Let's Make This Site Great Again

[nims57]

NOTE TO WEBMASTERS: This is identical to a message I wrote to C Fontaine, but I was worried it might have not sent.

I used to feel a true sense of community on these forums, even though this is a website. Seems like the redesign a few years ago was a mistake and paralyzed traffic to the board. That must have been a lot of work and it really makes me sad to see this place like a cyber ghost town. Right now I am in the prime of my life and more committed to my retail hobby than ever. So in the spirit of so many great stores (and bands), I would like to see this site make a comeback. And I feel a special calling to lead the way. Here are some suggestions:


Make the forums more organized. There are so many different subcategories of popular retail establishments. Right now, the sections on here just can't do justice to all of them. Maybe we should divide by regions of the country/world (like Groceteria) or time periods in the last century and this one. Better yet there could be different sections based on different phenomena. For example there would be a closings section, a relocation section, a rebranding section, a section for stores that were planned to open but were cancelled, etc. We really still have a lot of ground to cover. I can think of a couple dozen great chains that have rarely or never been discussed on here.

How about a section specifically dedicated to covering non-retail issues, but concepts that could be seen as going hand in hand with them? Like other historical and cultural matters? Some ideas that might be popular would be official threads about different music artists or different countries since these have complicated histories just like retail companies. Or what about a forum on collectibles such as toys or something? I think of my retail hobby as a sort of collection, since I like to count and list all the locations of different chains, etc.

[Zayre88]

A couple months ago I did some clean up because so many posts were scattered everywhere, in wrong categories, and new threads about 1 specific store in a chain were opened all the time and often people opened new threads when one was already there.

Still, I'm not sure of what would be the best way to organize the forums.

You have store closings, company closings, new concepts, rebranding, former chains, grocery stores, regions, time periods... not easy to figure out how to properly display all of it.

Thanks for your comments nims57

[EddieJ1984]

I think some of the Everything Else boards could dissappear (well merge with others).
I mean the Art board's last post was in 2009. I think the one thing that probably doesn't help getting potential new members would be seeing boards that hasn't had a post in a while (should at least have posts in 2011).

[NJxxJon]

A couple months ago I did some clean up because so many posts were scattered everywhere, in wrong categories, and new threads about 1 specific store in a chain were opened all the time and often people opened new threads when one was already there.

Still, I'm not sure of what would be the best way to organize the forums.

You have store closings, company closings, new concepts, rebranding, former chains, grocery stores, regions, time periods... not easy to figure out how to properly display all of it.

Thanks for your comments nims57

Agreed 100% on this. I think its too late to go back and try to organize most of the posts on here. I am still looking at spam robot leaching their grip on the user list (and its been 4+ now)

[EddieJ1984]

One thing, I think needs to disappear and probably makes potential new posters think this is a dead board is the message under news at top:

News: Welcome to the 2010 AMES BOARD!!!!

Yea its 2012, less than 3 months from being 2013 lol.

[ynkeesfn82]

One thing, I think needs to disappear and probably makes potential new posters think this is a dead board is the message under news at top:

News: Welcome to the 2010 AMES BOARD!!!!

Yea its 2012, less than 3 months from being 2013 lol.

Eddie,

I think Chris needs to do this since he's the main admin on this forum. I'm a sub-admin for this forum and I looked through all my settings multiple times and couldn't find a way to change this. Shoot him an email or message him on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/amesfan

Marc

[Zayre88]

One thing, I think needs to disappear and probably makes potential new posters think this is a dead board is the message under news at top:

News: Welcome to the 2010 AMES BOARD!!!!

Yea its 2012, less than 3 months from being 2013 lol.

Okay so I tried to modify this for a few minutes and it turns our that I could!  Let me know if you thing of messages that would be good to boost discussions here !!

[XDeSuEhTX]

I too feel badly about the cyber ghost-town this place has become, as this was one of the first online communities I ever frequented, starting way back in 2005. I'm no one to complain though, as I've dissipated from the forums on and off for years now. But I also hate feeling like I'm just talking to myself here. We've had a lot of solid contributors here over the years, but many of them trail off, never to be heard from again. And if we are honest, there's not a lot of people in this day and age that are into such a hobby as defunct retail. Couple that with the fact that internet forum usage as a whole is down a lot everywhere, since the rise of social networking and various other trending distractions such as Youtube. People are forgetting how to explore and find different content across the web.


