descriptiveness (I hope thats a word). Otherwise the whole thing is purely academic.
PM inbound.

There is, in my specs, within every API a "links" object that describes the things you can now do, along with the things that are somehow related.

I've just forsaken a chunk of purity. For example I'm not going down the path of custom Accept headers to describe the underlying resource structure and version. Because the vast majority of developers cannot seem to get their head around it.

So... discoverability in, purity forsaken for key principles.

Wish I had the skills to help.

If I could afford an equity share I would be in.

Can we check the tax implications IE writing it off against a tax bill as its r&d

also, i hope your moving on with the world, no ie6/7 support ;)

Also in for a minimum, but would like to know figures.

And what happened to the bee?

As per others VB, the investment amount I've selected would be a minimum. I might be able to go higher, but can definiatly commit that.

Just an idea:

A lot of forums/blogs have a number of relative companies sponsoring down the right hand side of the page which obviously brings in £. Is there anyway of attracting sponsors to this forum as it is one of the largest of this type. i.e SS/FixedGear.

Also, Forum Merchandise. i.e cycling caps, stickers, mugs etc. I know this idea isnt going to make you millions, but surely anything is a help, plus it then further promotes the forum?

Sorry if this has already been covered im just throwing ideas out there!

Velocio has a hatred of ads, there were some for a while, but he got rid of them.

Merch is being done, to a certain degree, but I think he wants the two to be separate - for Microcosm to stand on its own feet, rather than being dependent on here.

also, i hope your moving on with the world, no ie6/7 support ;)

Why? Browser snobbery is neither big, nor clever.
I wouldn't expect full feature support, but I'd expect it to be usable, the same way I'd expect it to be usable in Lynx.

I more so meant that dont waste weeks of your life fully supporting IE6

IE6 and IE7 relegated to no-JS land with Lynx/Links unless basic jQuery nullifies the differences.

That'd depend on your target market, both in terms of geographic and socio-economic quantifiers. In fact I'd expect at some point, microcosm.app would need to lend a certain degree of congruent support to legacy browsers (in general, not just of the IE variety), if any push Asia-bound were to be on the cards.

..unless basic jQuery nullifies the differences.

Say what?

In, but things will be made a lot easier if I sell plenty of copies of my book...

which book?

Good luck D!

Say what?

If you use a library like jQuery or Prototype, most of the basic DOM and event model differences between FF, Chrome and each different version of IE are wrapped up by a Someone Else's Problem field.

Sadly there are some problems with IE6 and IE7 with no level of jQuery SEP or Prototype SEP will fix so rather than waste dev time fixing it, just send those broken browsers a simplified version of the page.

Stop arguing about implementation details, it's futile.

The site will start with a "it should work in a no-JavaScript world of basic browsers" because I care about accessibility and function trumps form in this scenario.

But clearly nice things like having event attendance increment in real-time requires fun like JavaScript and web sockets... so snazzy browsers get snazzy features. And you can reasonably expect newer browsers with better CSS3 support will also look better.

So... pragmatically, any reasonable assumption is correct.

As for adverts.

Adverts do not work on forums.

I could put them everywhere, there are companies that ask if they can give me £100 to display a banner.

But... the revenue generated from adverts barely reaches break-even on the cost of running adverts.

Why? Because you're on a forum... you're talking shite with other people, taking the mick, and helping others out. You have no purchasing intent, so the adverts are never clicked and do not result in conversions (into customers) for the advertisers.

There IS purchasing intent... you buy and sell stuff. But that window is so small that banner adverts can never reach you at that moment.

What works on forums is affiliate advertising. To take the moment in which you ask about puncture resistant tyres, and someone links to Marathons on Chain Reaction Cycles. Then, right there at that moment... you have purchasing intent and adverts work.

That's what works.

