Suggestions and promotion! :)

[Mux213]

Okay, so we just openend for business. How do we go about bringing trueno.org into the world?

A question we need to answer is what is our target audience? Initial D fans? AE86 owners in Europa?

What things do we need to solve?
Obviously we need to speed up some things (new hardware, maybe alternative hosting at some point)
How about content? Any other forums we need? Any forums we dont need? Do we need to have more features on the http://www.trueno.org main page?

Bring out ideas people

[banpei]

mux213 Wrote:Okay, so we just openend for business. How do we go about bringing trueno.org into the world?

A question we need to answer is what is our target audience? Initial D fans? AE86 owners in Europa?

What things do we need to solve?
Obviously we need to speed up some things (new hardware, maybe alternative hosting at some point)
How about content? Any other forums we need? Any forums we dont need? Do we need to have more features on the http://www.trueno.org main page?

Bring out ideas people

First of all: new hardware would be a great option. The server is "just" an old K6-266 running on 64 megs of ram. I'm currently looking for "new" hardware, something between 500MHz and 1GHz with at least 256 megs of ram. I have a lot of spare parts available, but I'm still missing the essential parts (e.g. processor, mobo and case)

Alternative hosting is not yet something we have to look for since the up/downstream is sufficient enough. Networking troubles were fixed yesterday.

Frontpage definetly needs rework. It should be made complient with the phpBB users/sessions so we can show the last active topics and give the users opportunaty to react on news, add events, etc. That will take some time.

As for the audience, I'd recon that most people will be ae86 orientated, but I would not exclude Initial-D fans coming here as well.

BTW: are we going for trueno.org or hachi-roku.org? Both domains will end up here, but most of the textual fields are set to trueno.org. trueno.org is easier to remember, hachi-roku.org is for a wider audience. What about other domains?

[Mux213]

Hmm hachi-roku.org would compete to much with hachi-roku.net and similar so I wouldn't emphasize on that.

I'd like to have http://www.levin.org though for obvious reasons

[banpei]

mux213 Wrote:Hmm hachi-roku.org would compete to much with hachi-roku.net and similar so I wouldn't emphasize on that.

I'd like to have http://www.levin.org though for obvious reasons

Too bad levin.org has already been taken.

I've been tracking the parsetimes of the forum and it looks quite okay (about 1 to 1.5 seconds parsetime), except from time to time it ends up in the 5 second and plus regions. I have not figured out yet why, but I'll monitor it some more...

Apart from that I'm still searching for some hardware... I've found some machines which look quite okay, but it will take some time to find a suitable and do a proper install.

[banpei]

I bought new (second hand) hardware this weekend:
P3-1GHz, 256MB ram, 20GB hdd

It will take some days to set up the whole thing, but my estimate is before the end of the week.

[Mux213]

Sounds very very very good!

[Ivan141]

I too think it's a shame that http://www.levin.org is already taken, since ths forum will more likely target a european audience (there's no use in trying to be as big as club4ag). Trueno.org for europe is a bit weird since there arent any trueno's in europe at all. (well maybe ten or so, but all imported).
About the initial D business, I like to watch Initial D as much as the next guy but I think it shouldnt be the focus of an ae86 forum. Discussing Initial D wont get any ae86 owner anywhere, and having fanboys begging you to sell your car all day isnt very pleasant either.

[Mux213]

Hi Ivan,

Yeah its a real irritating fact that levin.org is taken. And hachi-roku is used in many many forms so our hachi-roku.org URL isnt that usefull either. We have to make due with what we have. Offcourse if levin.org even becomes available.............

As for competing with club4ag, that is not our goal. We just want to offer a europian alternative for AE86 owners. We have no intention to grow bigger then club4ag or try to overtake it. We just feel club4ag is to much targetted at America and does not feel the needs of a europian AE86 owner.

As for initial D. Both me and Art are big fans and it was actually part of the reason this forum is in existance in the first place. I think we'll get fanboys begging here whether we have an initial D section or not. I've got a Delorean and its amazing how many Back to the Future watchers come round to the community. I am actually more afraid of wanne be drifters buying up AE86s and trashing them. With drifting becoming more and more popular all over the world this is more likely. I know more people who got interested in the AE86 because of the overflow of movies about drifting ae86's then from watching Initial D. Alot of people, esp. in holland regard cartoons to be for kids, not for us 18+ adults and thus do not watch initial D. I have met many who simply refuse to watch the series because they believe they are adults and adults do not watch cartoons.

Luckely it seems that BMW is a bigger target for these people then ae86s since there aren't many in Holland.

For that reason also we made a section for Shuto Trials which isn't a cartoon but normal series of movies about street racing in Japan with a clear message that this is dangerous and not to be thought of lightly.