EaglePost Blog

Okay!  Just over one week to go before our launch!  The to-do list, although short, is proving a challenge after all.  Most of the remaining things are back end things that aren’t very visible, but are turning out to be very challenging.

The bad news:

• There is a bug related to the chat and firefox.  It only seems to affect users who try to use the private message.  This is a very complex issue (and a program I still haven’t really figured out), so it may take some time to fix (please be patient). 
• The calendar is still not functioning the way I want it to.  I’ve put an initials legend link at the bottom to help you know which sport is which, but the drill down links are not working.  As such, the time of the game is not right (assuming the schedule had it right to begin with).  As a general workaround, I’ve put a link to the actual schedules through the initials ledend.  Know that I’ll be working on this too, but it isn’t a priority at this point.
• I want to have a decent sitemap for the site, which should drive traffic from the search engines.  This might be the most difficult task to date (which is bizzarre to me).  This is one thing I will get done before we go live.  Wish me luck!
• We need more pictures for the gallery.  I’ve had one member step forward and donate, but the gallery is really bare.  If you have some good pics, please send them to me!

 The good news (and this is a preview you won’t get anywhere else):

• The Auction items that Dick Vogel sent me are fabulous!  Autographed photos of some of the Southern Miss greats to include, Ray Guy, Todd Pinkston, and Reggie Collier.  I still have a little work to do to get it ready.  The auction goes live on March 1st.
• It appears I’ll be able to manually update post counts and user registration dates in the database.  It is a bit tedious, but I figured most folks would appreciate that.  I still have to figure out how the date formatting works (not intuitive at all), but I’ll get there.
• About 90 users have registered.  While not a holding a candle to the 1400 or so who are registered on the old site, I feel this represents a more accurate picture of who is currently using the service.
• The current messageboard is getting more views than ever!  We topped 125K in January and appear to be on target to match that this month.
• Chat is getting a decent amount of traffic during basketball and baseball games.  You should log in and check it out!  You should log into the messageboard first (www.eaglepost.info/board/) and then click on the chat link (top right section of the header).
• We announced our first H’burg based sponsor last week.  I’ve also had two other inquiries, but no others have formally signed.  If you know any H’burg based businesses that you believe would consider advertising on a site like ours, please tell them about us.

I am pleased to announce that the new EaglePost, which is scheduled to go live on March 1st has secured our first Hattiesburg-based, long-term sponsor - Dohtery’s Furniture and Bedding (http://www.dohertysfurniture.com/).

I thought I’d take a moment to explain why this is so important to the future of EaglePost:

To users, EaglePost has always been and will always be free. That is not to say that the service is. The cost to run and operate EaglePost has always been covered by the Board Owner and other generous individuals who’ve made donations.

EaglePost has never had the resources to promote itself to any great extent (the Board Owners have in the past spent some money on promotion, but very little). You are most likely here because you heard about the site through word-of-mouth. I would like to change that. I would like to apply additional resources to ensure that every USM fan is aware this service exists.

To fund this additional promotion (beyond what I’m capable of donating), I have made a few changes to EaglePost. You’ll notice some Google ads on some services and the Sponsor Board. I currently have a few national services as sponsors and a “donation” button on these Sponsor Boards. The addition of Doherty’s Furniture and Bedding is a major step in the direction I hope the Sponsor Board goes for a number of reasons. Most importantly is to help build a relationship between the Hattiesburg-based businesses and the USM fan base. There has been a lot of discussion about this relationship and the basic conclusion we always seem to get to is that a good relationship is mutually beneficial.

So, with that in mind, when you or any friends or family are in the market for furniture and/or bedding I hope you’ll stop by and tell Bill I said, “Hi”. I cannot thank him enough for his support of EaglePost.

Go Eagles!

Okay, with three weeks to go, I feel really good about the new site.  It seems to be stable and I’ve worked out a lot of the kinks.  Still have some work to do, but most of that won’t take too long.

Messageboard

On the messageboard, I created a new ranking system.  All transition members will be ranked as VIP members.  I wanted to try to update post counts and start date, but unfortunately the new system won’t let me do that easily.  I’m going to keep looking into it though…

Chatroom

The Chatroom has been up and stable for almost a month now.  We’ve had some decent traffic during a basketball game, and it seems to be working well.  Remember to login to the messageboard first as they share the same user database.

Pictures

I’ve had some baseball pictures come in and I hope to get them posted next week.  I have limited Internet access this week, so I haven’t had enough time to get them done.  We’re always looking for more, so please do contribute to our library!

Auction

The Eagle Club has donated some items for the auction.  It will be run similar to the previous one, with just a little tweak on closing to make it fair for all bidders (since this is email based, we need to have appropriate time for feedback on the winning bids at the end).  The auction will formally start on March 1st with the kickoff of the new board.  I’ll have the items up prior to the actual start of the auction, so stay tuned!

Okay, I’ve fixed the problems with Firefox (at least it seems to work with version 2.0.0.1).  Time to upgrade if you haven’t already!

I’ve also gotten a lot done on the cosmetic issues here and there, so my to do list is getting shorter and shorter.  March 1st here we come!

We had a very good run on the chatroom last night.  Lots of people dropped in from time to time during the USM basketball game.  Seems to be working well.  Not a heavy load test, but enough to show it functions.

I’d still like folks out there when they get time to get a good cross-section of users feedback.  So, enjoy!

I took some time this morning to evaluate the number of pageviews that EaglePost has seen over the past few years.  Proboards gives me the ability to see pageviews per month provided we had paid for the ad free service.  This service costs a fixed amount for 50,000 pageviews, and unused pageviews are not rolled over.  So, the statistics are not necessarily 100% complete, but there is enough data for us to do some general comparisons.

