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[ForumsHelp]

You have a point pharmacist Actualy releasing forums and CMS software with no attractive skins has a very clever marketing idea behind it. The software owners are leaving a margin for new markets to be created around their own market, like design market, coding market and so on. This attracts more crowd to the software and expands the main market for the software owners. Also on the other side, it gives more flexibelity for forum owners to have what ever they like with their forums.

As for your second point. Forum owners always find a way to generate money, for example donations, ads, selling products and services, there is always a way to generate profit

[pharmacist]

I see. I don't know if this is the right place to post but it's about templates, for example, templatemonsters. I see they have many nice templates, but they don't sell the whole package. It doesn't come with codes...only templates...As an inexperience web person, I don't really know how to put them together if I ever bought one from them. I have seen samples.

From what I know, templatemonsters don't come with the necessary code for example if I want to set up a beauty salon website using their template and I want to have a calendar where customers can make appointment or even a form to send email, I don't think those templates from templatemonsters include those codes. Is this a database issue that you need to set up? I don't know how to create database for it. Do you have the knowlege to do this?

[ForumsHelp]

Yes the web templates don't include any extra coding but the code for the design and this is not limited to Template Monster, but it's a general standard for web templates.
So if you want to edit these templates, you can do this directly by using a HTL editor like FrontPage or DreamWeaver. But I have to say that if you need to add more complicated features other than normal static HTML pages, then you will need coding experience.

[Norman]

Originally Posted by ForumsHelp

Ok First let me say that I love your avatar lol

I also love it.

What I meant is, did you face any technical problems running a forum before? or even did you face any kind of problems as a forum user?

If you're administrator, the first problem you have, is found a great staff.
You can found a lot of people that can be a part of your staff, but you don't found a lot of people that can moderate, for example, in excellente mode. And staff must have a great personality. You (administrator) can't you permise to have a "little bit stupid" staff. Why? Couse if a member see a bad moderator is your name, like admin, that's going in the shit.

My self, as forum user, I have never face (is this the right word?) big problems.

Originally Posted by pharmacist

Yes indeed. I have just one question. Most of forums, for example vbulletin.com, don't have good skin for their site. I know they're making money selling forums, but their skin (default) look terrible. Even with portals too, they don't even have nice skins for their site. Whenever I visit portals or boards with their default skin, I usually would close my brower and go to another site. It's only when those graphic designers come in, like yourself that make it look better. I just wonder why they don't hire a graphic designer to make it look nicer, for example, vbulletin.com

In vBulletin.com case, I think is for show default software style...
I think eh..

[ForumsHelp]

Yes I probably agree about the forum stuff point and I think that it's reaaly hard to find someone who can run your forum as if it was his.

[JiM]

ForumsHelp, Great thread.

[ForumsHelp]

Thanks Jim and glad that you find it useful

[gahomg1]

thanks for the tips, ill keep in mind