Listeners Site Showcase of The Week

[ozental]

Hi there, I was wondering whether you felt it would be a nice little feature of offer up a "Listeners Site Showcase of The Week" each episode similar to that for "mod of the week" and "style of the week". The idea whereby listeners, or yourselves, can mention in the podcast a phpBB-based community that you like, has cool features, is implemented in a 'special' or different way, been successful, etc. so that other listeners can view the site and perhaps get some ideas of things to incorporate into their sites.

Just an idea...

[webmacster87]

That is something that I've been thinking about. I just got back from a out-of-country trip, but once I get settled, something that I want to work on is a more effective way for MODs and Styles to be nominated by our listeners (currently, we just pick MODs and Styles by randomly picking one from the databases/websites out there). For us to pull something that you're suggesting off, we would need to completely rely on nominations from listeners because there aren't "databases" of communities that we could grab from.

So don't expect it to happen soon, but it is something that I would be interested in.

[ozental]

Well I'm glad the idea appears to be well received. I'd obviously promote one of mine, which features portals too (not the SG one though) as discussed in a recent episode.

[drathbun]

I also like the idea, but to make it easier to manage maybe this becomes a one-a-month thing? So maybe the 2nd podcast of each month includes a site of the month, and leave off the mod of the week / style of the week in the interest of time. Or not, keep 'em all in there if you want. By having to do this only once a month I think it would be easier to get nominations as well as give y'all a chance to review the site before you talk about it.

[Handyman]

I also like the idea, but to make it easier to manage maybe this becomes a one-a-month thing? So maybe the 2nd podcast of each month includes a site of the month, and leave off the mod of the week / style of the week in the interest of time. Or not, keep 'em all in there if you want. By having to do this only once a month I think it would be easier to get nominations as well as give y'all a chance to review the site before you talk about it.

so basically make it site of the month

[webmacster87]

Now there's an idea...

[ozental]

I do think it would be a great little addition. Even though I think some of my sites are quite nice, I'd love to look at them and compare them to other 'trend-setting' or popular sites and perhaps use it to get ideas.

[Sniper_E]

I think in a little section of the page or in a popup, where any user or guest can vote on the small list of * of the week choices you provided.
Each month a new list goes up after that month's results are posted. You guys are having some good ideas!

[webmacster87]

I'll look at implementing some of ideas more closely once Londonvasion is over; I've been busy keeping things going for it!

[webmacster87]

I wanted to provide an update regarding this idea. I want you to know that I haven't forgotten about this, and have been noodling over it for quite awhile, and actually, for the past few weeks I had planned to launch a Featured phpBB of the Month as part of our upcoming website relaunch next week. However, I have changed my mind for a few reasons.

The reason that we do a MOD and Style of the Week each week is that we want to bring some attention to some of the more interesting MODs and Styles that are out there. Our primary target audience for our podcast is administrators of phpBB-based boards (hence our various ACP tutorials, our Building a Successful Community series, etc.), and so we try to highlight MODs and Styles that administrators may find interesting. We don't have any significant standards for our MOD and Style picks--mainly we desire that they have been validated by a reputable site, and, in particular for styles, we look to see that the author has put in some amount of work in producing something that looks original and functional. The main reason our standards are so low is because we do this in our spare time and don't have much time to look for the best and brightest out there.

While there are certainly benefits to featuring a phpBB community each month, that brings up many different scenarios. The first being, how do you find them? There aren't sites that keep databases of phpBB communities the way that there are for MODs and Styles. Do you just go Google them, or do you make listeners submit places that they recommend? Googling them is quite time-consuming, and when listeners submit their recommendations, they often submit recommendations that they are already affiliated with, and then this turns into advertising. Furthermore, we would want to have high standards for communities that we would want to feature on phpBB Weekly, and I'm not sure where to set those standards.

Consequently, after much deliberation, I've decided that this will not be something that we will start doing in the near future. There are other folks that do feature various phpBB communities each month, such as phpBBHacks.com, for example. Plus, we may consider doing a contest sometime in 2009 involving the best designed phpBB community or something like that.

Nevertheless, ozental, thank you for your suggestion. It was a great idea, and we spent a lot of time considering it.