Sooooooo......

[quartz]

Did integrating the board into Animated and Lucky Draw really cause that much confusion? It was done as TransformersAnimated.com grew to have the same and then more traffic than Transformers At The Moon within two months of the show launching so it became important for us to have a board up for that site and running it separately seemed pointless.

Personally its lack of time, interest and I guess posts that stop me from reading and posting on the board again now which itself has a knock-on effect of creating less posts.

Most of the board members we use to have have moved away and are either just posting on TFW as its basically the "official" site now Hasbro can't ever name it as such. You also have the rise of YouTube and Podcasts over the last few years that have drawn people away to use those mediums as places to talk and then the associated boards such as Moonbase2 etc.

I agree that the board here needs to change and probably focus on more "fun fluff". I want to totally reorganise it once I complete the code re-write of V9. Yes I know that's been in development for a year but sadly work has taken a massive toll on me over the last 18 months so I've not had a chance, energy or will to continue heavy coding sessions when not working.

Moonbug is moving right now and that's been also causing some issues over the last few months so once he does fully move (the next few days) it'll be just me maintaining everything so I need to start streamlining a few things anyway. At the same time it's also going to probably mean I knuckle down and focus on completing some of the outstanding work.

V9 of the site will show the latest posts and topics on the main site which may help as at the moment other than a small button you'd be hard pressed to know that we have the board.

We will be the official board for Auto Assembly? No its not going to happen. I offered a few years back and even though I am on the committee and was the main sponsor last year it won't happen. Its more likely that I may re-write the AA website at some-point and possibly host it for them, but it would be its own separate entity.

In general traffic to the Moon has fallen over the last few years anyway. Partly because of the lack of updates to the main site (the toy galleries are still the main reason people come to the site and they dried up, not through lack of toys to photograph mind just time to take them and my personal hatred for how I wrote the site).

I have considered starting a podcast but, TBH, there are so many and though I am sure people here have a lot to save and discuss that isn't out there, I don't want to tread on other peoples toes and I'd not want ot start it and then have it fall quickly to one side.

Video reviews will come. My problem was I could not copy the video camera footage from my MiniDV. I now have an HD camera but the computer is not good enough to copy it off still (lol) but I will be buying a new computer in the new year and we do have a YouTube account ready for videos on that (we can also host and stream video ourself. Though I still plan on integrating YouTube into the new members area so people can effectively push their YouTube reviews onto the website. That might also help as it will give everyone another form to give content and at the same time use their existing YouTube libraries.

The news section has already been revamped and the In The News section will be expanded (if I can find more trusted sources of news) but as a minimum will be displayed and navigated in a different way.

The toy gallery and review sections use the same image navigation as Transformers-Prime.com. That site is basically a preview of V9 of the Moon as the layout is the same template, the code is running from the same engine and its running of the new database.

I still want to bring back the mobile phone version of the site (we use to have one) along with possibly an collection of Widgits / Apps along with the first real toy identification system. Forget what you currently have around, I planned one of those before ANY other TF site had one, yes even Transformerland. It was working once as a Javascript powered one back in about 2000. But this will be something different. At the moment I'm having trouble with being ahead of technology but I still have a very strong idea of how it will work I might just need to get some experts in to help me develop it. But if I can pull it of it has the potential to be a big game changer for the not only the site, but some of my other projects.

I certainly want to try to bring the fun back and though the integrated board has meant I could push news to the board easier, in hindsight leaving proboards was probably a bad move as that was more established and I haven't been able to develop the custom features I wanted (mainly as the code behind PHPBB is awful, and as a developer myself I would fire the people responsible for designing it as its fundamentally flawed and un-scalable).

But please post your thoughts / wish list etc on the board as I do want to change it and I want all you guys and the other members to have more of a say not only on the board but on the site and to get involved as if you can contribute to something then it makes you want to go back and do more.