Interview By: Greg "MasterMind" Hard, h-realms.com

Discuss: Here

UBBDev: Let's start with a little "behind the scenes" information on yourself. What is your background and how long have you been on the web?

Brett: I have been on the web since early 1995. I am a Broadcast Journalism major from the University of Southern California, which means I have absolutely no computer training whatsoever, but I have always been very computer literate and interested in it. I work in advertising, but spend a lot of free time on my various sites.

UBBDev: How did you come up with the idea for vhlinks?

Brett: I have been a fanatical Van Halen fan for 20 years, and I ran a fairly elementary VH site back in '96. It went nowhere, so I scrapped it. Three years later, I decided to give it another try, but do something a bit different. So I created VHLinks.com in September 1999, which has basically the Yahoo! of Van Halen-related sites. It has grown beyond my wildest expectations.

UBBDev: Why did you choose the UBB over other forum software?

Brett: Well at the time I bought my UBB license, in early 1998, there was no other software that even compared to the UBB. It had more features, and the interface was cleaner than anything else out there. It was only $30 for a license back then, so to me it was a no-brainer.

UBBDev: That is very true. I bought mine in 99, and i loved it. What do you like and dislike most about the ubb?

Brett: That it does tend to get bogged down when threads and forums become too large.

UBBDev: Are there any "tricks of the trade" you'd like to share that any ubb owner can use to improve the success of their site?

Brett: Post, post, post. If you don't post on your own board at first, nobody else will see the need to. It took me a few months to get the board off the ground, I had to seed the forums with threads and respond to every comment so that I could get users to come back. Also, start with a minimal amount of forums. If you have too many empty forums, it looks terrible. Start with a few broader forums, gain some members, some interaction, and grow from there.

UBBDev: What is your favorite UBB hack?

Brett: Probably Who's Online. My members definitely were happy when I was able to add that back in to UBB 6.