Saltwaterfish.com Forum
As many of you know, the Saltwaterfish.com Forum is currently housed and managed by Huddler Corporation. Huddler creates forums as an advertising platform in order to sell advertising space to companies and get their ads in front of people with specific interests.
Huddler was recently purchased by a larger advertising entity and they are going through a reevaluation of their goals and realigning their priorities. As part of their realignment, they have decided to drop a number of their Forums and unfortunately the Saltwaterfish.com Forum is one of them. Said more succinctly, the Saltwaterfish.com Forum can no longer reside on their servers, nor use their proprietary software.
Saltwaterfish.com was made aware of this several months ago and we made the decision to continue the Saltwaterfish.com Forum in the interest of our customers, our forum members, and the Hobby. This forum has been very active for many years, with tens of thousands of members, millions of posts and photographs, and it is a valuable resource for all hobbyists.
The challenge to transition the forum is formidable, however. We have had to customize a new forum platform so that it looks and feels like the Huddler platform for ease of use. At the same time we have had to build the new platform to accept all the posts, pictures, forums, and members from the old site and seamlessly (hopefully) transition them to the new site. This has taken Saltwaterfish.com and the team developing the new forum months to plan and execute, and obviously many thousands of dollars in development expenses.
Within the next two weeks this transition will take place. What you should find is a look and feel similar to what you were used to with Huddler. The functionality will be effectively the same with some new features particularly in search. Buttons might be in different places and other small nuances, but members should pick up on the changes quickly. All the past member information, forums, photographs and posts will be on the new site. Nothing should be lost.
There will not be any advertising to start. That is something that we might look at in the future to help defray costs, however.
There will be a stronger integration with the Saltwaterfish.com store; in particular with reference to reviews, articles, and species descriptions. We don’t think it is unreasonable for our members to know that Saltwaterfish.com fully funds the forum for the benefit of our members and the hobby. We would love our members to support Saltwaterfish.com or the DeepBlueSeasFoundation.org (our Foundation to sponsor the children of fishermen collecting our fish with educational opportunities) to the extent they feel is reasonable. Part of that is getting to know who we are and what we represent.
We hope you will enjoy the new forum. We have strived to make it as user friendly and consistent with the Huddler Forum as possible. We appreciate each and every member and hope that the new forum will continue to be the place to talk about Saltwaterfish for years to come. Thank you for being a member and thank you for being a vital part of the hobby we all love.
The forum will be inaccessible for approximately 7 days starting 7/12/14 while this transition takes place.
Scott Hughes,
Saltwaterfish.com
DeepBlueSeasFoundation.org
As many of you know, the Saltwaterfish.com Forum is currently housed and managed by Huddler Corporation. Huddler creates forums as an advertising platform in order to sell advertising space to companies and get their ads in front of people with specific interests.
Huddler was recently purchased by a larger advertising entity and they are going through a reevaluation of their goals and realigning their priorities. As part of their realignment, they have decided to drop a number of their Forums and unfortunately the Saltwaterfish.com Forum is one of them. Said more succinctly, the Saltwaterfish.com Forum can no longer reside on their servers, nor use their proprietary software.
Saltwaterfish.com was made aware of this several months ago and we made the decision to continue the Saltwaterfish.com Forum in the interest of our customers, our forum members, and the Hobby. This forum has been very active for many years, with tens of thousands of members, millions of posts and photographs, and it is a valuable resource for all hobbyists.
The challenge to transition the forum is formidable, however. We have had to customize a new forum platform so that it looks and feels like the Huddler platform for ease of use. At the same time we have had to build the new platform to accept all the posts, pictures, forums, and members from the old site and seamlessly (hopefully) transition them to the new site. This has taken Saltwaterfish.com and the team developing the new forum months to plan and execute, and obviously many thousands of dollars in development expenses.
Within the next two weeks this transition will take place. What you should find is a look and feel similar to what you were used to with Huddler. The functionality will be effectively the same with some new features particularly in search. Buttons might be in different places and other small nuances, but members should pick up on the changes quickly. All the past member information, forums, photographs and posts will be on the new site. Nothing should be lost.
There will not be any advertising to start. That is something that we might look at in the future to help defray costs, however.
There will be a stronger integration with the Saltwaterfish.com store; in particular with reference to reviews, articles, and species descriptions. We don’t think it is unreasonable for our members to know that Saltwaterfish.com fully funds the forum for the benefit of our members and the hobby. We would love our members to support Saltwaterfish.com or the DeepBlueSeasFoundation.org (our Foundation to sponsor the children of fishermen collecting our fish with educational opportunities) to the extent they feel is reasonable. Part of that is getting to know who we are and what we represent.
We hope you will enjoy the new forum. We have strived to make it as user friendly and consistent with the Huddler Forum as possible. We appreciate each and every member and hope that the new forum will continue to be the place to talk about Saltwaterfish for years to come. Thank you for being a member and thank you for being a vital part of the hobby we all love.
The forum will be inaccessible for approximately 7 days starting 7/12/14 while this transition takes place.
Scott Hughes,
Saltwaterfish.com
DeepBlueSeasFoundation.org
