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[Linked Image]
Interview by: tackaberry
Interviewee: Paulus Magnus

Content Rulez!!! Don't you know that by now. UBBDev each month honors one of our outstanding member communities that has developed a strong and vibrant community. This month we are proud to introduce our winner, Team Nicole . An all-out Nicole Kidman-fest. We caught up with the Captain of Team Nicole, Paulus Magnus to find out what it takes to have an Academy Award winning fan site.

Team Nicole can be found at: http://www.teamnicole.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi .

[Linked Image]

UBBDev:
Tell me about the history of Team Nicole and when you got started.

Paulus Magnus:
I joined a Nicole Kidman site in Sept 2001 after looking for some information online about Nicole and if she was going to appear on stage again. I met a few people on the site that I got on really well with but was troubled by a number of members that were just making trouble for everybody. The webmaster was on an extended holiday at the time so nobody was able to moderate or update the site. Therefore, I came up with this design where the workload could be shared. Somebody came up with a name for a little support group called TEAM NICOLE and the two ideas merged into one so off I went to start up this little site. It took 3 months to get our first 100 registered members but now we clock up around 25 a day after I redesigned the site earlier this month.

UBBDev:
Which are the most popular forums on your board?

Paulus Magnus:
Films - Anything related to Nicole's films is fair game in here so it's always busy with past and future projects.

In General - This is for anything that doesn't quite fit into the other forums but is always busy.

Café Mocha - Named after a members favourite coffee order, this is the general chit-chat forum for anything that isn't related to Nicole at all but just for sharing ideas and opinions between the members.

UBBDev:
What are the typical types of threads on Team Nicole?

Paulus Magnus:
We get a lot of news related threads with people posting articles from around the Net or from magazines/newspapers in their country. We also get a lot of pictures of Nicole that the members find around the Net. These threads usually turn into content that we move to the site for our infrequent visitors to find and for the search engines to index more accurately. We also have a lot of fans sharing their ideas and opinions about things not directly related to Nicole but are more related to their age as we have a large core of members in the 14 to 18 age bracket.

UBBDev:
How many films has Nicole Kidman appeared in?

Paulus Magnus:
25 released films, 3 more that are in post production at the moment and one that is being filmed at the moment, Cold Mountain.

UBBDev:
What other types of professional work has she done (i.e. modeling, stage, etc.)?

Paulus Magnus:
Nicole has done the odd bit of advertising work but started on stage in Australia, moved into TV and Films in Australia before Hollywood saw her and put her in Dead Calm opposite Sam Neill and Billy Zane. She did some major stage work in 1998 with The Blue Room in London and Broadway that got rave reviews and started a trend of other Hollywood stars turning to the boards. She has also recently done a few musical projects following her success in Moulin Rouge, one with Robbie Williams last year and she's doing another song this Christmas with Kylie Minogue. Robbie and Kylie are worldwide stars but hardly known in the US.

[Linked Image]

UBBDev:
Which of Nicole's movies are your favorites, your member's favorites?

Paulus Magnus:
My favourite would have to be 'The Others' as Nicole carries that film by herself and does a great job of portraying such a deep character. It's also a very good psychological horror movie. The members favourite is definitely 'Moulin Rouge'. That one movie has triggered more online activity than any other with lots of tribute sites around, it's one of those superb, feel-good movies. All credit to Baz Luhrmann for a stunning piece of work.

[Linked Image] [Linked Image]

UBBDev:
How many members does Team Nicole have, both total and regulars?

Paulus Magnus:
At the moment it's 1,200 in total but growing at 25 a day. Regulars would amount to around 150. We also get a lot of people signing up but never posting but as we don't use the email information for anything I haven't quite worked out why yet.

UBBDev:
Since there are surely lots of Nicole Kidman sites, what sort of things do you try to do versus other sites.

Paulus Magnus:
There was only one other large site and they recently merged with Team Nicole. We've always stuck to the professional side of Nicole's life as we want a site that Nicole would be pleased to have her name associated with. She doesn't like the invasive nature of today's press so we make sure we keep that off the site. I also try to keep everything easily updated so that we don't get bogged down with the quantity of information. Far too often, sites become large and can't cope as you get hundreds of static pages and it becomes a burden to maintain. Team Nicole has always been database driven which means we're still able to react and add new features and sections quickly and keep our content up-to-date and authoritative. It's largely down to the members though, it's all their bits of information that keep the site ahead of the rest. We try to say to the members, this is their site, we just provide the framework for their information and credit their submissions all the time so they feel they're part of the site.

