Yuku free message boards

Don't get me wrong when I say the following as I know that the boards have had to be a priority. This after all is first and foremost a message board system. As 99.9% of Yuku members are ex-ezboarders a decent message board system is what all have been expecting. But the whole idea of Yuku is that it it has everything in one place, ie:- message boards, blogs and htlm pages.

The profiles started off great. But since then there has just been a basic blog dumped on them and they have since been abandoned. Many people are already blogging elsewhere on the web and at the moment just can't use their Yuku blog for the simple reason that they have no way to import an active blog over here yet. So what do they do but continue using their active blog and ignore their Yuku blog. We can't even copy and paste an active blog over here because as stated above we can't back date posts. Many posts posted in the past would look ridiculous as a post with a recent date, especially for those that use a blog as a type of journal.

We have the facility to change our user names but we don't have the facility to export/import our blogs from one user name or one account to another.

The profiles were raved about (including by me) on our first arriving but after 2 years we can still only add basic htlm to the blocks. We are still unable to add gadgets/widgets or extra blocks or drag/drop block from one side to the other.

The profiles are still only profiles 2 years on. As profiles they are the best on the web, but as blogs they are the absolute worst.

Yuku wanted an all in one system to encourage people from all over but concentrating purely on message boards for all this time and totally ignoring the blogs is totally defeating the whole object of what Yuku was going to be all about.

Ok, I know board owners are going to start screaming, saying but we need the boards working perfectly before time is spent on the blogs and I don't deny that the bugs on the boards do have to be worked out asap, but owners of boards are a very small part of a board systems members. Board owners want new members, but how can we get new members if there is nothing to attract people that have never heard of Yuku or Ezboard. As a member of a board a board is a board. They don't care what system it is on, they care about the content of a board and of it's members. But, there are a lot of people out there blogging that could be encouraged to move a blog over to here if Yuku offered more or at least as much as other blogs. These people would then maybe become active members of our message boards.

I would dearly love to see Yuku become bigger than Myspace or Blogspot or any of the other blog systems and to me blogging is where the members of a any system are. Bloggers do far more blog hopping than board members do board hopping and they also share so many links with each other and follow up those links. Get those bloggers on Yuku and owners of boards get themselves a decent blog going on here and it wouldn't be long before Yuku became the hottest thing since sliced bread.

I had a try out of starting a blogspot a couple of day ago and within two hours of creating it and before I had finished making it look as I wanted it I had two people come along and not only leave messages but one of them had put a link to my new blog on their blog by the time I went over to theirs to be nosy. For those that have never blogged you wouldn't believe the movement of members on them. My visitors to my personal Yuku board has also jumped up since putting a link to there on the blogspot.

The other thing that I really think we need on a Yuku blog is the choice of being able to have guest posting. Many people from other systems just wouldn't want to take the time to register to make their first quick posting. Once they had posted as a guest and found our blog interesting and would want to post again or find themselves an interesting Yuku board they would then register.

I expect Alison will raise her eyebrows to this post of mine thinking here she goes again, lol, as I have been going on about the blogs for months, but I truly see the way forward to attracting members from other systems as via the blogs. We need to get those with blog mentality over here to give them the idea of using message boards as well. There is an untapped source out there that have never even been on a message board.

Nothing to attract them? The content of your board should attract them. The people posting in your community should attract them. They will be attracted by witty posts, engaging discussions and meaningful diatribes. They'll be attracted when they read things that interest them and want to join in. To say that only a blog can interest people who've never heard of yuku is like trying to say that people will only read something that is relevant to them if it has been labelled with the correct name.

You are totally missing my point here. To an ordinary member of a message board (not an owner) a message board is a message board. They frequent message boards to enjoy the company and the posting. Yuku message boards in that respect are no different to anyother message board system, (for a message board member). All the knobs and levers on Yuku message boards members can find elsewhere as well, calendars, chatroom, chatboxes etc etc., all other things we have on here are of interest to owners.

What will attract members here in the first place to search out message boards as apposed to other systems is the profiles and blogs. If people don't come onto the system in the first place how on earth are they going to do a search for a specific type of board.

My point is that at the moment the only people using Yuku are ex and present ezboarders and I am sure that those that own Yuku would very much like to see people that have never even heard of ezboard finding their way here and finding it so much better than other systems that they stay. At the moment there is no new blood and no movement within the system. If Yuku aren't bothered with bloggers then why go to all the trouble of incorporating them in the first place. Of course they want bloggers. Not only do Yuku want message board users to move their boards on to this system but they want bloggers to move here as well. Common sense says that Yuku would love to get myspacers and blogspotters and whatnot over here. Blogs on here are not a knob or lever, they are just as important as the message boards if this system is to become special. I know if this was my system I would be doing a jig everytime I managed to entice a member away from another system.

Ezboard was a message board system. Yuku is an all round system and all parts of it are as important as the other. Yuku, (I got the impression of), is to bring community systems into the 21st Century and all the time people are thinking of it as just another message board system then it isn't going to happen.

With this system it's going to be indiviual members that bring in the money for the owners not message boards as it was on ezboard. I believe that indiviual people will be paying for non ads, for image hosting etc not as it was, whereby it was mostly revenue from gold boards that did it for ezboard.

Of course the message boards have to be perfect before one can ever hope to bring everyone from ezboard here but Jeez, it's taking so long that understandably people are getting impatient. Waiting for the completion of the message boards it like waiting for the Forth Bridge to be finished painting, lol.