Dory36 demoted!

[grumpy]

After 4 months in Buenos Aires I went to an island I heard about in Southern Brazil called Florianopolis. It's an amazing place, about the size of Maui but 1/6 the cost and a very laid back vibe.

Andy,

Welcome and thanks for relieving Dory from some of the tedium. I noted your reference to Florianopolis. My son's girlfriend is Brazilian and they just returned to the US from three weeks there visiting her family. I thought you (and the rest of the crazies here) might enjoy some pictures my son posted:

http://flickr.com/photos/jeffweiss/sets/72157594471681683/

We are hoping there will be a wedding sometime in the near future and we will have a good excuse for a trip there.

Grumpy

 

[Andy R]

Welcome and thanks for relieving Dory from some of the tedium. I noted your reference to Florianopolis. My son's girlfriend is Brazilian and they just returned to the US from three weeks there visiting her family. I thought you (and the rest of the crazies here) might enjoy some pictures my son posted:

http://flickr.com/photos/jeffweiss/sets/72157594471681683/

We are hoping there will be a wedding sometime in the near future and we will have a good excuse for a trip there.

Wow Grumpy, what a small world! Very few people in the US have heard of Florianopolis. It really is a special place (safe, relaxed, inexpensive - relative to the US, nice weather and 52 beaches) and I am planning to go back for most of March (when prices drop, peak season is January/February). I have a Brazilian girlfriend (that's why I am going back) and they sure do know how to relax and enjoy life!

[Removed Link with personal info - Andy]

 

[Sarah in SC]

Welcome, Andy! What a coincidence, as the other forum where I read a lot, post very little, is the Airstream forum. Found my rowdy old girl there, but I'm a MHer! The Basher is a Airstream Argosy Motorhome, 28' 1976. She's truly awesome--I bought her from one of your VERY prolific writers on that forum! Such a great knowledge base there!

That is a well run and well attended forum. Good folks and gives me a good feeling about you moving in on us over here.

Again, welcome!

Sarah

 

[Nords]

The more content gets created the more pages are index and the more visitors we will have. It's the visitors (random surfers) who click on the ads.

Wow...post count might finally mean something

These concepts are preferable to no E-R.org at all, but that doesn't mean I think they're a good idea.

Perhaps the first thing the new software could do is get rid of the post counts. Dates to distinguish the long-time posters or stars to distinguish the high-volume posters, sure-- but no scorekeeping.

 

[FinanceDude]

Brazilian women are hot............

 

[Danny]

Brazilian women are hot............

They wouldn't be if they lived in a cooler climate...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

but no scorekeeping.

Totally works for me. Then all I have to do is get rid of these giant bunny ears and there'll be nothing to make fun of...

 

[obryanjf]

Wow Grumpy, what a small world! Very few people in the US have heard of Florianopolis. It really is a special place (safe, relaxed, inexpensive - relative to the US, nice weather and 52 beaches) and I am planning to go back for most of March (when prices drop, peak season is January/February). I have a Brazilian girlfriend (that's why I am going back) and they sure do know how to relax and enjoy life!

[Removed Link with personal info - Andy]

My wife is from Brasil and her family now lives in Floripa. Before our last move I was trying to talk her into moving there but too close to the family.

job

 

[haha]

Since I'll be getting no cash for this, this will be in conflict with my goal of never being anyone's "uncompensated asset". Therefore, going forward my posts will be even more useless than before.

Ha

 

[Caroline]

Therefore, going forward my posts will be even more useless than before.

When do you start this policy, Ha? It wasn't with THIS post - it made me laugh out loud!

What is more, it did so a mere 5 minutes after I hung up with AT&T, who used my request for a repair to my non-functioning land line as an opportunity to SELL ME SOMETHING ELSE that probably won't work either.

Thank you kindly for the mood-breaker!

 

[lswswein]

Hi Andy
I was looking for pubs/places in Summit county with cheap beer and good food and where maybe the locals hang out instead of all the tourists. I have heard good things about Abasin and will check it out on a friday. Thanks for the music links.

Your business plan looks interesting. If you don't mind a few questions - I see you have bought a few forums. At what member base do you break even - did you break even on the first ones? I am asking because it is really difficult to break even with ad revenue only. We have see it at the fool.com message boards. Also to attract newbies you might need some more original content articles. I understand you costs are low because you are in South America, but still you would need bandwidth and storage along with servers right? Just curious because a friend of mine is working on online learning stuff which also relies a lot on message boards etc.

-h

 

[Andy R]

Your business plan looks interesting. If you don't mind a few questions - I see you have bought a few forums. At what member base do you break even - did you break even on the first ones? I am asking because it is really difficult to break even with ad revenue only. We have see it at the fool.com message boards. Also to attract newbies you might need some more original content articles. I understand you costs are low because you are in South America, but still you would need bandwidth and storage along with servers right? Just curious because a friend of mine is working on online learning stuff which also relies a lot on message boards etc.

there is not a certain membership base that I have been looking for. I have been looking at sites that have active users, good management teams, topics I enjoy (mostly) and potential. it's really hard to say what size things get going, I have started forums from scratch, acquired ones that went from 6,000 members to 60,000 members in 18 months and some that have been flat to small declines in traffic and new registrations. There are definately cycles but I have yet to determine how to predict them...

