The publication industry just isn't the same today as it was 1986 when Videomaker started. While the magazine is still a big part of our daily work here in Chico, the web site occupies at least as much of our time. It's not all articles and videos either. The Videomaker forums have been amazingly popular since we went online so many years ago.
Back in September of 2012, we launched the new Videomaker.com, and no part of our site has been the same since. Articles are more clear, videos are played in 1080p, and we've even launched new tools like the Videomaker Rate Calculator. The forums, however, have been a different beast.
Here's the thing about internet forums. A web forum is not a piece of content that can be published and left alone like a video or an article. One can't craft a forum the way they can a screenplay. Forums are people. They live and breathe and evolve like a living organism. A forum is a platform and a community. So how do we at Videomaker build such a platform that facilitates and encourages positive discussion?
That's a question we're constantly trying to tackle. When we launched the re-designed Videomaker.com, the forums weren't quite where they needed to be. A couple weeks ago, just two months after the site wide re-launch, we re-designed the forums again. We re-worked the thread layout to eliminate unused space. Outdated and inactive forums categories were merged into more active ones. Best of all, we put more rigourus filters in place to reduce spam. We're not done improving the forums, but we're pretty happy with where they're at.
We hope you find the new forums better organized and easier to navigate. Visit our new forums and poke around a bit. After you've spent some time with it, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below or email us at editor@videomaker.com