Spotlight

Our second place site this month is the beautiful: http://www.enterthemuse.com
A gorgeous mixture of flash, light colors, and fine writing, Enter The Muse is the brain-child of ubbdev member jmcneese, a systems architect from Holland. MasterMind once again gets us the inside story in how Joshua built such a nice site.;

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?

Joshua McNeese :: i am a senior systems architect for the leading ASP in The Netherlands. i have been on the web since 1994, and have worked as a lowly tech support rep, technical support manager, systems administrator, technical solutions consultant and network engineer.


UBBDEV:  How did you come up with the idea for ETM?

JM :  i started ETM after leaving another large UBB driven writing site in april of this year. i started out with v5.45c, and made minor adjustments to the BB using tips and hacks from scriptkeeper and ubbhackers. when 5.47 came out, i went into serious overdrive modifying the board, using hacks from ubbdev and some minor tweakage of my own. the idea for the site was a combination of the wishes of my members (we are a very democratic community at ETM), as well as suggestions from my webmistress OliviaDrab (check her out at http://www.geocities.com/oliviadrab/).


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

JM :  UBB has all the features that i want in a forum (except database backend, but i'll probably investigate OpenTopic soon enough).




UBBDEV:  What do you like and dislike most about the ubb?

JM :  i like the potential for customization that UBB has the most, but i dislike the horribly ugly code that is behind it ;). i also don't like the fact that it's not database-driven.


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? 

JM :  setup your site to parse shtml as soon as possible, and never forget that javascript/DHTML is your friend. and DON'T FORGET TO BACKUP YOUR FILES! :D

UBBDEV:  What do you do to keep your site fresh and keep people coming back for more? 

JM :  i check ubbdev almost daily and have a testboard that i try new hacks on. after having my moderators try to break the test board, i move completed hacks over to production. stay on the lookout for entirely new framed layout, and dynamic menus based upon usercookies and preferences!


Thanks,

joshua mcneese