So what can we do...

Topic: So what can we do... (Read 21360 times) previous topic - next topic

So what can we do...

Reply #15 – September 17, 2018, 04:31:39 PM

Quote from: EricCoolCats;467106

I keep coming back here for the cookies and s...

I don't think she has signed onto the forum in many years now.

I do understand exactly why the traffic is down. That writing has been on the wall for years. Many years in fact. I took some quotes from some very old threads. Both of these quotes were from 2007, and they hold true.

Quote from: Cougars 2 go;166573

Generally speaking, this community doesn't have or choose to spend gobs of money on their cars. Lots of first cars, free cars, hand-me-downs, junkyard finds, high school, college, just-starting-out types around here. If it wasn't for limited budgets, I bet a lot of these members wouldn't even be here in the first place. They'd be driving something with a higher purchase price and working on that.

Five to ten years from now, I think our profile will have shifted to a higher percentage of people that really love these cars and a lower percentage of people who settle for them. That will also yield higher prices for parts and cars.

Quote from: Thunder Chicken;166605

As for how most owners of these cars came about owning their cars: I've been saying that for years. Maybe 10-15% of the members of this forum actually really like these cars, and of that 10%, maybe 10% again might have extra money to throw at them. The vast majority bought their fox Birds and Cats because somebody else was practically (or literally) giving them away and it was all they could afford. Most people view these cars as sub-$1k beaters, throwaway cars, and nothing more, and they usually join the forum for the sole purpose of either getting free tech info to keep their hoopties on the road or to make a single post in the "for sale" section. Some people start out with one as a beater and end up really liking the car, (and eventually replacing it with one in better condition, or a better version like from V6 to V8) but not most. If I were to go into the control panel of this message board and delete the accounts of everyone who has joined and made a post or two (or none), then never came back, we'd be back down to about 200 members. 99% of the people whose accounts were deleted would not even notice...

I think at this point, the key is to find a way to offer the public something they can't easily get on social media. Proper write ups, pictures, build threads, and true tech is hard to come by on social media. Getting people to visit the forum isn't difficult. Getting them to want to register and stay is the harder part. It will never be what it used to be, but these forums are still a pillar of our community.

So what can we do...

Reply #16 – September 17, 2018, 10:50:16 PM

I'd agree with the above comments. Most people came here to keep their cheap hooptie on the road. When I got my Thunderbird 16 years ago it was my first car, junior year of high school. Turns out I really liked it and after 2 years it became a car I was able to save and not daily drive. Owing to life opportunities I was able to afford to modify the car extensively and even repaint it last year. At this point the only people who are really going to be into these cars are people who really like them. We're past the point where people are daily driving these cars. What's left are people who are committed to these cars and keeping them around as a second/third/fun car/hobby car. What we have to do is attract those people and keep them coming here. There is never going to be a huge amount of them (unlike Fox Mustangs) but the ones who are interested in these cars will come, no matter how few, since this place offers up a great amount of knowledge.

So what can we do...

Reply #17 – September 19, 2018, 01:29:00 AM

I accidentally found this site back in 05 while searching for TBird information. The site and the members have been a godsend for me. I could not have reconstructed my Turbo Coupe without all of the information available on this and Eric's forum.
I agree with Thunderjet- I'm one of those guys who really like these cars ever since they came out. I admit my favorite is the 87-88. The thing is everyone can own a new Mustang, Camaro, or Challenger. I see plenty of them at every car show here in Las Vegas. I think I must have the only 80 anything TBird. I've never seen one at any car show.
Another thing is having the ability to build my own car that no one else has. Again- I couldn't of done it without the help from the members of this site.
These two sites do not bombard you with continuous pop-ups, the members are friendly, and a wealth of good information. I think that if the members start to mention these two sites on their Facebook pages, post a few pictures the effort might bring in a few members. I'm an old guy who quit working, not retired but quit, and I know next to nothing about social media. What the hell is a "tweet"? I voted for President Trump, own a gun, NRA member, and a Army Veteran, eat meat, and cuss. If I can help keep these sites open please let me know. In the meantime I will continue with my Turbo Coupe remodel, get dirty, greasy, open new wounds and continue to try and convince my wife that spending a pile of money on a 30 year old car is worth it.

So what can we do...

Reply #18 – September 19, 2018, 05:05:28 AM

Quote from: tommym;467159

I voted for President Trump, own a gun, NRA member, and a Army Veteran, eat meat, and cuss. If I can help keep these sites open please let me know. In the meantime I will continue with my Turbo Coupe remodel, get dirty, greasy, open new wounds and continue to try and convince my wife that spending a pile of money on a 30 year old car is worth it.