As for the forum, like with so many things, I find myself nostalgic for the Ames forums of the past. The classic setup with the green Ames themed backdrop, the heyday of the site. While the current setup is fancier sure, it just isn't as compelling in my opinion. There are so many sites that look and operate the same way, it just doesn't stand out as it used to.

I really don't know what to offer in terms of ideas. I do second the proposition to consolidate all of the off-topic forums to general, no sense in having so many, imo. I do hope to see this place make some form of a comeback.

[retailisking]

A lot of retail-focused forums and sites have gone inactive. Caldor Rainbow hasn't been updated since April, and The Weis Project hasn't had new content in five years. The Remembering Retail group on Yahoo closed down and moved to Facebook, losing a number of members in the process (though I admit I've been spending way too much time there of late, thanks to the real-time conversation.) Even the venerable Pleasant Family Shopping blog is being updated less frequently. We often forget that this is a hobby, not a business, and other pursuits also have claims on our free time. I would stop short of declaring this forum dead, but maybe this is the "new normal."

[Zayre88]

I agree with the new normal.

There is also less dramatic changes happening in retail.  Ames closed ten years ago and back then, we were still discussing closings that happened just before that: Hills, Caldor, Bradlees, Wards and others.

Currently, the economy hurts retailers, they close stores here and there but I don't see big changes in the retail landscape like in the 90's and 2000s.

Kmart Sears and JCPenney will make the news soon maybe but overall, everything is normal, Walmart, Target, Kohl's are at the top.  Other stores are where they are.  Ames is long gone and so is Woolworth, Zayre and the rest.

For now we can follow the small changes here and there and discuss about it here.

[IGA/Kmart Is Forever!]

I will have to personally say that I think that the new green Ames color of the message-board is a great change.

I would also like to say that I personally love this message-board an awful lot as well. I have loved stores and businesses ever since I was a very little boy. I had no idea at all that this website ever existed until I found it for the first time back in early/mid 2011 on a link that was in the Ames page of Wikipedia. I kept trying over and over to become a member on this message-board for a little more than a year, but could not answer the questions while trying to register, due to the fact that I could not answer the security questions that prevents spammers from becoming members. However, I contacted Chris Fontaine this past summer after obtaining his email address from the contact section on his website @ http://www.amesfanclub.com/contact.htm. He gave me the information that I needed to answer the security questions and the rest is history.

[Pikapower]

A suggestion, how about we post a defunct retail Wiki for this site!

[Ameskid]

A suggestion, how about we post a defunct retail Wiki for this site!

No. You don't need a wiki to organize information about a subject.

There are simply too many wikis for too many things. I tried to start one for air raid sirens, and quickly realized that there was a lot more to it than I thought, and it was neither easy nor fast.

(Have you heard of the SpongeBob wiki that has a page for literally every object that has ever appeared on the show?)

[retailisking]

On a housekeeping note, is it my imagination or has the forum tab disappeared for anyone who's not logged in, or has it always been that way and I just didn't notice it before?

[Kmart4life]

I have noticed it too.

[IGA/Kmart Is Forever!]

I have noticed it too.

Same goes for me as well. I think that the update was done when they changed the background of the message-board from gray to Ames green.

[Pikapower]

I have noticed it too.

Same goes for me as well. I think that the update was done when they changed the background of the message-board from gray to Ames green.

Same here, why didn't the forums button stay when the colors were changed?

[retailisking]

One thing that might revitalize this forum, though it's a big job, would be to transition to new board software. ZenForo is pretty cool and it runs snappy on my browser. Here's an example of it in action:

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/

One detriment to XenForo is that it isn't free; another is that there isn't an official importer from SMF to ZenForo, though there are workarounds.

SMF is certainly usable, but it's getting a little long in the tooth, and my understanding is that 2.0 is pretty demanding of computer resources without much new in the way of functionality.

Just my .02...

[Ameskid]

XenForo is one of the best BB systems I've ever used, period.  It's easy to use, good-looking, and hardly breaks down (although one forum that I'm on that used Xen experienced major problems with the quoting system for a while).

However, moving to a new BB system wouldn't necessarily generate new traffic to the site.  It might even make the current situation worse.

[TheFugitive]

One thing, I think needs to disappear and probably makes potential new posters think this is a dead board is the message under news at top:

News: Welcome to the 2010 AMES BOARD!!!!

Yea its 2012, less than 3 months from being 2013 lol.

When Parkway Center Mall closed in Pittsburgh in January, 2013, one of the last remaining
stores was called "90's Nails"  :D ???