Webbi List: Review #1
Message Boards & Forums
Webbi List Review #1:
Message Boards and Forums
Updated September 3, 2009This first report looks at message boards and forums. Since the Webbi List is primarily geared to the WebTV/MSNTV crowd, only those services that work well with the Little Black Box are reviewed.
A message board is a wonderful way to keep your visitors informed of all site updates and news. It helps build community. I manage two boards: One for site updates and feedback, the other for my webring members. Searching for a forum compatible with WebTV can be a headache. Most boards (if they're free) are plastered with pop-ups and banner ads which take forever to load on WebTV. This is consideration if you and your visitors want to post. A few boards I've had in the past wouldn't let me post at all! Two in particular, though they were very nice boards, had literally no customer service, so I was stuck with non-functioning boards and had to look elsewhere for another host. Starting all over again from scratch is no fun, what with the initial sign-up, logging in, configuration, and re-posting information from my old boards.
Message Boards: Good Ones!
Network54 is an easy board host. Very simple to set up and manage. Boards can be personalized for color scheme, headers, footers, links, layout. Easy message delete/edit. Moderators can control who posts: Anyone, Network54 members, or no one.
Replies to threads can be sent to your inbox. Troublesome posters can be banned via IP numbers.
Please be aware that Network54 is ad-supported. Most ads are not that intrusive, but sometimes WebTV will freeze if the board's ads take too long to load. Network54 has an upgradable plan – $7.95 per month (paid in 6 months installments). No ads and more features. I opted for the premium plan but soon dropped the service altogether because it was too costly. Customer support is available to premium members only.
Rating: 8.5
Until recently, before I opted for a Site Updates blog, Boards2Go was the home of my general message forum. Easy to set up and configure. HTML in posts is allowed but BBcode is the standard. Forum owners can personalize as to colors, theme, headers, footers, images, etc. Control who can post. Troublesome posters can be banned via IP numbers. Has a "swear" word filter. Can be set up so posters can receive replies via email. Forum owners can be alerted if someone posts. Moderators can opt for a confirmation code which a visitor must enter before post is displayed. This is a great feature as it eliminates posts by spambots.
Boards2Go is free. That means it has banner ads all over the board. This can be a problem for WebTV users. The entire page takes forever to load with WebTV, slowing to a crawl. There is an upgradable plan to get rid of the ads. I used Boards2Go because of the costs-benefits of "upgrade to premium." Only $5 for 5000 impressions, and they never expire. Once you've used your impressions, just pay another dollar or two. This is far less expensive then Network54. I had my B2G forum since March '07 and it took nearly a year to go through my 5000 impressions. Nice!
Update (09-03-09): Boards2Go is no longer WebTV friendly. Logging in to your account works okay, so does configuring your board. Reading threads is fine, but replying to threads or posting new topics is impossible. Click that Submit button and nothing happens. A good workaround: Load the board via Skweezer.
Rating: 8
Message Boards to stay away from! The following are to be avoided by WebTV users:
Hotboards was a good forum host when it was Paradise-Web. However, since Paradise was bought out, the service has degenerated from bad to horrible. While the boards are still nice and easy to set up, customer service is non-existent. The so-called "Help" forum has been taken over by spammers and trolls. Don't even bother to post your concerns or questions, or even email them. You won't get any replies. Even the existing Hotboards forums are overrun with spammers. Many such boards have been abandoned by disgruntled users.
I had two Paradise guestbooks – that I paid $10 per. Once Hotboards took over, the books quickly filled with spam posts. I hated deleting unwanted postings so much that I yanked the "Sign my guestbook" pages. Still the books continued to fill up with spam, and deleting the offending entries was too much of a chore.
Update: Hotboards is offically kaput. It is now a porn (BDSM) discussion forum. I knew it would come to this.
I had considered Aceboard for my webring forum, but if you don't know how to read French, managing the board is a pain. You can have the board itself and main administrative page in English, but the place to configure your CSS layout is all in French! Board layout is weird on WebTV, and the font never enlarges for us – unless one changes WebTV text settings to "Large." Aceboards text is tiny. Support board is OK but not much help. Deleting your board is an impossible task.
I did use Invisionfree for almost two years before they decided to become LBB unfriendly. In the past few months I couldn't even post to my own board! This was a nice phpBB board, somewhat easy to configure and manage if you know what you're doing. Basic board skinning is simple as copy-paste with a partner skin generator. However, for all Invisionfree's bells and whistles, if it is no longer welcoming to the LBB crowd, why bother. I still visit and post to Invisionfree forums but only with the PC browser.