UBBDev:
Do you have any relationships with webmasters of any other Nicole Kidman sites. How would you describe that relationship.

Paulus Magnus:
I used to have regular contact with the webmaster of the other site but he's now part of the team behind Team Nicole. I do have contact with a few other webmasters and on the whole it's very good. We're all doing similar things and having those bits of competition between sites helps the fans ultimately so I'm all in favour of mild competition as long as it doesn't turn into a war. I do have contact with the webmasters of a TV site for Five Mile Creek which was one of Nicole's early roles and that's very good. They post on the site and they've also been wonderful at supplying us with lots of information for this section on our site.

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UBBDev:
Do you have a Tom Cruise bashing forum?

Paulus Magnus:
Lol, no we don't. We don't have a Penelope Cruz bashing forum either. As we don't know any of these people or what goes on privately between them we can't judge them so we remove all such blatant "bash" postings. We also get quite a few Trolls in this corner of the Web pretending to be Nicole so we have the forums locked down pretty tightly and all the other interactive areas of the site are either locked down or they're monitored by the moderators. We also have a reminder in our forum rules about Trolls and that they should just report them.

[Linked Image]

UBBDev:
Since a lot of your members are young, what steps do you take to ensure content is suitable for minors

Paulus Magnus:
The site is rated with ICRA tags that stipulate we have mild expletives on the site. We do have some 'R' rated scripts on the site so these are tagged appropriately. The youngest member we have is a 9 year old boy. The rest is down to the moderators to make sure we stick within the scope of "mild expletives". We also have a large censored word list that filters out the more extreme words. When we invite moderators on the site we try to make sure we cover all the timezones so that anything offensive is dealt with quickly. A hack for all new posts since you last visited would be gratefully received for this job though. *hint*

UBBDev:
What percentage of your members are male vs. female? What do you try to do to attract one sex versus the other?

Paulus Magnus:
I think they're about 60% female, judging by their email addresses, but the number that actually post on the forums is more around 95% female. The guys seem to have problems simply having a discussion. It's strange how the forums and the chat rooms reflect true life so well, with the guys simply lurking or standing against the back wall looking awkward, lol. We promote the site on the basis of where "Nicole Kidman" appears online, sometimes that's "beautiful babe" sites, sometimes it's fashion and style sites and sometimes it's wallpaper and celebrity sites. I guess more females type "Nicole Kidman" into the search engines.

UBBDev:
What are your future plans for Team Nicole?

Paulus Magnus:
Forums wise, probably not a lot unless some killer feature comes out. Too many hacks that would make upgrading difficult. Report Post would have been worthy of an upgrade but I've written my own in PHP now which fits in with our back-end workflow system. Site wise, we've still got a lot of historical information and pictures to add but we've got some more interactive and fun elements to add. There's a whole new 'Fun' section that will be added but I'm completing a control panel that allows all the moderators to control the content of the site and deal with the day-to-day admin of queries, checking guestbook entries, adding links, etc. My Report Post feature allows the moderators to bring posts to the attention of an Editor so that if a post contains an interview transcript, that Editor can then add it to the site. I'd also like to add a classifieds section as well, this was something that didn't make it in time for the July 1st re-launch. More PHP required and more code to interface it to UBB so that their membership operates throughout this section as well. I also get the odd request from people that want our picture gallery script but as all the code is custom written it's hard to simply hand it over, so making a generic version of this is on the "to do" list. Other than that, more promotion on the Net and try to get our ultimate award, an official endorsement from Nicole herself.

[Linked Image]

UBBDev:
To your knowledge has Nicole Kidman visited Team Nicole and/or posted?

Paulus Magnus:
Not to my knowledge. I believe she knows we exist though as I have had a brief exchange with her publicist which involved Nicole.


UBBDev:
Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, and best of luck with your site.

Here are the award winning threads submitted for the contest:



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