And it's great because affiliate advertising:
1) Does not track you like banner adverts do
2) Does not uglify the site like banner adverts do
3) Are right in there capturing 1% of the transaction just when it matters, but invisibly to you

So it's possible to get revenue from forums, but not through banner adverts. Through affiliates.

And that's one of the core epiphanies behind the company and product... that instead of a company charging for forum software (a rent on the site), and instead of harming the experience for you guys (with banner adverts), there is a real and viable revenue stream in the communication itself.

Whether that be affiliate fees for general posts, or a pound in a pot for classifieds (eBay take x%, yet forums have the market... what if we did a good job and charged a fraction of the price?).

I want forums to be self-sustainable, and I want to be able to offer really great software even to a local cycling club in Ipswich.

The money is there, and forums shouldn't need a begging cap to survive (hah, the irony of me posting that).

So long-term... I have a plan, and it's a good plan.

Research suggests that this is possibly a £155m per annum business in 5 years... but holy schmoly the hard work and being brassic for the first 3 years of that are going to be a fun rollercoaster.

The market is there, and I'm really really happy it doesn't involve banner adverts and invasions of privacy.

The intent is that it would be possible to sell on the software aswell to other companies that run 'forums' to get a new take on their 'forum' right?

In, but there must be stickers.

VB, Interesting to hear, and very promising. It's funny you should post that as I was imagining some sort of post-completion word replacement thingy. Getting a clickable tooltip above the plaintext product name, prompting the user to transform it into a Product. When displayed in the Thread view it'd appear as a regular hyperlink, possibly with a slight visual modifications to hover state. When clicked, the Thread view Product would display bubble overlay beneath with an image, brief spec, and 'Buy it now' style links to affiliates who stock the product, in a V-Box layout.
A point of sale for the affiliates, and more detailed information instantly for users.

The intent is that it would be possible to sell on the software aswell to other companies that run 'forums' to get a new take on their 'forum' right?

Nope.

Like tumblr, for forums.

Instead of doing the equivalent of installing your own servers and your copy of Wordpress (vBulletin, phpBB, Vanilla in our case)... you just say you want a forum, and seconds later you have a forum.

This removes so many security problems with out of date software, removes the technical barriers for those who want forums, etc.

New sites would get sub-domains on microcosm.app. So LFGSS becomes lfgss.microcosm.app

And then domain owners can CNAME their domain so that accessing www.lfgss.com would access lfgss.microcosm.app

Piece of piss.

Yet... if you are technical, and do want to fully bespoke the front-end or create a deep integration with something else, then great. Everything the site can do, the APIs can do... and we will fully open our Django front-end, so you can see it all in action and have a starter for 10.

Then all you need do is run an instance of Django pointing at our APIs.

We still keep the users' privacy intact, and the server secure... but you can render it however you please.

10 second starter for the non-technical, as close to full control as possible for the technical.

Going back to the local cycling club in Ipswich which only has 20 members... it should take them no more than a matter of minutes to go from nothing to forum that they can use. No technical knowledge required, and they don't have to pay.

The cost of a row in a database is virtually nothing. The cost of serving a web page I want to be so low that it also is virtually nothing. This way it is possible to make a business using those razor thin margins on affiliate fees.

It's effectively a volume business in which the costs have to be low and usage high to make money. But that's exactly what I've proven is possible with other forums I've run

And if you read that carefully you suddenly realise that the scope and ambition is massive.

LFGSS is my baby, and LFGSS is what I love... but I see no reason at all that I can't run 20% of the forums in the world, and that by offering such great software and removing so many technical barriers that I can't help even more people create them and bring people together.

The dream is big.

And if I can do it whilst keeping your privacy intact, embracing aliases and pseudonyms... then maybe as well as denting eBay and PayPal I can do my bit to bring Facebook down a notch or two. But that is dreaming. First, I need to build the thing and for that I need to fund it.

:D sounds extremely exciting

Pretty inspiring. I've voted a minimum as others have. I could and would pay more depending on timing

Voted, love the idea. Next week is payday for me.