The Workout Forum; Site Changes

By Joe Ponzio on February 13, 2008  |  43 comments

Ask and you shall receive. My web designer got back to me regarding some ideas that have been posted here for forums, discussion boards, etc. He also gave me a price and, well, ouch.

Here's where we are at.

We discussed adding a message board/forum where visitors can discuss opportunities in both long-term holdings and workout situations. I was adamant about a few things:

• I don't want it to be jammed with spam, arguments, or the traditional "How do I buy stocks" banter;
• We need to have a moderation system where seasoned commenters/posters do not need to have stuff approved by me;
• It has to be custom — no cookie cutter template;
• It has to be scalable so that we can add features later;
• Users must be able to subscribe to individual threads and entire discussions;
• It has to be user-friendly.

(I'll drop the price bomb in a minute.)

To accomplish all of this, the site needs to be redesigned somewhat. No major fundamental changes, but there has to be a usability factor beyond a blog and comments. With 110+ posts and 1,400+ comments, a lot of great discussion is getting lost and that has to be remedied.

I also brought up the issue of allowing people to subscribe via e-mail and having RSS feeds for comments on posts or for all comments. As you can imagine, I had no idea how complicated it was to set up a "community" website — I thought I was just going to blog.

The price...$3,200.

Here's my take on it: I think the above features are a nice addition to the site and will help all of us (myself included) grow, both intellectually and financially. I don't mind coughing up the dough, but I can think of more profitable places to put three grand.

Here's my proposal to you — my friends and partners: If I go through with this, will you suffer through some ads, assuming they don't detract too much from the structure or content? After all, what kind of business man or investor would I be if I just blindly plowed cash into a website with no chance of recouping that cost?

I'll let the group decide. More features and some ads? Or, status quo? And if we go with ads and an update, what other features should we consider?

I'll decide by tomorrow night and Friday's post will be the decision/results and a look at the PENN workout.

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