We quietly launched a new area of the site tonight – TechCrunch Forums. Reader feedback and comments are an integral part of this blog (in fact, any blog in our opinion), and we want to be able to expand the conversation beyond whatever posts are fresh at a given time. The Forums is the place to do that.
Create a thread on any topic you like. This is a good place to pitch your new startup or product if it hasn’t been featured yet on TechCrunch (or even if it has), share tips with the community, spread rumors, or endlessly debate the definition (or existence) of Web 2.0. When interesting conversations spring up, we’ll link to them from the main TechCrunch blog.
We’re still getting the bugs worked out, so it will evolve from its current state over time.
The software behind the Forums is from Jive Software. Their stuff is bulletproof (or so we hear), and they power the Apple discussion board as well as 1,450 other forums on the web. Thanks to them and Media Temple, our primary hosting provider, for their help in getting this set up.
We’ll roll out dedicated versions of this for the other blogs in the network as soon as this is nailed down. Please let us know of any bugs you find.
A permanent link to the TechCrunch Forums is in the navigation bar at the top of the site (on the left), or you can get there directly at forums.techcrunch.com.
Great idea!
Great work Michael! Looking forward to read and write about other web 2.0 companies and entrepreneurs.
BRILLIANT MOVE
The growth of TechCrunch is just one year is astounding, what is the magic???????????????????
You paid thousands of dollars for forum software!!!! And it doesn’t even look good, or like TechCrunch. If you must have paid for your software, why not choose something a little less pricey – like vBulletin for $160 – it also powers thousands of forums like sitepoint.com and it seems like out of the big forums on big-boards.com, only 4 use Jive. You could have even tried an open source solution like the companion to WordPress, bbPress. This has kinda turned me off TechCrunch.
Congrats. I think this will be an interesting element to the site. Lets just hope some folks don’t ruin it for everyone.
Bryce – you don’t like TechCrunch any more because of the forum software we chose?
you should have picked vbulletin.. they have been around longer and their support is awesome.
I still like TechCrunch. It’s just that $3000+ for a forum is a bit excessive. And it doesn’t really look like techcrunch
huh.
well, like i said, we’re working on making it pretty. we wanted to start with getting it to work.
Well it’s a great idea and adds another forum for me to post on
I might suggest you put in some rules/guidelines in a sticky or something.
I agree, the amount of money paid is a little crazy. I would have gone with something like MyBB, but hey, that’s just me…
Michael, irrespective of Bryce’s tone his point is valid. I run several forums on different sites, and for ease of management, features, configurability and price, nothing beats vbulletin.
That said, *any* forum addition to Techcrunch will rock! Thanks for the new place to hang out and post
Great idea for the forum. The comments are as interesting as the posts on your blog, hopefully the forum will be an extension of that.
I agree about the software though, vbulletin would probably be better. Just sayin..
VBulletin? You really think a web 2.0 top blog would go for such an old-school piece of crap forum software? The company that makes it doesn’t have rounded corners on its home page!!
Excellent! Will be interesting to see if this move inspires more bloggers to add forums and what the knock on effect will be in the boardscape.
@permanent hater: lol, was that supposed to be a joke?
I must admit, I’m kinda starting to like the software (I know, 360 degrees in less than 10 minutes)
@BoardTracker: You make sure you get them indexed now lol
For some reason, I found it highly amusing that the forums were “quietly” launched … what would a “loud” launch been like, I wonder?
I’m digging the boards; good job, Michael. Let’s hope the trolls don’t take it over
certainly needed.
some of the folks talking about ‘brilliant move’ and stuff – i don’t even know what to say about that. i guess my breathing every day is kind of a brilliant move on my part (self-preservation and all), but…
was curious which board you’d choose – i never heard of this particular stuff b4. i’d seen http://getvanilla.com/ , but i didn’t like the api. vbulletin and the rest suck for integration. not that this one looks like TC, either.
and even with the 18,000 blog add-on comment/discussion board systems, none made the cut. i’d have done the same. but interesting.
no OpenID? hopefully coming soon…
http://www.myopenid.com/
agreed… nice move Michael. Should generate a ton more page views too.
