Nearly all the commonly used message boards allow the use of what is known as an “avatar.” These are the little pictures that you see next to the member’s names in the message thread. Many of the message boards I have been involved with offer a list of interesting avatars that you can set up in the user control panel. You can choose from a couple dozen or even hundreds of pre-selected avatars, or you can upload one from your computer, or point to one of your own located on your website.

Avatars are so popular and forums so prevalent that there are websites solely devoted to offering you a huge assortment of avatars. Some are free, some you pay for, some are plain and simple, some can be joined with frames and other image elements. They come in many sizes, but usually will not exceed the dimensions most common message boards allow. Here (more…)

NOTE: This began life as a reply to a forum post in October 2006, asking for a critique of of the website, geek4ums.com (you can get to the site without my help - it is a bit different than it was a year and a half ago when I originally wrote this). It was in the section for Forum Organization. I’m a stickler about staying on-topic, so my review was about how the site was organized and nothing more. The following is my, um, “review”, to use the term loosely. I offer this review to you because it is endemic of many websites across the Ether. It might even apply, in some ways, to yours.

To me, “organization” has more to do with how your site is laid out, how accessible it is to the visitor looking for something and whether the way you have organized your forum categories and discussion forums is conducive to adding and retaining members and encouraging visitors and lurkers to become participants. Organization doesn’t have much to do with colors or graphics or the style and design of your forum.

Now, aside from the the questions of style and design, you have problems from the top down. Just because its pretty, doesn’t mean it’s organized well. I’ll begin with… (more…)

We all love to share with our fellow Netizens and when we run across something especially poignant, an interesting news article, or a great photograph, we just want to post it so all our friends can revel in it too. We get a sense of belonging and of being seen as a generous and giving person. It would be awful if anyone knew that article, picture or interesting prose was actually stolen from some unsuspecting, starving artist somewhere in the ether. It’s not like we conspired to pilfer someone else’s work. We might even mention their name as the author or artist. But the fact is, taking it without permission is just like swiping that candy bar from the corner store when we were kids. Just like taking anything that doesn’t belong to us, it’s just… well, like stealing.

It may seem such a harsh accusation when we are only talking about a little picture, or an article found while surfing that someone posted for everyone to see. But (more…)