As far as the forum goes, I have some thoughts.
I know exactly why people aren't flocking to shmax forum, its the same reason all other startup forums end up failing. Of course this one is different, as it is an extension of the collector side of the website, but the idea is related. Most tfans have difficulty in posting on more than one TF site. Usually, there will be one site that a particular user called "home" and will hang around that site more than on others. That is also related to the animosity between the forums, although part of that is due to the older guys having that and the newer people adopt it. Anyways, new TF startup forums end up having trouble staying afloat because they are (in the end) competing with the big 3 (I'd say 4 but Tformers has fallen off greatly) which already have the vast or diverse userbase to keep things interesting. This forum comes off as being a place for Shmax database members to hangout and that is exactly what the userbase here reflects.
Now, there are a LOT of collectors that either do not know what Shmax is or plain never heard of the place. This isn't entirely surprising considering that it isn't really talked about too much in the hobby. Yes TFW2005 does allow members to use the shmax signature (as long as you aren't randomly found conflicting with their rules) but most other sites do not allow animated GIF or Flash signatures.
As mentioned earlier, Tformers is in a funk and they appear to be trying to figure out how to right the forum side of their ship again. Part of their issues were caused by some amount of negligence regarding keeping the forum current, as can be seen by the constant complaints why there was an Animated forum well into Season 2 of Prime and no Prime forum. Another reason it fell off was due to their closing of INH (which I'm not complaining about) and Remy shutting down shop. This is just a little backstory to where I am going here. There seems to be recent talk there (amongst the members anyways) about getting Tformers toy database fleshed out and be more like Shmax. Except it seems that the people talking about this didn't know about Shmax or its capabilities. I had a crazy idea of how Shmax could be integrated into Tformers but then I get visions of Mr Shmax coming after me with a board with a nail in it. :mrgreen:
So one of the things needed is to get the word out, but not in full on advertising. You don't want other people to start seeing Shmax members talking about Shmax to be akin to Spam or having us lumped into some "he's one of those Shmax people" type group. The conversation I'm speaking of starts here (and ends on the next page where I post about TFW and Tformers reputation) :
http://forums.tformers.com/talk/index.p ... &p=1622059Which I had to respond to the comment of "I like that checklist idea. Not sure why no one else is doing it" asking if that was a joke, but it became obvious that the people asking for some sort of interactive collection tracking checklist that they can tie their Tformers/ENI accounts into and didn't know about Shmax. As a result of this conversation, I came off as being against the entire idea, but had to save myself by promoting the site. And here is a good way to "spam" something but not seem like being spam, if you get to my post about mentioning ActionFigureChecklist (booo competition) but need to relate that they just aren't good enough and Shmax has just what I need.
TL;DR
As far as the look and feel to the forum, you could always install an additional skin, but not make it default. Have some people try it out, edit it as needed and so forth. There are a bunch of free skin kits out there, (I'm sure) but I've only dealt with IPB. But I gotta say the new IPB version coming out soon looks really cool. I'd suggest a switch but I don't know how hard that would be on the site integration side, so best to stick with what ya got for now.
