With the inception of this forum, and over the years several farrier orgs./groups/associations, I'm interested in hearing/reading what draws farriers to begin this process? Might be a good starter to invite others who have not joined here to do so so that they might sound check. Regards Ray Steele
Ray, Are you asking why people visit certain forums / websites or why people build websites? I'll answer both since one leads into another. I never owned a computer until a few years ago or so. I didn't even know about forums until one of my customers mentioned it to me. Once I got reading and sifting through a bunch of nonsense I realized there was a lot to be learned from a website. I got involved with doing some World Championship Blacksmiths competitions and was checking out there website and it was basically a single page scrolling down to find stuff. I looked into websites a little and then started doing the wcb website. From doing there website I got a good idea for what people are looking for in a website and that different websites have different needs. I recently finished up there website and now they're going to take it over from here. So then I got sitting around thinking, OK, I have this knowledge and I'm not putting it to any use right now. Maybe I should look into my own website. If you do a little searching on the internet you will notice forum traffic across the board is going down for the past couple years. I contribute that to Facebook and soon Google+. So then I started looking into different forums and noticed information was always scattered and good information became lost rather quickly. That's when it started to come to me that I will start my own website. After speaking to quite a few people and getting plenty of complaints from doing the wcb site I knew I wanted a few things for this site. Keep it simple - there's still a lot of people who can hardly turn a computer on. Organize it for the future - I intentionally only added a few forums right now. I can see where it goes and add appropriate forums later. And I created the resource category to add quality information that people will be looking. As the forum grows people will know they can go to the resource section and find what they need. Easy - it has to be easy. Registration needs to be easy and once your logged in posting and navigating need to be just as easy. The easier you make it the more people will hang around. So that's my story. Everything just kind of evolved into what it is.
Just found this site today; waiting for the appliance repair guy. Great job, Eric; easy enough for an old guy.
I have to hand it to you Eric, you understand the K.I.S.S. method. Today that is the problem with so many sites. They think they need all the bells, whistles and fancy stuff to keep people in. I guess for some of us old guys who get confortable with easy sites they are a problem. Thanks for your work. Mikel
Thanks Mikel! We're still working on fine tuning everything and seeing how everything's gonna fit. It will always remain clean, as simple as possible, and Very Fast!
Eric, I'm in agreement w/ all others, thumbs up on your site. You've done a great job keeping it simple. Not bad for a horseshoer.
So True, glad you are keeping it simple and easy...just one question? How to you edit profiles, load pictures , avatars and such..I really am a simpleton when it comes to puters....
Did you figure it all out Gary? I see you uploaded an avatar. Uploading pics is the button to the right of post reply. (upload a file)
One of the things I like is watching the membership number grow, I think it was 30 when I joined, It will grow and new people will join, how exciting is that
I disagree that those are the two primary reasons, if I had to make a list I don't think they would crack my top 10. Not sure what you mean by "on the same page as the same price"?
A lot of these organizations end up to focused on number 2, and it just ends up being a bunch of snobs in a mutual admiration club. Nobody wants to be around folks like that.
See also; "Oil industry monopoly." Although, there are some guys around here that don't realize that they'll never get anywhere but on an operating table trimming for $30 or less and Shoeing for $50.
Right on Travis only you left out that those same ones want to do 20 head aday and do them cheap...they figure if they are shoeing cheap and alot that they have it over the rest of us???
