<img src="http://ubbdev.com/columns/stilgar/vhtrading03.jpg" align="left" alt="spotlight winner">Interviewer: Stilgar
Interviewee: ScottRoberts
VH Trading




Every month we hold a contest here at UBBDev. A contest to see who has the best looking, best modified & best feeling UBB.classic™ around. We gather them up in front of a panel of judges. After a lot of browsing, reading and enjoying of the contestant's forums, we tally the votes and declair the winner. This month it's VH Trading.

UBBDev: Hi Scott. Congratulations on winning this month's Members Spotlight.
What do you think about all this?
ScottRoberts: I'm pretty flattered. I redesigned the site and just wanted
to see how it would do in the contest, otherwise I probably wouldn't have
entered with the older layout. I honestly didn't think I would win
straight out.

UBBDev: Where do you get your inspiration for your new forum layout? Some
people say it's very XPish.... in a good way.
ScottRoberts: It was originally designed to be a cross between XP and the
2001 design of MSN.com. The first revamping of the site and forums had a
darker look with a grayish-purple as its base color and icons across the top
(similar to what it has now). I put off completing the redesign for a few
months and when I came back to it, I found I hated those new colors. So I
changed it to the current white, blues, and grays, and the rest is history.


UBBDev: What is your favorite color?
ScottRoberts: Depends on the mood. I like "cool" colors like blue, purple,
or green. But that doesn't necessarily mean I would use them for every web
site I'd design.

UBBDev: You take a lot of care in not adding too many hacks. How do you
decide on what to use?
ScottRoberts: I just try to decide what's best for the site. It's easy to
get carried away by adding every available hack on your boards, but one has
to show some self-restraint. You have to ask yourself, "Does this
modification help in any way? Does it make things easier? Is it going to
add a legitimately useful function?" Sometimes you may add a hack or two
and find out that they're not really being used, so you take them out.

UBBDev: What is the one hack that you would like to see as a standard
feature?
ScottRoberts: It's hard to say. It would have to be one of the many
"smaller" hacks such as Last Post By (which would be very easy to include in
the standard code). Maybe Sticky Topics.

UBBDev: Do you have any advice for people just starting out?
ScottRoberts: Make sure your forums are based on a subject matter you're
passionate about. Don't have a board for the sake of having a board. Don't
be aimless and directionless with your board. Be sure it's "about"
something and find others who are equally enthusiastic about it. Also make
sure that your moderators are knowledgeable, mature, and trustworthy.
Newbies should study the Community Development forum on UBBDev and the
previous Spotlight winners' interviews on tips on how to create a better
community, how to recruit new members, promote your site, and so on.

UBBDev: What drew you to UBBDev as one of your hangouts?
ScottRoberts: The fact that it was a great community where people were very
open to helping others out by not only creating hacks for a product we're
all interested in but in answering questions and giving support to newbies.

UBBDev: Where do you see yourself and VH Trading in 5 years?
ScottRoberts: Seeing as how the site was very small and static when it
started almost five years ago, it sure has come a long way. I can only hope
that it will continue to grow and evolve that much in the next five years.
Who knows what new features and new ideas will spring up? And with the
rapid advancements in technology, no one knows exactly how the trading
community will evolve (although I have my theories). I will be certainly
exciting to find out.

Thank you Scott. VH Trading is a great site.