You sound like my kind of people.

Twitter is one of the forms of social media that I never had interest in. I don't know if Twitter would really serve the car community well or not. Instagram seems to work pretty well and Facebook is just okay.

So what can we do...

Reply #19 – September 19, 2018, 08:05:49 AM

Facebook appeals to the instant gratification crowd. The problem there is that there's no accountability and no archive of the 1,456,985th times before that a question has been asked/answered.

The forums are a good archive of info. When I go looking for information on a project, or whatever, my searches always send me to a forum, not a FB page. Then again, I'm old and actually like to do research and do the work.

The cars are old, and the community is small, but the information is still invaluable. This and Coolcats.net are pretty much the ONLY reliable sources for these cars, and have been for a long time.

So what can we do...

Reply #20 – September 19, 2018, 08:39:37 AM

I am a new guy here. The first thing I do when I get a "new" car is look for a forum. I like how this forum is run and I do check daily for new posts, but I tend to not post often.

I don't think there is much more to add than what has already been said. I did search on Tapatalk for this forum but didn't find it. Tapatalk does help for posting pictures and what I started using when Photobucket went bad with my dirt bike club forum. I notice a lot of guys inside the club add hashtags to their posts and Facebook posts for Instagram. Does anyone know if it automatically cross posts to add traffic?

edit: does this version of forum allow Tapatalk to be added?

So what can we do...

Reply #21 – September 19, 2018, 09:08:41 AM

I think one of the things that would help would be to start another tech section with something in the title of what these cars share with the Fox Mustangs. There are a lot of parts from the Fox Mustangs that can be used on these cars that if people do not know about it they will not see any kind of after market support when there is in a round about way. We also need to point out what you cannot or should not use from the Mustangs (UCA and LCA's for example) so people do not go down that path and get discouraged. Mostly Eric hit the nail on the head with consolidating some of the posts and getting the site more social media friendly. Me personally I do not have a problem with deleting aging accounts but emailing the user and giving them XX days to respond if they do not want their account deleted would be nice. If there is no benefit in it then no reason to do it but if it makes managing the site easier then I say go for it. I realize there might/would be a cost to this but I am willing to contribute and I am sure others would as well.

One last thought would be to reach out to other sites like 4eyedpride, NATO, etc and see if we cannot cross reference each other so that the locals on those sites still know we are here and we know they are there as they do have good tech that does relate to our cars.

So what can we do...

Reply #22 – September 19, 2018, 10:15:18 AM

Quote from: Mikey97D;467168

I am a new guy here. The first thing I do when I get a "new" car is look for a forum.

Yup. Just inherited an '87 Dodge D150.

All of the forums for this vehicle are dead except the ramchargercentral forum, but that's for the SUV version. The Facebook group, however, is quite alive and kicking. The search function is nice to find answers without having to ask again. Not as good as a forum, but it does the job.

Same thing for my boat. Forum is basically dead. The manufacturer went under in 2009 due to the recession. (doesn't help the admin thinks he should get $900/yr to run it) However, the FB group is kickin'.

I don't think there is any way to 'revive' the forum. It's a limited quantity item that is constantly decreasing in numbers, as opposed to an 'interest' forum where the idea/product is always available to create or buy. Social media has also put a hurting on it. Heck, look at the Corral. The lounge used to have 50+ people on it and the front page would turn over a few times a day. The oldest post on the 1st page of the Lounge is now from April! Have any old-ish car forums weathered the storm?

The tapatalk thing may be worth looking into though.

On the other hand, the 4Runner forum is still getting lots of traffic (or at least the 5th Gen [2010+]). Helps that it's the only BOF truck in it's class left and social media has made it an extremely desirable vehicle. OMFG, here's a pic of my 'rig' tricked out with #pelfrybilt armor, #nfab sliders, and #budbilt hidden winch mount on my 'gram. Seriously, those people will by a 40k truck and throw another $10-30k on it without blinking! Overlanding is the new car camping! /rant

So what can we do...

Reply #23 – September 19, 2018, 04:12:37 PM

Well I did a little digging and we could upgrade the vBulletin software to v5.0, which would get us the following:

- Responsive design (for mobile devices)
- Social media integration
- Improved search function*
- Better automatic SEO/keywords
- Tapatalk compatibility
- Lots of appearance and functional updates
- Supposedly easy upgrade from the current version

* We'll see.

