Other Clubs' message boards versus NSC?

[Gilliver's Travels]

Do a Google search and it seems most Championship clubs end up fragmenting their fanbase into a few of those ready-made footymad-type packages.

There are obvious exceptions, like Leeds' Waccoe, West Ham's KUMB and, yes, Palace's BBS - all with consistently heavy site traffic and the feeling of a proper fan community.

Our own Links pages list only a handful of clubs' boards. Be useful if we could get all 23 up-to-date. Anyone?

Nothing quite as good as NSC though - or are we deluding ourselves? Your nominations please!

 

[Notters]

Quite like Peterborough's londonroad.net and have been known to frequent Blackpool's AVFTT

 

[Drumstick]

I love that NSC is still free and hasn't gone down the yearly fee system that say SaintsWeb has.

Pasoti is another good one.

 

[VAL1850]

Often thought this when viewing other clubs forums - end up wondering if I am actually on their main boards due to so little traffic - an up to date register of all clubs/links would be useful

 

[Braders]

Foxestalk isn't bad either.

 

[FLOG GNAW]

BBS is good, although obviously that opinion won't go down too well.

 

[Rich Suvner]

Often thought this when viewing other clubs forums - end up wondering if I am actually on their main boards due to so little traffic - an up to date register of all clubs/links would be useful

exactly

i seem to remember years back that NSC had a list of notable non-BHA boards - is this something we could get again? or does it already exist and i've just overlooked it?

 

[Bozza]

If 100 people popped one in here:

North Stand Chat - vBulletin-Link Directory

...it would be all done and dusted.

The intent with that section was that people just added stuff as and when, although it is clearly not very well used nor looked at. I have some plans for a bit of a re-design of the whole site over the Summer and I think a single page that listed, for each club, links to official site and prominent independent sites would be a useful addition.

 

[Triggaaar]

I love that NSC is still free and hasn't gone down the yearly fee system that say SaintsWeb has.

The day it charges, I'm off (imagines Bozza twiddling thumbs)

 

[Danny-Boy]

Nsc4me...

 

[Bozza]

I love that NSC is still free and hasn't gone down the yearly fee system that say SaintsWeb has.

I like to think we've reached a happy compromise here with adverts. If you are registered and logged in you will obviously note the prominent top banner but unless you scroll to the very bottom of the page you won't see any other ads. This means Google more than funds what is currently about 4 million served pages / c£600 per month. Amazon is a useful top-up, as is Skimlinks (the occasional auto-affiliation of words you'll see).

Guests see more adverts, but I make no apology for that. If you don't want to register/login to contribute then we're happy to serve you more adverts as your contribution to the community.

I rarely look at BBS, but it's admirable how they've gone down an ad-free route - I assume they rely on user donations to finance the site. Would NSC members cough up £600 a month to do the same - I'm not so sure given the long-standing free-to-use experience.

 

[turienzo's lovechild]

some of the championship clubs have AWFUL forums.....i especially hate those 90's style ones where you have to click on each post in a thread individually

 

[sully]

OK. I've popped a few in lower down the league pyramid. Anyone else?

Does it fall to Bozza to move them around at the end of the season once all the promotion / relegations are sorted?

 

[Vegas Seagull]

NSC still no 1 on Tapatalk out of 218 worldwide, why go elsewhere?

 

[Bozza]

OK. I've popped a few in lower down the league pyramid. Anyone else?

Does it fall to Bozza to move them around at the end of the season once all the promotion / relegations are sorted?

It would, yes, but as above I think we'll move to a different format where you have the whole of each division on a single page in order to save everyone lots of clicks.

We'd just have a simple table of the following fields...

Site Name
Site URL
Club
Description
Official/Independent

And another table with...

Club
Division

And at the end of each season the latter gets updated where required.

 

[Drumstick]

I like to think we've reached a happy compromise here with adverts. If you are registered and logged in you will obviously note the prominent top banner but unless you scroll to the very bottom of the page you won't see any other ads. This means Google more than funds what is currently about 4 million served pages / c£600 per month. Amazon is a useful top-up, as is Skimlinks (the occasional auto-affiliation of words you'll see).

Guests see more adverts, but I make no apology for that. If you don't want to register/login to contribute then we're happy to serve you more adverts as your contribution to the community.

I rarely look at BBS, but it's admirable how they've gone down an ad-free route - I assume they rely on user donations to finance the site. Would NSC members cough up £600 a month to do the same - I'm not so sure given the long-standing free-to-use experience.

The adverts are necessary to keep what is an excellent busy forum alive, Know one wants them as such but it certainly is better than no NSC or a subscription service.

 

[Bozza]

The day it charges, I'm off (imagines Bozza twiddling thumbs)

Compulsory charging would be the absolute last resort if I believed it was absolutely necessary to keep the site alive. We've never been close to that and the 'business model' (and I use the term loosely) has been refined over the years, and that process continues.

I would be very happy if NSC's incomes were such that if we weren't receiving any money from Google then costs would still be covered. I want this because it does feel as though we are on a bit of a tightrope with Google's programme policies and if we were excluded from that, the site could face difficulties. I very much want to stay onside with Google and having 'The Other Stuff', where anything can be discussed as no Google ads are carried there, should mean we are able to stay in the Google programme. However, if the worst were to happen there it would be nice to have comfort that the site can continue.

The 'Friends of NSC' thing we are putting together should be another source of funding to give that comfort.

 

[seagullondon]

Compulsory charging would be the absolute last resort if I believed it was absolutely necessary to keep the site alive. We've never been close to that and the 'business model' (and I use the term loosely) has been refined over the years, and that process continues.

I would be very happy if NSC's incomes were such that if we weren't receiving any money from Google then costs would still be covered. I want this because it does feel as though we are on a bit of a tightrope with Google's programme policies and if we were excluded from that, the site could face difficulties. I very much want to stay onside with Google and having 'The Other Stuff', where anything can be discussed as no Google ads are carried there, should mean we are able to stay in the Google programme. However, if the worst were to happen there it would be nice to have comfort that the site can continue.

The 'Friends of NSC' thing we are putting together should be another source of funding to give that comfort.

Does it still have to be always called 'the other stuff' or will it ever be possible for it to return to its rightful name of Childish Ramblings?

 

[The Grockle]

Anyone/bozza know where NSC ranks in busiest forums, I’m sure I read that palace’s BBS is one of the busiest if not the busiest in the country….surely we can’t be that far behind?