Idea for this site

[pencero]

Don't change the color schemes and logos. When you have something good, you don't want to make the classic GM mistake and take the thing everyone liked and redesign it from the ground up. Just do bodyforum and then it will become a simple mission of paintshopping 1 letter @ the # forum heads repeatedly. If you do redesign everything, do me a favor and put a 'classic' button so the rest of us can just make the forum look how it does now. Big coding tricks are cool, but they make the page load much slower. Your new target customer is the type of guy who accesses the forum from his phone because he spends so much $$$ and time on his car, he doesn't have time to get on a pc anyway. If you make the site complicated, you will lose the younger gen customers coming on here from their phone apps.

Time is money, so when you aim to redesign something you want it to be in a cost (time) effective fashion. I had this idea as much as 4 years ago and never said anything because I assumed other people would arrive at the same conclusions and reserve the .com / respective trademarks to capitalize on their respective favorite vehicle platforms by now: that never happened. Also, now that you are reserving the respective bodyforum.com's you hold the power to ask vendors to step in and provide the service of re-coding the site. When someone has a major business incentive to gain, you should stick either the bill or the work to them - if not both!

 

[oldtinsmith]

Well,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,I for one believe in the old saying:"nothing ventured, nothing gained". I like most all AMERICAN cars but, that's just me! What other people like is just fine with me too! My fear with this "idea" is that this site will be dominated by the '68 to '72 Chevelles and pony cars just like most of the popular magazines! I've always felt the G-body car is like the (please forgive my use of this phrase) "b*st*rd child" of street rodding! If you watch the TV auctions, you'll see what I mean!

Doug

 

[GP403]

Waaaait a second. 😀. These would all be separate sites. Different logins, urls, color schemes (so you know where you are) etc. no cluttering up this site with other stuff.... I'm not sure if I'd want a common login or not or if it can be done.

 

[joesregalproject]

I know exactly what you mean, oldtinsmith. Not only chevelles, but all the late 60s/ early 70s A bodies. They were born in the prime of the muscle car era, the G body was far from it. Oh well...

 

[oldtinsmith]

Waaaait a second. 😀. These would all be separate sites. Different logins, urls, color schemes (so you know where you are) etc. no cluttering up this site with other stuff.... I'm not sure if I'd want a common login or not or if it can be done.

That would be okay if the sites are kept apart.

Doug

I guess it was the title of this thread that threw me off :? !

 

[pencero]

While it would be ok to make separate sites I'd highly recommend against it. Some would fail while others succeeded. If you group everything together as one, a section that fails would just go unnoticed or continue to be perpetuated by the few loyal fans it does attract at virtually 0% additional expense to you. Making separate business ventures out of each platform would detract from the potential profitability of the idea. Having everything under the same search function makes your forum potentially powerful - and easily available on apps. The more search material a database has to offer, the more valuable it becomes. Combining everything on the same database could potentially make you a powerful person. Vendors would leap at the opportunity to be on your site because it repeatedly would become more cross referenced on search engines like google / bing and cell phone search applications:

grouping everything under the same database is so potentially powerful it could cause vendors to build parts they otherwise would have decided against reproducing due to lack of their ability to conduct effective marketing studies. Imagine if there was a really irritating vibrating panel or a loose wire to a rear window defroster or a faulty power window switch that was always annoying to a vehicle owner, and the kit to fix it was completely plausible to build as a profitable business venture, but due to the investors lack of ability to prove customers really would buy the kit, it never got built. What if that part or that 'kit' was an entire engine or transmission even? If you separate the platforms, you aren't taking advantage of how a modern search engine works and the power of commanding a large amount of data.

Of course, you don't want to become the wal mart of internet car forums. People don't want to be advertised to, but they just want parts that haven't been built to correct design flaws in their platform built simple as that. They also want certain parts that have been discontinued to become reproduced. Having limits is important - but its up to you guys who made all this to decide on the limits, not the guy who brought up the idea. If you build the site the way I'm suggesting I am so sure that endless possible vendors will come out of the woodwork. Some will have superior parts to others and some will have to be turned away for offering inferior quality. Perhaps the type of changes I'm suggesting would require a review process of vendors products. Just like any other idea there are pro's + cons for everyone to consider and you all might decide not do it @ all who can say what the future holds idk

 

[1evilregal]

pencero,

it's a great idea, but like most ideas and theories, they look good on paper(or screen lol), but often fail miserably...

case in point: we have 3 basic groups here- big wheelers, lowriders, and hot rodders. you see how much junk gets thrown around on some of the threads between them, which leads to some getting locked. now, just imagine: all those other bodied car groups coming in, and we're already the red-headed stepchildren of the automotive world.... poor gp403 wouldn't have time to go out and enjoy his car due to all the threadlocking he'd be doing....

just my $.02 (though, you did have a good idea :wink: )

 

[-83MONTESS-]

I would be fine with grouping the sites together but I can see alot of people chiming in on subjects they know nothing about. Like an Fbody guy comparing his camaro to a Gbody or vice versa.

 

[DRIVEN]

Agreed. Separate forums with similar and familiar look would be great. There IS such a thing as too big. I think we have a good thing going here at GBodyForum. I'd hate to see it get diluted and cluttered. Thanks for everything, GP403!

 

[pencero]

Just as a blue name indicates a product vendor we could easily just give the people who are ASE certified a badge so ppl can cut through the bs and make a better judgement call on whose advice to take. Such obstacles are easily surmountable. I think it's feasible, but it is none of my business so you guys carry on as you see best. You are doing a good enough job as it is +++