One of my work goals in 2011 is to "Revitalize PokerForums", and I'm taking it to heart.

I'm really glad to see a renewed energy and sense of community here in the past couple of months. New, passionate members and old long-time users have gathered together at PFO which has really helped to bring new life to the forums.

I have a number of proposed changes, improvements, and new features that I would like to share with you guys. Please provide your honest feedback on them!

1. "Upgrade" to vBulletin Publishing Suite

We've been using vBulletin version 3.x software for our forum for 7 years now, and it's been absolutely awesome.

However, vBulletin was sold to another company a while ago, and around a year ago, the new owners made a lot of changes to the company. One of the biggest changes was releasing version 4.0 of their software, which was a COMPLETE REWRITE of their software from the ground up. While it is supposedly very similar to the 3.x series in terms of usability and features, it is also the biggest change between a vBulletin series.

In addition, they also released an alternative software to their forum software called vBulletin Publishing Suite. The Suite is basically a sophisticated CMS (Content Management System) that offers a lot more features than just a forum; basically, it acts more like a website as opposed to just a forum.

You can compare the differences in features between vBulletin 4.0 forum software and the publishing suite software here: vBulletin-The Most Powerful Forum Software Available

The most notable improvements that the suite has over the forum are the following:

• Blogs - Each of you could have your very own poker blog at PFO!
• Article-based CMS Publishing - We currently have a custom alternative to this, which is why we are able to have side pages such as PokerForums.org - Videos but this built-in option would be MUCH better, and also allow us to have a front-page news/blog section.
• Access to the latest plugins - If we stay at v3.x forever, eventually there will be no new plugins made for it, and existing plugins will not be supposed anymore. this is already beginning to be an issue, a year after v4.0 has been released.

Now, cost to upgrade to the Suite is not an issue, as I already purchased it when it first came out. I just never upgraded to it.

You can view screenshots of the Suite here: vBulletin, the most powerful forum software (Please note that they are using the default skin; ours would be custom)

Below are the main pros and cons I see to upgrading to the Publishing Suite:

Cons:

- There will be a cost and time delay in converting our existing site to the suite.

- There could be certain areas and features of the site that are buggy or don't work for a while, such as the Trader Rating or chatroom.

- The main/default page would be a "news" style page, with the forum being on an inner page such as PokerForums.org/forum for example.

- Once we switch over, we can't really go back.

Pros:

- We will have a fresh, new, updated custom skin. Our current one is around 5 years old or so. The new skin will also streamline and integrate some of the advertising better, which makes the forum look better to you, and is more effective for the advertisers.

- New, updated plugins. Since v4.0 is the latest version, plugin developers usually cater to that version. As a result, we'd have access to the latest and greatest plugins.

- Members could create and run their very own poker blog! And with some pretty nice URLs as well such as bob.pokerforums.org or pokerforums.org/blogs/bob.

- We'd have a front news page. While this could be viewed as a con, it also would give us fresh related poker news every day that could interest readers. I might even be able to configure it to show various posts from "featured" poker blogs on our site.

What do you guys think about this? Please cast your vote in the poll.

2. Paid Rewards

I came up with this idea the other day. It would take a bit of tricky custom programming, but I think is possible.

I know that a lot of you are micro-limit players and have difficulty depositing on various poker sites. When you're a micro limit player playing the $5NL tables, grinding away at $0.25 pots every minute, $15 in your poker bankroll is like winning the lottery.

This is where my idea comes in. What if we had a feature on the site that allowed you to fill out incentivized offers, in exchange for credits, which could in turn be used to withdraw into your poker room account? The offers would mostly be simple submit and survey offers, and you could pick and choose which offers to run. You wouldn't need to purchase anything, but would have to give valid information on the offers (Ex. you can't give a fake e-mail address, etc.)

For example, you fill out a simple 3-page survey for a credit of 75 points (1 point = $0.01 poker room cash) or enter your e-mail on another offer for 40 points. In 10 minutes you could earn 800 points... worth $8, or 1.5 full buy-ins at the penny tables.

The main downside to this is that I believe I could only offer a finite number of offers, and they couldn't be completed twice. So, if we had 60 offers, for example, and you filled them all out for 7,000 points, you wouldn't be able to fill them out again.

Although, there is the possibility of you guys earnings points for actual purchases, which would greatly increase the amount of offers (and points). For example, purchase a coffee maker and earn 1,000 points.

What do you guys think about this idea? Remember, that it would require a lot of ingenuity in programming and so would therefore take a while to develop, if even possible.

