Private Forums and Drupal

Hi Everyone,

Back when I first launched Quit Your Day Job in 2006 I had a private support forum for e-book customers. This year I decided to try something different and open the forums to the public.

After 7 months of public access I've had an opportunity to weigh the pros and cons of a public forum. After careful consideration I've decided to make the QuitYourDayJob.com forums private once again.

Right now I manage two private forums and one public forum. The two private forums tend to have less spam and more high quality conversations. The signal to noise ratio tends to be a lot higher when everyone in the forum is on the same page. I've also noticed that my private forums tend to have more active participation.

With that said, I've temporarily disabled new topic posting and comments while I migrate the forum to a new platform - probably vBulletin.

I polled trusted colleagues on Facebook and Twitter last night and everyone agreed - private forums encourage better participation and higher quality discussions.

I'll keep everyone posted on the new forums. I'll need a few days to set the new software up and determine the requirements for the new community.

All the best,

Jeremy