Originally Posted by Gahba

um
1. Give us the option(in user cp) to go straight to forums when logging in.
2. GIVE US MORE THEMES FOR THE FORUMS, something dark and something for mobile users.
3. These (marked with X), are in my opinion unnecessary and can go with other parts.
One earlier gripe I had but you kind of have fixed is how you play the middle ground with your involvement with the site, where you go away for months then come back for 2 days promising new shit then go away for another 2 months. Either stay behind the scenes and have someone who is in contact with you regularly telling you stuff, or be more involved.

Oh, hi there Friend

1) Use favorites link in browser and stay logged in
2) Agreed. Will investigate options for mobile. No promises on the multiple screen styles (dark/green etc.) as they can be difficult to manage with little return.
3) It's not all that complicated for new or old member wondering where to post, but you may be right that there could be a bit of redundancy

Thanks for your comments

The videos are a really good idea. Essentially just a blogcast. Get a bit of software to screen record you playing a single table, watch it back and take notes on the hands (trim out any boring streaks) and then do a voiceover on it explaining your thinking at the time, and what you perhaps should have done if you got it wrong.

Some kind of community coaching system would be awesome! For example, a poker newbie (*cough*me*cough*) could post a rail request, and one of the experts offers help via PM. The newbie then plays in a ring game (low stakes / play money / PokerMavens with the expert) while the expert rails them and gives them advice via IM or Skype. You could agree a fee in advance, payable by PayPal if the expert wants a bit of return for their time.

Originally Posted by piv

lol yes at the crosses, and holy god - put objectdock on autohide please. how do you live like that?

I like it and I call it gangsta-dock.

Originally Posted by Pinguaq

Oh, hi there Friend

1) Use favorites link in browser and stay logged in
2) Agreed. Will investigate options for mobile. No promises on the multiple screen styles (dark/green etc.) as they can be difficult to manage with little return.
3) It's not all that complicated for new or old member wondering where to post, but you may be right that there could be a bit of redundancy

Thanks for your comments

1. I really hate the front page and don't care about the pokernews (the guys posting them are A+ though), this is mainly for when i log in from a school library or a friends house so it goes straight to the forums.
2. Thank you.
3. My point is that we have as many parts of the forums as we do regular posters.

Originally Posted by Crundy

How about disabling signatures until the member has made 20 posts?

Adding this to my 'todo' list, although I might make that 50 posts or so.

I'd also like to hear more ideas and thoughts regarding a possible "Video/Training System". How would we compete with CardRunners, and what benefit would there be? I'll be the first to admit that CardRunners is awesome. The only way I think that we could compete or offer any value compared to them is by offering a lower price point, at say $5/month, for example. We could actually create a paid member system quite easily thanks to vBulletin, but the hosting of videos would be another issue. If we hosted them on our server we'd quickly be up to our neck in bandwidth and storage bills, and we obviously couldn't host them at YouTube or Viddler, etc. as then there'd be no point to offering a paid system. The other danger is that people can always rip the videos and display them on sites like PokerTube.com...

Also, compensation might not be able to work well. I'd obviously give the video contributors a fair share of the Training System revenue stream, but with a price point of $5, a very limited possible paying member base, and after divvying up all that, it would not come to very much. For example, assume a few months into the system we get 50 paying members with 4 teachers. The total comes to $250, and let's say Ping and I each took 15% of that (assuming Ping helped administer and organize things), that leaves $175 left for the teachers which would work out to only $43.75/month.

What about just a free system, taking the money out of the equation entirely?

I can't see the subscription video thing working.

You're not just competing with Cardrunners, there's at least 3 other big players. If you wanted to undercut them and have a more "affordable" one, it would take a hell of alot of work to get it running properly to make it worth the while of those making the vids. Doing it as an aside to a forum won't work at all imo.

On top of that, how many instructors would we have? I can't see many of the 4 or 5 excellent players we have doing this because they could probably quite easily get a job like this for one of the big coaching sites if they wanted to do it.

The video section principle would work I think assuming we got enough vids.

Make them free, but include a watermark in the corner pointing to this site. Then you don't care if people do copy it, you get more advertising.

Just make a video section for free and host a few at a time. See what happens.