Note how we did in December:

December 2003 - 29,226

December 2004 - 61,733 (Liberty Bowl)

December 2005 - 45,515 (NO Bowl)

December 2006 - 90,699 (GMAC Bowl)

And if you thought that was a fluke, check out January:

January 2004 - 26,301

January 2005 - 64,133

January 2006 - 40,530

January 2007 - 124,000 (estimated actually it is 123,716 with all afternoon to go)

In each case, we’ve doubled or tripled the volume of last year.  And are far exceeding any of the highest totals.  And the past four months have all had over 90,000 pageviews averaging over 100,000 pageviews.

Why is this important?  Webmasters measure themselves by metrics like this.  It tells us that users value our service and come back over and over again.  The content is exciting and elicits good discussion.  And for those who would argue about the quality of the posts not being the same, I’d argue that nobody would come back again and again if the quality wasn’t there.

So, in closing, I’d like to say thank you to each and every one of you!  It is our members who make EaglePost what it is.  You provide the content and you’re doing an outstanding job!

Each day I’m checking off a few more to do items on development!  Sorry, but I have to share my excitement.

As of the time of this writing, we have 55 users registered with the messageboard.  That is great!  There have been a few minor annoyances, but nothing I couldn’t clear up quickly (I know, when you’re on the other side of technical assistance it seems like a lifetime).  So, we have most of the users, and particularly the most active users re-registered.

I put the Initial Legend on the Calendar.  I had to list sports by initials so they would fit on the monthly calendar.  Now you have an easy to find guide to what sports are what.  I’m going to enhance that legend even further by having links to the actual PDF schedules on www.southernmiss.com. 

I put a few counters on certain pages to give us an idea of the number of visitors.  This should be good information for our Sponsors to know how many views their advertisments are getting.

I’ve found a gentleman in Austrailia who has dealt with the Foxpro issue on the same template in the past.  He was nice enough to respond with a solution that solved part of the problem (header).  I followed up with him and he has given me a few more changes that hopefully will work.  You’ll hear me hooting from here when I get it working!  Stay tuned…

Besides setting up the Auction site for the items donated, the cutover itself is the only major thing left.  Most of the rest now is cosmetic.  So, if you’re out and about and something isn’t working right, please report it on the Help Forum.  I want the transition to be as seamless as possible.

Cheers!

I have gotten in touch with Dick Vogel and the Auction is on!  We’re going to receive some items for this auction and would like any of you who are willing to make donations for the auction.  As before, all proceeds will go to support the Eagle Club.  I’m sure you have something tucked away you’d like to see find a good home!

Look for the Auction when we go live, and more than likely, we’re looking to expand the quality and reach of the auction even more.  Details to come…

I know its a pain in the butt, but yes, you’ll have to register for the blogs separately.  They are on separate databases.  I wanted to integrate the user data for each, but being stand alone programs, it was far too difficult and time consuming for me to get done now.  I will try to merge them over time, but then I lose the benefit of upgrades from the vendors.  I’m thinking this through.

So, in the mean time…  After you register for the EaglePost Messageboard at www.eaglepost.info/board/ (you’re automatically registered for EaglePost Chat), then you’ll also want to register your ID at the following services:

- EaglePost Blog - this blog (www.eaglepost.info/blog/).

- RuffledFeathers - a blog by GoldenEagle33 (not sure if he’ll also keep doing his blog on blogspot or not or just do this one, but we’re glad to have him!)  (www.eaglepost.info/ruffledfeathers).

Registering on each of these services will allow you to make comments.  You may not want to make comments, but by securing your ID you ensure noone else is using it.  Just a thought to consider…

Yes, the messageboard isn’t working with Firefox.  Seems it might be a bit more particular with the code than Internet Explorer.  So far, the entire site works fine with Internet Explorer, but with Firefox, the color is wrong, so the text and background are often the same color (makes for some hard reading even with good eyes)!

USMmmm has gone searching for answers and has given me some leads I am following up on (63 of them to be exact).  Should be interesting…  In the mean time, he has also gotten this general workaround.  It works because you’re effectively turning background colors off and turning all text to basic text colors.  So, the site won’t be pretty, but you can register, read and post.

Again, the official go live date is March 1st.  I don’t want to spit traffic during that time and I need the available bandwidth (I’m only paying for a base amount) for development.  Thanks!

Workaround found by USMmmm

If you are unable to read all the script on the new site, there is a workaround…IF you use Firefox. The workaround drains the color from the site, but you can read all the script and register. Once you come off the site and go to your homepage, you might want to un-do the work around and reload you homepage.

The workaround is…and this is for Firefox users only…

Tools > Options > Content (a Tab) > Colors

On that page you should see a checkmark in “Allow pages to choose their own colors….blah blah blah….”

Uncheck that block. Then OK > OK

When you return to your homepage, go back and put the checkmark back into that block then OK > OK. Then reload your front page.

Baldy is working to fix a coding issue.

I was able to get a great deal done over this weekend!  So a March 1st go live date is planned and ready.  Most of what I have left to do is cosmetic (except for that firefox issue).  Thanks to USMmmm, I now have a lead on that and hope to have that fixed soon.  I hope to have that fixed before I go on vacation.  Then I can just spend the last two weeks of February on new content, setting up sponsors, and helping new members with the transition. 

To facilitate the transition, I have posted a message on the old board to get people to contact me for instructions for registering for the new site.  So far we have 30 members (besides myself).  So much for the only 12 members myth!

We also received word that a second Hattiesburg-based business is coming on as a Sponsor!  Great news as I really want this to be a network of alumni that is willing to help each other grow.

I also arranged an affiliation with Stubhub.  This site allows users to buy and sell event tickets and has quickly become the go to place on the net for sports tickets.

So, yes, a busy weekend to say the least, but a very good one for EaglePost!