3. Referral / Post Contest

What do you think about if I held a forum contest at PFO, with prizes up for grabs to the top participants?

For example, I held a contest a couple months ago which you can view here.

We could have categories for the Top Referrers (people who refer the most amount of new members to the forum), Top Posters, and Top Quality posters. There are a lot of rules in place in order to help prevent low quality posts and spam (namely for the top posters category), although it does still tend to occur no matter how many rules and stipulations are in place.

I would only be interested in doing this if you guys think you'd be very active in the contest, because I've held a number of these in the past with very unsatisfactory results. For example, how many referrals (new members who register to the forum, who make at least 5 non-spammed posts) do you think you could refer in the span of a month?

I'm just thinking of ways to improve the site.

Thanks guys! Please cast your vote regarding the Publishing Suite, as that is the biggest change I had in mind.

Kid, if your serious about pumping life back into the forum, do the upgrade now. We're still small right now, and most of us won't be bothered with some outages.

As to paid rewards... hey I'm all for top poster awards (cough cough)....... Oh whats that...... what the hell..... you mean i have to have quality posts now? dammit..... sigh....

If your looking to reward us financially, then offer up some cash for tournaments. Let's start up a weekly poker league, that has quarterly seasons, plays twice a week on rotating days so it excludes as few as possible, and each event has like $5 or $10 added to a $1 buy-in fee. End of the season, the season winner gets like $50, and an entry into the $10 season chamionship. Top 2 or 3 places for the season get an entry into a, say, $50 buy-in at the end of the year, with some cash added.

And curiously, what plugins are we talking about?

+1
On the weekly league , it will grow in time and attract new members if there is added value . Perhaps throw in a monthly freeroll with the requirement of some activity on the forum.

All of that sounds good to me, rewards, new systems *thumbs up*

Only thing I don't like would be the broken webchat Don't take that awayyyy!

I think the upgrade is a good idea.

The other stuff, meh. Here are a few ideas I'll bounce off of you

As far as the money rewards, I don't know about that: I think you'd be better off setting up a PoekrStars Home Game league and hosting a monthly tournament (play money) where the winner gets $25 --or $15 for 1st, $10 for 2nd, $5 for third. But to join the league you must have 100 posts or similar stipualtion (I think you're limited to 50 members) Althugh you could always set up a second league if it grows large enough, and have forum members mangae each league.

Contests, mehh. Have these worked in the past? I think in-house rewards would be better: Maybe the top referrer each month --no contest, just the top referrer, but a minumum of 5 referalls is required-- gets a custom title, or some other priveledge (expanded signature if its possible)

What good does it do to reward the site's prolific posters? They already post a shitload!

Originally Posted by Steve Ruddock

What good does it do to reward the site's prolific posters? They already post a shitload!

Carpal Tunnel treatment is expensive steve!

I think having a set limit of posts will lead to spam and or numerous simple +1 posts (aka bonch lolz). Some of the best posters are the lurkers who post maybe once a month. Kinda like the big guy from Gone in 60 seconds. I'd say just be a registered member for 3 or more months with 10-20 quality posts, or a minimum of 100 posts, And if theres any question, the mods would decide.

As far as the money rewards, I don't know about that: I think you'd be better off setting up a PoekrStars Home Game league and hosting a monthly tournament (play money) where the winner gets $25 --or $15 for 1st, $10 for 2nd, $5 for third. But to join the league you must have 100 posts or similar stipualtion (I think you're limited to 50 members) Althugh you could always set up a second league if it grows large enough, and have forum members mangae each league.

We already got a homegame going... its $1.10 as most players are micro stakes players.. winner takes all i think. once every two weeks or so..

its good fun, well for me. i dont take it serisouly but they do

Regarding the in-house tournaments, leaderboards, and homegames - that's already in the works... I'm just waiting for KnightofNarg to announce the news. Steve actually almost guessed it exactly. Only, I'm working with PokerStars to give away a nice ticket into a big tournament to the top leaderboard winner each month

It looks like we're probably going to go the Suite route. This is going to be by far the biggest change the site has seen in around 5 years! Oh my.

Regarding the in-house tournaments, leaderboards, and homegames - that's already in the works... I'm just waiting for KnightofNarg to announce the news. Steve actually almost guessed it exactly. Only, I'm working with PokerStars to give away a nice ticket into a big tournament to the top leaderboard winner each month

Cool, I think this will be really good for the site.

We already got a homegame going... its $1.10 as most players are micro stakes players.. winner takes all i think. once every two weeks or so..

From experience, the interest difference between a freeroll and a $1 tournament is the same as a $1 tournamnet and the Sunday Millions.