Hello All,
There is so much ground to cover! I've had this idea for a new forum application on my mind for almost six months now. It's one of those ideas that gets planted in the back of your head, then it grows and grows it just keeps growing and soon you can think of nothing else; it consumes you. Well this is how it has been for me, and I must say I think it is very good. I have been visualizing this for several months. So I've decide to take action, and pursue it, and here it is:
Background Information
As of this time we do not have a name for the forum software. But we are calling it it Codename: Evolution since my intention is for it to be a whole new evolution in forum software! I understand there are many other forum applications out there: vBulletin, IPB, and the major free ones, like phpBB, Simple Machines and punBB. Each has its strengths, and each has weaknesses inherent in them that I believe a new approach can solve. vBulletin - It is considered by many to be the highest standard in the industry. Not everyone can get their hands on it; it very expensive for many potential forum owners, and this discourages them from purchasing it. IPB - Most users do not like their staff, especially their President who constantly delays release dates, etc. It is also somewhat expensive, and it lacks features that are people prize in vB. phpBB - Arguably the most popular free BB out there is very nice. However, its quality, efficiency and features pale in comparison to the paid applications. It has a history marked by security holes, and since their staff is not getting paid, concerns may arise about timeliness and effectiveness of fixes. The same can be said for many of the other applications available at no cost.
Why another?
Why introduce another Bulletin Board on the market? As I mentioned earlier, each BB has its own weaknesses. We hope to eliminate all of the weakness the others have, and we've been brainstorming functionality that goes way beyond that offered by the strongest boards currently available.
Here (user IWDN password forums) is a list of mandatory/traditional features and innovative features, and we are adding more and tweaking this list every day. I'm confident this project can set a new standard for BBs, and I'm committed to putting together the right team to make it a reality.
How it came about
This idea came about as I was trying to find the BB that suited me best. When my forums were first made, we went with phpBB. We had registered about 25 members when phpBB was hacked. We did everything we could upgrade phpBB, PHP, MySQL, everything, but it was no use, the hacking continued relentlessly. We were forced to go to an alternative. phpBB was the best free BB in our eyes, and we wanted to make sure we didn't downgrade our functionality, especially with the number of modifications we'd make up to that point. So we purchased vB. vB was great once we laid down the cash, but everything can be improved, which we hope Evolution will do. We want to bring the best of every forum together into a single application and then take this a whole level higher.
What we need
Evolution is an idea waiting to be brought to life. We need people. We need as of this just only need programmers. We hope to get a one or two more programmers added to our current team. All participants need to be experienced and dedicated and at least 18 years of age to be legally bounded to our legal agreement. I am hoping to have this available for purchase in one year. Here is a rough timeline for which I'm shooting.
1 Week - Finish up new reply, new topic, start integrating smilies and BBCodes.
10 days - Start on the Administrator Control Panel.
2 Weeks - Making final touches on the client's side. Adding final links etc.
18 days - Start on installation script, and converters for all major Bulletin Boards.
From then on we will be optimizing the code as well as the database, trying to improve speed and accessibility. We will be attempting "breaking' "Evolution" to try and find all errors, and fix the code. Making final preparations for the private beta.
Around the end of July/Early September, we will be contacting certain board owners, who we all agree on about testing a private beta. The private beta will be approximately 2 weeks long. We will then open our public beta after all bugs have been fixed. The public beta will allow a maximum of 100 downloads per hour. We will have dedicated public betas, once every other week. In a single month we will allow 4800 beta testers. Once the public beta has ended, we will then submit "Evolution" to a private company, they will attempt to "hack" or exploit "Evolution", they will document all security problems, which we will then apply. We will then release "Evolution" Version 1.0 available for purchase.
As you can see its not a quick-and-dirty project. We want to take our time to create a product that stands out, quality over quantity (construction time). We want make it excellent, presentable to other companies, and to be competitors for other BBs like vBulletin. Most importantly, we have to identify and capture the market that needs our product.
For example, I'm proposing that this new system come with a parental control panel, where parents can sign up their children for a forum, and using their own CP, they can monitor their children's online activities. This would endear our product to companies and organizations that target minors, to the point that it might be the feature that sells the product. I'm proposing an optional self-imposed time/post limiting feature that can allow individuals to track, regulate and cap how much time they are spending on a site. This would help people with time management issues, and forum owners may find offering this sort of function makes for better quality contributions with less membership burnout.
I'm asking experienced programmers to contact me, at the very least to give me feedback on it, and at best, to be a part of the production team. If you know of anyone who might be a good fit for this project, I graciously request that you forward on my contact information so they can learn more about it from me.
There are still plenty of logistics that need to be sorted out. I understand developers are busy with their own projects, and we need to set realistic levels of involvement for people. There's the matter of pay; I'm asking for an investment of time on people's parts now for structured compensation in the future, and this needs to be ironed out. All developers that join the team, depending on level of excellences in their past work experiences, and how fast/great they work on the project may be paid $500, or all the way up to $2500, after 3 months of work. They will then stick with "Evolution" and get a share of all profits. At the very least a developer will get, $500, and a share of all profits, at the very most $2500, and a good sum of all the profits. There are matters pertaining to effectively managing this project in light of geographic/time zone inconveniences. There are logistics I'm certain I haven't considered, and this is one area where your feedback would be most valuable to me.
Contact
I am opening up many ways you can
personally contact me, so we can further discuss this matter. Answer any questions you may have etc. Please be ready to be asked, your past work experiences, (portfolio, resume etc), your age, location, how long you've been programming, anything of this matter. I suggest you be prepared.
You can reach me on AIM at Tyler11999, you can also email me at
tyler@cbttechs.com, or you may PM me here.
I look forward from hearing from you! Remember contacting someone never hurts, you may just fall as much in love with this project as I am!
Thank you everyone for reading this. I hope to hear from you soon!
Tyler Cole
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