Having self funded everything, I had to make wise economic decisions along the way. That includes watching Dell.com for server sales, leveraging economies of scale on data center space (bandwidth), etc. I did a lease vs buy analysis to determine which was the best choice, I choose to buy servers and collocate. This also has downsides, like when a chassis fan went down last year in a server and I had to get Dell to replace it before the server would reboot. We were down for 18 hours and I was coordinating repairs from Brazil. In that case it would be nice to be leasing it from a company who had techs and spare parts on hand.

 

[Eagle43]

Hi Andy,
Glad you're here; you seem to know your stuff and have led an interesting life. Congrats to Dory who needs the break.

Yep, birds of a feather flock together. These birds soar when discussing retirement, getting to retirement, and making money while enjoying life.

Somebody said something about "hot Brazilian girls." Where's the data on that?

 

[kcowan]

Andy
Please help us with the change in forum software. We don't like surprises!

Let's make sure Dory still has a special place in this new environment.

While in BA have you ever visited Punta del Este in Uruguay? It is one of the fallback locations for us in case Firecalc or the markets let us down!

Keith & Faye
Retired in 2002 and still doing fine...
Typed using free WiFi from our penthouse balcony in downtown PV MX

 

[Andy R]

Keith & Faye,

Dory will always have a special place here on E-R!!!

I have not been to Punta Del Este yet but I hear it is amazing. I hope to go sometime soon for a weekend.

As for the software we were hoping to convert to vBulletin which is a commercial forum software. It's more expensive but well worth it. You have probably used other forums running on vBulletin and will recognize it when we convert. We will give you plenty of notice and post lots of tutorials on how to utilize all the new features. We are not exactly sure when the upgrade will take place but we will let you know long in advance...

I use a Buffalo wifi card in my laptop with an external antenna. It's amazing how many free wifi spots you can find. Last year when the Mavericks were in the NBA Championships, I watch the games streaming from my Slingbox (which send your TV from your house to you over the internet) on a free wifi connection in Cairns, Australia. It had a group of people standing behind me watching the game and amazed that it was being privately broadcast from my house in Texas!

Have fun in PV, that's a great town!

 

[Peaceful_Warrior]

I like vBulletin -- I was the first mod on a very busy board that uses vBulletin, and I liked the software quite a bit.

When I add forums to my site, I'd strongly consider vBulletin (though since our site is currently low-traffic... maybe a couple thousand hits per month and mailing list a bit over 100 people... we may look towards a free solution until we have more income).

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I did some mod duty on a vbulletin board mannnny moons ago. Nice software. Solid 'ignore user' feature. Very close to the smf package this board runs. Nice search feature. Very fast. Good tech support.

Lots of add-ons and bonus features to do all the things you've always wished for.

Only downside is that it costs a few bucks instead of free.

 

[HobbyDave]

Sorry I didn't notice this thread earlier, been really busy with... *gasp* work.

Anyway, I love reading this on my work provided blackberry while I'm traveling here & there. This is one of the very rare forums which has a very clean mobile version of the site. If possible, I would love for this to continue into your forum software, I don't know if the software you're considering supports mobile versions of the site.

Anyway, good luck with everything

 

[Andy R]

We are actually going to be looking at specially formatted interface just for mobile users. There is a special add-on software that interfaces with the same database but is a completely separate software designed specifically for mobile users (Bberry, WAP phones, iPaqs, etc). We still have not tested this much yet but I am pretty sure it is going to be successful and then it should be pretty easy to roll out. It will probably be run on a different domain like mobile.early-retirement.org. Hopefully we can detect that you are coming from a mobile device and automatically redirect you but all those details needs to be worked out. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[HobbyDave]

FYI, I'm also a reader of the cruising message board (interesting that two of my message boards will now be related)

Are the login accounts going to be combined as well? It would be nice I imagine to be able to have one login for all of your message boards.

 

[Andy R]

No plans to merge the logins. The best ideas is to get the same name on each forum. I have no intent on homogenizing the forums as I feel each one has it's own unique character. Plus can you imagine what it would be like to try and merge all those accounts and figure out that mess!

The one thing that I am hoping to do across the sites is use some elements that are the same from a software skin I am having developed. It has to do with the forum listing page and then inside each forum where the threads are listed. I just think there are better ways to use the screen real estate then the way they are setup now. I have a time slot reserved with a very highly regarded graphics designer/vbulletin skin guru at the end of the month to work on the details. I will post more info (and a screen shoot) as it becomes available.

 

[Sheryl]

Hi Andy - I just wanted to offer a belated Welcome! from me - I've been on vacation and missed this thread until investigating the little hiccup this morning.

It sounds like you've had a very interesting life, and definitely have the proper mindset to fit in with this board. Looking forward to having you around.

Dory - congratulations to you on the demotion! I am glad you will have more free time to enjoy your ER now. You've done a fantastic job getting the board to this point, and I think you know it, but we all appreciate it very much!

 

[Andy R]

Sheryl,

Thanks for the welcome greeting. I do look forward to being able to participate in the discussions more. Right now I am working 80 hour weeks trying to keep up with everything on our network, just having to tackle one little piece at a time. With time I hope to have systems setup to automate most things and then we can talk about the fun stuff (retiring, saving money, traveling (I have some tricks to share here), etc).

Andy

 

[lswswein]

Hi Andy
Summit county boarding was just awesome - I enjoyed the bowls at vail a lot and Keystone & Breck were good too. I did check out the goat - thanks

-h