Since your blog entry caught my eye for several reasons and it was a little open, I would like to share with you a few things – I think our site might be a perfect match for what you are looking at doing, as we are looking to do many of the same things, and looking to convert to vBulletin at the same time. In fact, I still have the demo open in another window!

Our forum, ScrapChat, (www.scrapbooksuppliesdirect.com/scrapchat/), currently consists of the forum with a gallery, calendar, blog area, resource center and small shopping center. We have a consistent theme throughout, which was something that I found extremely difficult and time consuming (I learn as I go, without having any formal training). I am a little concerned that making the conversion might be difficult “theme-wise”, plus our phpBB is modded out -with many features that are standard on vBulletin. Our resource area is based loosely on Joomla (it’s a Joomla core that we do not really use; we use an add on that we purchased). Our members can submit scrapbooking tips, tricks quotes & page titles thru one area, and then our newest area (which is 100% perfect with the article submitter) is where scrapbooker’s can submit their personal stories, how to’s and other scrapbooking related articles. We are really excited about this area and have found some vendors that are willing to furnish materials for Designers to create with and then write about, but without having the resources to gain more attention from these submissions we are finding it difficult to gain participation.

Additionally, a year or so ago we piloted a free add on website for a signature/website graphic that individuals can use to track their forum and gallery statistics, also known as a toplist. This is at ScrapperStats.com. Many websites use these toplists and have had great success for years, so we created the same thing but for individual -The members that actively use it love it. It’s a free membership with almost no advertisements and no spam, but again, not getting the word out hurts.

Adding the RSS feed to the bottom of our new forum and/or using an article submission (currently we use EngineSeeker.com each month, though I love Brad Callen’s stuff) would definitely be a huge boost for the site, our new article section or even our Design Team’s “Design Conversion” (last month we began converting the Design Team’s layouts into kits in effort to raise funds for the site). Heck, even the site builder would help out, I can foresee us adding a scrapbooker’s resume section once we get the site where we ultimately want it. I’m hooked!

If you think we might be a candidate for your contest I would surely love to hear from you!
Thank you so much!
Jeanne
ScrapbookSuppliesDirect.com