Great idea
great move mike, i think i had read somewhere like few months ago that techcrunch was going to have forums, and today i said “wow”:)
but the forum itself is not looking great, for example in each reply to the post the date, time and title is shown and it is in the same font, size and color with the reply itself, one reading the reply gets lost in this useless info. most of replies are given in the same day and it puts the same date in every reply.
would be better if you give a try to IPB or vbulletin.
@permanent hater, does vbulletins “no round corners” give u a reason to call them “crap forum software”? how many round corners do googles home page have? i mean the google.com… go count, and then post a reply.
I tried too register still haven’t received my confirmation email…as of yet….whats going on michaels I used simple machine forums for my forum…its works out nice
Huh? No OpenID? Stone age…
I haven’t yet received my confirmation email…. after about 10 minutes
I registered about an hour ago and I still haven’t received my confirmation email. I checked my spam box and it’s not there either. Strange.
Yep, No confirmation email as well – registered an hour a ago.
The emails might take a while to go out, there is somebody looking into the issues at the moment. OpenID support won’t be too far away as Jive Forums now has a plugin architecture.
Every detail on Jive can be customised, so just because some font isn’t right or the order of something isn’t good – that doesn’t mean that Jive sucks, it means that those bits weren’t setup well
phpBB I think still would of better suited. But its horses for courses
glad to hear the registration issue is getting sorted. Cheers.
It will be great to have the forum and Wordpress blog membership integrated
Andy: that will happen in the next 24-48h
Great move guys. I’m addicted already. Can’t wait to see how fast the forums grow. Definitely recommend some stickies with some basic guidelines for posters. Keep up the great work!
–brian
Go ahead and set up a “Flame” forum sticky… I think with this bunch, you’re gonna need it
Everyone at each others necks… just like Christmas. Gonna be fun to read.
(and I’ll take credit for the forums on here)… what? Algore can get away with it but I can’t?ha
So no one thinks 3k gets you better forum software? Techcrunch and network can afford to pay a lot more for marginally better software.
Please switch to VB.
VBulletin is one of the worst forum packages I have ever come across. PHPBB is the second worst package. I don’t know why anyone would recommend those bloated and badly coded pieces of software.
I’ve never used Jive before but from a quick flick round the forums it appears to run quite quickly. I’d have preferred to have seen the use of Vanilla but I’m pleased that it’s not either of the afore mentioned packages.
this is a ploy to make your site more sticky and generate more pageviews to score more sponsorship money. i’m on to you.
With all these features getting added to techcrunch will you not rather call it a website now rather than a blog?
this is great. I love it.
http://www.web2...-the-new-forums
Damn going to have to update it now :p
great great.. love the idea.. more conversations, yey!!
Ugh, yet another registration for the forums…
In a perfect world, the forums would remember my cookied information from the main site and then only ask me for more info if I want to post. It should be much smoother than the integration I see on so many sites.
DabbleDB got it right where they integrated their forums right into their primary authentication.
I really wish sites would embrace single sign on initiatives and stop the madness with having to sign up for every new site that comes around.
Great Idea!
But VB or phpbb should have been better
Nice.
This is a great move on behalf of TechCrunch. I look forward to seeing how it’ll evolve over time.
Cheers.
Missing Story ?
>>> Amazon.com launches independent Endless.com – 13 minutes ago
I received this TechCrunch headline thru the TechCrunch2Skype service (http://www.tech...runch2skype.com). But it seems to be missing from your blog ?
Did you remove it, or is this a TechCrunch2Skype issue, can’t imagine they made up that headline. Or maybe a feedburner issue ?
Hmm..still waiting for the confirmation mail.. (3 hours..)
hope i’ll get it soon
You guys actually paid for a forum? There are many open-source solutions available or you could have created your own in a few days using RoR/PhP with MySQL and Apache… with very little previous experience.
At least that way you could have completely customized it for your needs rather than working with a predefined framework.
Then again, maybe you guys have gotten so successful you’re looking for write-offs wherever you can get ‘em!
That’s my guess.
Well I have noticed main media picks up stories from web 2.0 working around them facelifting them and making them unrecognisable. So we achieved democratisation of Expression, shall we soon get credit for the same.
http://www.tekn...ld.blogspot.com
Finally, Ive been waiting for these things. Although it is interesting that a site about web 2.0 using web 1.0 mechanisms (forums).
The email confirmation doesn’t work for my email too