The Dublin forum is dead

something should be done about it,
londonfgss irish tour. something for the summer, sixtie miles a day for a week,
londonfgss riders only

This Forum is dead
long live the forum

Vague, but go on..
Like london riders coming over or us just doing more?

yeah riders come over,
show them the west of ireland or could fly to dublin the cyce the cost road to cork go home,
londonfgss on tour

That's a bloody good idea!! Organise an invitational and then have a huge group ride... maybe try and do it for a charity or something if we can get enough people...?

It would be a lot of fun though...

Or if that doesn't happen we could just try and get our arses out more, alleycats, polo, tricks as well as the odd ride

This forum IS dead.

It really doesn't help that you have to join the social group to post here - it's off-putting to new peeps. Is this the intention?

Not ideal but if I had the money to rent a server I would start a completely separate Dublin/Ireland forum.
If anyone else does feel free:P.

Not ideal but if I had the money to rent a server I would start a completely separate Dublin/Ireland forum.
If anyone else does feel free:P.

I don't think that a Dublin or Ireland forum would have the same amount of posting on it that London does. Like it or not, there's not much of a 'scene' here, so I reckon it's on a hiding to nothing, but I may be persuaded to set something up if people are interested... anyone other than Stein?

I think it's a nice idea but I know I for one wouold still use the London forum as much and I don't need another forum in my life, one's bad enough, lol, I also don't think it would be active enough to justify existence really... Nothing wrong with this on here...

Prob agree with you there to be honest on the amount of traffic it might generate, but in saying that I see at least 5/6 diff fg/ss a day now and I work and live far from the city centre, so it's probably just a case of getting the word out there.

I'm a graphic designer, moving into the area of web design too, so happy to help out on that end if it goes ahead.

I have talked to a good few people about the prospect of a Dublin forum and the reply was only good,
quite a few of the couriers were very interested in it, a few non lfgss or boards fg riders were interested.
I would think that the main reason we don't get more traffic is that the users on this sub forum were previous users on lfgss anyway generally capping the amount of new users we get.

yeah riders come over,
show them the west of ireland or could fly to dublin the cyce the cost road to cork go home,
londonfgss on tour

i'd hit that shit

Or if that doesn't happen we could just try and get our arses out more, alleycats, polo, tricks as well as the odd ride

i'd also hit that shit

Yeh be nice to get a bit of a community going over here. Get more people on bikes too. I'm more a reader than a poster though, and don't contribute that much to the main forum. I kind of feel that newbies asking genuine questions get an unusually hard time, and I'd genuinely like to learn more about the mechanical end of it, maybe a build or two down the line.

What's needed to set up a dublin/irish based site apart from hosting, anyone got coding skills?

I reckon its more maintenance that is needed, these forums are generally just a pattern that you get(paying or not?) and modify them yourself from there over time, the daily bugs and problems will be a good bit of work.

I'm up for a ride around Ireland, best for me would be to end it around Limerick/Shannon.

You guys should absolutely do this.

What help do you need? First up... find someone who can do basic tech stuff (HTML, some PHP, some notion of what a database is). You can start small with free software like Vanilla ( http://getvanilla.com/ ) or PhpBB ( http://www.phpbb.com/ ).

You just need a web hosting account that gives you php + mysql.

Oh, and Vanilla will require more coding skills than a heavily templated system like PhpBB.

This site runs on vBulletin, it's a commerical product, you won't need what it offers for a while (scalability, caching systems, bulk management tools, etc).

The reason it's important to have a local forum is rides and drinks. It's what it is all about... being on your bikes and meeting people.

Do it, and if you need advice hit me up.

Sounds good to me. We could all chip in a few euro for the hosting end of it. Be cheap enough?

And what would you call it? Dublin or make it National?

I reckon its more maintenance that is needed, these forums are generally just a pattern that you get(paying or not?) and modify them yourself from there over time, the daily bugs and problems will be a good bit of work.

My daily input into this site is about 2 hours per day to manage spam, membership issues (registration problems mostly), filing (threads in the wrong place, etc).

It's quite a commitment.

At the start it was about promotion, and building the momentum, and then over time it turns into the daily grind of the stuff above. 2 Hours a day is both the max and min effort required, you can use processes, policies and some tools to reduce bits of work, but other work seems to appear in it's place. I just accept that it's part of what it takes, without it people wouldn't be able to register, threads would be lost between the gaps, they'd be spam everywhere... basically it would piss people off and they'd leave... so running a forum does need constant input and effort.

The big question for most new forums is: Are you an open to the public forum, or a private forum? There are issues, pros and cons with both. The majority of fixed gear forums are private because of jerks, spam, legal threats, etc... I chose to go public, but to achieve that requires ensuring you manage and balance possible risks... going public I chose to be a service provider, which means I act like the post office or telecomms provider... no moderators! If you have moderators you're a publisher... which infers that you're responsible for what you publish.

Think about that stuff up front. It's hard to change it later.

Like it or not, there's not much of a 'scene' here

I love it, for now.

Oh fuck, I may aswell hand in my notice and just sit at home on the sofa all day if we get another forum... I already spend way too much time on this one :(

I will find myself opening chrome, opening dfgss, lfgss,boards and my email.... EXCELLENT

My daily input into this site is about 2 hours per day to manage spam, membership issues (registration problems mostly), filing (threads in the wrong place, etc).

It's quite a commitment.

Thanks for that info Velocio, do you mind me asking how long it's been running altogether? I got that email regarding fund raising for the forum and was fairly impressed with some of the stats. ie traffic and numbers and being no.2 online cycling community.

I think it'd be good, there may not be much of a scene regarding tricks/polo etc, but plenty of people riding/commuting fg.

I think it's a great idea. Personally, I usually only post in this Dublin section anyway because the main forum seems to be all in jokes and any new user who asks a simple question that may have already been answered before, gets the piss taken out of them and repeatedly told to "use the search"