We could purchase and install it ourselves for about $250 US, and keep it as long as we wish. Or we could prepay for a year @ $25/month US, and get continuous updates. Either way we'd still be able to keep our current hosting server if that's what we want to do.

This upgrade would likely solve a lot of message board usability issues and keep us relevant, so to speak. And then we can get a bunch of people on Facebook to cross-promote it. That shouldn't be too difficult.

Remember that a lot of people don't use social media (or don't want to) and that's fine. For those people alone, this board can be a godsend so it's worth a little time and effort to keep it relevant IMO. And from my POV, not having to do manual SEO would be a blessing.

It would be a good starting point, at least. Then we can start our library, culling old threads, database cleanup, etc.

Thoughts?

So what can we do...

Reply #24 – September 19, 2018, 04:31:20 PM

Hell yes. The info, laughs, and sheer good times I've had here in the past....man, that shiznit can not have a price tag on it.

I'll throw in 25 bucks or so to help out.. :)

So what can we do...

Reply #25 – September 19, 2018, 05:16:03 PM

Quote from: EricCoolCats;467175

Thoughts?

How have things like this been funded in the past? Who actually pays for the forum?

Mobile formatting alone makes it worth it for me, Tapatalk is a bonus.

Also the point brought up about photobucket having helped ruin forum reputations across the internet for all. How are we with storage, should we go exclusive to hosting our own pictures and not using third party hosting? I always used photobucket in the past but my recent stuff I have been uploading pictures here assuming storage is cheap for us now that it is for the rest of the world.

So what can we do...

Reply #26 – September 19, 2018, 05:23:28 PM

Quote from: JeremyB;467171

I don't think there is any way to 'revive' the forum.

Maybe start posting in your old buddies threads instead of lurking. :hick:

That's right, I caught you lurking.

So what can we do...

Reply #27 – September 19, 2018, 05:28:43 PM

Hey, all. I just wanted to throw my .02 in. Let me just say that I am very thankful for this site and CoolCats. I know by reading the majority of the posts here that, if I ever thought I had any mechanical skills, compared to most of you I can't even use a can-opener. I drifted away for several years only because I simply didn't own a car of this type. Truth be told, even when I first signed on back in whenever, I probably never had a drive-able car. I would buy cars that had too many problems or issues for me to ever put on the road, and usually had to s them in the end. I am just simply a fan of these cars. I never got into them because of their great reliability, their resale price, their long-term collectibility, or any of that. I just like them. I'm old enough to remember when the roads were littered with them, and never really imagined a time when they'd almost be extinct. The car I own now still needs a trans to get back on the road, but it's still way closer to being a driver than anything I've had in 10+ years. And I'm also pretty sure that in my little town of about 18,000, there's not another Fox Cougar/T-bird traveling the roads. We have a once-a-month drive-in car show (mostly locals), and I will be happy one day just to take my little simple V6 Cougar there and represent the genre. I live in another very Chevy-oriented area. Everybody's got their Chevelle, Camaro, Corvette, Bel Air, Nova, etc. Once in a while a Fox Mustang shows up, and that's rare. These sites help me a lot, and I hope they never go away. I'd love to meet any of you in person, but I'm like lots of others, I live pretty far from any of the gatherings. I may never have a car I trust to drive across the country. I'll be with you in spirit, if that counts. Just wanted to weigh in.

So what can we do...

Reply #28 – September 19, 2018, 07:03:08 PM

Quote from: CougarSE;467177

How have things like this been funded in the past? Who actually pays for the forum?

Mobile formatting alone makes it worth it for me, Tapatalk is a bonus.

Also the point brought up about photobucket having helped ruin forum reputations across the internet for all. How are we with storage, should we go exclusive to hosting our own pictures and not using third party hosting? I always used photobucket in the past but my recent stuff I have been uploading pictures here assuming storage is cheap for us now that it is for the rest of the world.

Carm had posted about this same situation before, and people here just started donating for the software upgrade. I don’t know if he has any funds left over for that. But typically that’s what’s happened. We need his input first so we know how to proceed.

Photos can be stored on the server...that’s okay with me. That way, if a non-member tries to view a thread with photos, they won’t see them...they’d have to join and login to view the pix, which might be a good way to get people to join again. If we run out of server space we can always move the board. I can likely cover that part. So there are some advantages to going that route. Linking to photo hosting sites would still be fine but if the new board software (and Tapatalk integration) makes it easier to post from a phone or desktop, then people may be more apt to use it.

So what can we do...

Reply #29 – September 19, 2018, 07:58:31 PM

So if 10 of us active members chip in $25 we can upgrade?

Who do I send my $25 to?