Subj : Re: Design and Theming To : Lord Gareth From : Warpslide Date : Tue May 26 2020 12:35:36 On 26 May 2020, Lord Gareth said the following... LG> I'm new at running a BBS. Running into general setup issues and LG> learning how the system works has been a lot of fun! I actually forgot how much "work" it was getting everything setup. That must have been something I blocked out when I last ran a BBS back in the late 90's. Once you get it up & going it seems to just be a matter of maintenance, which I guess is what I mostly remember doing. LG> I have a framework of a board in place and have it connected to fsxNet. If you haven't looked at DOVE-Net yet I'd recommend a look. It's fairly active and you can setup your own account and join all in the same day. LG> However, I haven't figured out what the PURPOSE of the board is and LG> what the cohesive experience is for users. I don't know that my board has a specific purpose either. When I last ran a BBS it seemed my users were all about the door games. There were a couple of users that were fairly active in the message bases, but they were few and far between. I tend to look at my board as a "general purpose" BBS with maybe a focus on quality over quantity. I'd rather have door games installed that people actually use rather than having say 100 games with only one or two of them actually receiving any attention. The same goes for message networks, I'm surprised how quiet Fidonet is now-a-days. I spend most of my time reading fsxNet & DOVE-Net now because that seems to be where all the people are. LG> I guess my question is, how did you come up with what you wanted to "do" LG> with your board and then how did you go about establishing a solid theme LG> around that? How did your board evolve over time? Right now, like you, I'm in the middle of (re-)launching my BBS. So we'll see how it actually evolves. Right now I'm setting it up similar to the way it was in the late 90s and see where usage (if any) actually steers the direction. Back then there were boards who specialized in door games, others in message networks and some in having huge file bases. I tried to be the best of all 3, even going so far as buying a 5 disc CD-ROM drive and having the latest "Night Owl" CD's imported into the file bases. I remember one thing I hated about the CD Changer, whenever it switched discs the whole computer would lock up for 3 or 4 seconds. So if I had one user running LORD, another user browsing the file bases and me using the computer, the whole system would seemly lock up for a moment while the disc switched. I'm not sure how a file-base-centric BBS would do today with web apps taking over almost everything we do, and X/Y/Z-Modem method of downloading certainly seems antiquated to today's standards. LG> Also, did you do the ANSI theme design yourself or did you use a group LG> like ANSIGARDEN? What tutorials or information on ANSI art design did LG> you use to help get started? Somewhere at my parent's house up north there is either a burned CD or a Zip Disk with the last backup of my BBS I took before shutting it down. I'm hoping when I'm up there next (after this covid thing is settled down) to hopefully find it. I've re-created the menus in The Draw the best I could from memory. Back then I was shameless for stealing ANSI from all over the place to use on my board. In the beginning I had pretty much the same menu for every screen (much the way I have it now) - By the end of it, I had different cartoon characters on every menu (Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, etc) all ripped from ANSI groups found on the internet & even other boards. I'd be interesting in hearing from some more seasoned SysOp's who have been running a BBS longer than I have. What usage patterns have you noticed over time? How many active users do you have? Paging Tiny! I remember dialing up your board when I lived up in Bracebridge where I ran the original Northern Realms. It was long distance from where I was, but it was worth the call even back then. I think that's when I started using London Telecom or something similar to save on Long Distance. ..J. --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Windows/32) * Origin: Northern Realms BBS | bbs.nrbbs.net | Binbrook, ON (21:3/110) .