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?
Ryan Douthit: I started out on the web in 1991, sponging time from my sister-in-laws university account. Shortly thereafter I launched a BBS called Midnight Cafe that featured online E-Zines from the net and live chat, in addition to the normal set of online games and MUD's. I didn't get into web design until 1996, the same year I registered MidnightCafe.com with NSI. I was working for a regional computer retailer in sales and marketing and thought an online store would be cool. It took 1 year and 2 site revisions, but by 1997 we had launched the first regional e-tail presence with secure online ordering. Therefore, through necessity I learned
a lot about development and due to time constraints I also learned to hack pre-written code to do what I needed of it.
UBBDEV: How did you come up with the idea for midnightcafe?
RD:
The Name, Midnight Cafe was derived from the community feel I was trying to achieve with the original BBS and since it went online at Midnight and went offline in the morning - I only had one
phone line at the time. It's been through a number of permutations over the years including a design studio, parent to an online competitor to buy.com (our funding dried up with the rest of the market) and finally an e-tail marketing consultancy.
It has functioned in its current form for only 3 months; the online review and community segment (midnightcafe.com as opposed to Midnight Cafe, LLC. the official business) keeps me in-tune with the core audience I develop marketing strategies to attract into the retail and online businesses that I work with. Since MidnightCafe.com is currently a moonlighting project It has to be self-sustaining and easy to add content to from remote locations (I get around
a lot), which leads into the next question...
UBBDEV: Why did you choose the UBB over other forum software?
RD:
MidnightCafe.com, at one time, handled business affairs for GamersDepot.com - we still host their boards today. We were looking for simply something to run our forums. Everyone seemed to use UBB so we purchased a license. About a year later I had the idea to revive midnightcafe.com as a community site, the original thought was to integrate review content into a message board format, I already had the license (two of them at this point, but that's another story) so I launched MidnightCafe.com with just UBB, using the main forum view as the entry.
Early on, feedback started to return with my reviews not being taken seriously due to their 'Just a Forum Posting' appearance, additionally hardware networks had no interest in sponsoring the forum format. I had some other ideas I wanted to implement and had noticed the slight differences in UBB to UBB implementation, from avatars to stars - why didn't my board have those? My search ended at scriptkeeper and led to
UBBDev, where I found several great ideas such as the SlashUBB script, enabling me to update news from anywhere - a constant bane of my experience running review sites. Several really large review sites today still use FTP or
FrontPage to update their news and review content. Using a separate UBB installation (remember I already had 2 licenses anyhow) led to my own modification of the system to handle paginated reviews, where each thread reply is another page.
UBBDEV: What do you like and dislike most about the ubb?
RD:
The ease of customization and modification available to a non-programmer like myself is it's strongest asset, if you can think logically and have a firm grasp on the core concepts of programming it's a no-brainer. Also, since it's a pre-published html format it allows for very low server utilization, key to scalability. Alternately, I would feel more comfortable if I could attach it to a SQL database down the road, without having to move to OpenTopic - I think that is my only major gripe.
UBBDEV: What do you do to keep your site "fresh" and what do you recommend to keep people coming back for more?
RD:
We have been able to rise from 0 traffic to 200,000 page views this month (est). due to making partnerships with key entities and hosting other peoples forums under our own (and thereby sponging off of their user base), this has only been possible through the high-degree of customization made possible by UBB, take a look at our "affiliate forums" from the main menu for an example.
UBBDEV: What is your (and your
users') favorite UBB Modification?
RD:
I have two favorite Mods, my own modification into the paginated review format and SlashUBB, which I use as an AT timed include on the front of the site to lower CPU utilization. The site would just be too much work for me to maintain otherwise, given my hectic schedule.
UBBDEV: I *really* like your
work with your reviews modification. It really looks great - the layout is
outstanding! Are there any modifications you really don't like?
RD:
I think that my *least* favorite modification would be global time mod - I really just don't see the point of it and soooo many sites use it; just a
waste of space.
UBBDEV: Off the record... we agree. ;) Thank you for your
time in giving us a little insight into a truly excellent site.
RD:
Thanks for the opportunity to participate in the UBB community.
L. Ryan Douthit
E.I.C./Administrator
MidnightCafe.com
A Member of the Ad-Allies Network
http://www.midnightcafe.com
ryan@midnightcafe.com
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