Officially launching the forum on April 13th, 2013. I'll consider this to be a "beta" version until I become more knowledgable in forum administration and management.

Good luck with the new forum!

Thanks! It's great to see so many folks signing up on the very first day. Good stuff.

(06-09-2013 05:09 PM)Guth Wrote:  Earlier in the year when I purchased the cb1100forum.com domain, I could find no evidence of any other CB1100 forums on the web. The UK-based forum launched before I finally got this site up and running. I believe there might also be a German-based forum around now as well. That's about all that I know of.

Actually Guth, if you had the time and interest, I would be very interested in your journey on how this site got started. Maybe a little behind the scene detail? Things like, have you done this before? What got you started or where did the idea come from? Are you an IT guy or power user with an interest? After purchasing the domain, where did you find the forum software? Are you hosting the forum at home or at a hosting data center? If you are funding this personally will you accept donations? What other details can you share with us? Maybe a little background on you, your bike story. I'm interested... Tell us about the journey! Thanks Guth!

Last year when Honda announced that they were going to bring the CB1100 to North America, I put my deposit down that very day. I was so fired up about this bike, I needed a release — like a CB1100 forum. I started looking for such a forum, but none existed. I've worked as a marketing/web guy for years, dealing primarily with Intranet projects, but I'm not terribly technical like the developers that I work with. I had never set up a forum before, but I started to read up on it a bit and thought I should give it a shot. If no one else was going to set one up why not? Even if it failed, eventually someone else would probably get around to setting up another one. I've bought a few domains in the past and have launched a couple of small websites on my own, so I was familiar with much of what I would need to do. I stuck with the same hosting service that I've been using for years. In the meantime, I found the CB1100 thread going on over on the ADVrider forum, and that kept my CB-spirits buoyant. Then I started to think, geez, what if things go terribly wrong and I don't end up with a CB1100. It would be too painful to run a forum dedicated to the bike I wasn't able to obtain. So I waited. I finally took delivery of my CB1100 on April 5th and as you know, I launched the forum on April 13th. I researched a number of software options, and I settled on MyBB, which is free, but has a strong developer community and received very positive reviews. (I was originally going to dish out the money for vBulletin, which is probably the most common forum software.)

It sounds like a number of members are experiencing bandwidth related problems and if I can't get this resolved with my current host, I might have to look for other options. So far, I've just funded this out of my own pocket. A couple of you have inquired about making donations, but I'm not too concerned about the money aspect of things so far as my current hosts costs are fairly reasonable. Thus far, the demand on my time is felt much more than the money needed to keep this place going. To be honest, I've already received an offer from a company wanting to buy this forum. While surprising and flattering, I'm just not sure things would remain the same here. This place has gotten off to a great start thanks to all of you. I really don't want to lose that. Things have remained manageable for me and I continue to learn a lot. Like the rest of you, I'm really enjoying this place as well. So as long as members here remain happy with this forum, onward we go.

...Bill

Guth .. I have started (and currently own) two online forums like this one. One is automotive and the other a niche bike forum. You're welcome to bend my ear in a PM.

Thanks Bonafide! That would be great as I'm sure more questions will arise as time passes.

Guth,

If its like other forums I go on, as soon as you sell, it will go to hell and the ads will be stupid bad. Not that ads are all bad, the ones on the UK board aren't all that bad. Not like news boards.

Hey Bonafied, Help Guth get some smilies. Sorry Guth, I had to do it...

Thanks Bill!! So cool. Love the background info and genuinely appreciate the journey and the time you put in!

I run a few websites (high school football, lacrosse and college athlete recruiting). Not sure I can help, but there's never harm in asking, so keep me in mind.

I've not seen any significant bandwidth performance issues... Sounds like you have more info on the problem and it may be server resource related verses Internet WAN bandwidth related?

Thanks for all you do to help me fuel my passion!!!

- Bill