We're celebrating a week now

[cbscreative]

This new SBF opened its doors last week Thursday, so today marks a full week of being publically available all day. Though there is still work to do, we have made tremendous progress and quickly got past the issues we were having.

Thank you everyone for joining us and making this a huge success. The word is getting out because of the efforts of you telling others. What is more important than our numbers is the fact that this forum has restored quality. Some of our members here were inactive on the old forum for months, but are now back with us. Those who were still left were frustrated, and that's why we're here now. We also have members here who were not part of the old forum. Together, we have made this a useful forum and valuable resource for small busienss people.

I am pleased, and we are well on our way to having the best small business forum on the Internet. The quality of members here is the magic that makes this place work. I believe we have not only recaptured what was lost on the old forum that made it great at one time, I think we are doing better. Actually, you are doing better. This is what will attract more members to this forum. Our numbers will grow because of the quality.

Again, thank you everyone.

I welcome you to speak up on what you like here so the other members will know how much this is appreciated. Feel free to tell us what topics are helping the most, or anything else that is making this forum useful to you. If you have a question not being answered, start a thread about it.

[billbenson]

Congrats! You guys have done a lot of work and had a lot of success in a short period of time.

[KristineS]

I hadn't realized it had been a week already. Pretty good first week I'd say.

[vangogh]

Thanks everyone. It's been a great start so far. What's impressed me the most is the quality of the conversations we're having. I realize it's because we have so many quality people here, but it's amazing to see the signal dominating the noise.

We certainly have a long way to go to get to where we want to be. Hopefully in the near future we'll begin to pick up search traffic. The forum is getting indexed so it should be anytime now. Ideally that will bring some new members and new questions and different points of view with it and help us grow more.

One thing I would ask everyone is if you can create more new threads it would be great. Most of us are the types to respond to other threads instead of starting new ones. I'm the same way. But new threads mean new pages to be indexed and more traffic, etc. If you have a question or just curious what people think about something ask away in a new thread.

Thanks again for making our first week a great one.

By the way I think we're over a week. It was last Wednesday when the doors opened so today should be day 9.

[cbscreative]

Thanks for clarifying, vangogh. I know we were scheduled to open on Thurs night and you accidently opened the door when you installed a plugin, but we have never regretted the early opening. Many people were enthusiastically waiting, so even though it was ahead of schedule and we had some bugs to swat, it has been a great week (or 9 days).

[vangogh]

Yep, Thursday night was the originally scheduled opening date and then next thing we knew we were live someone Wednesday morning/afternoon. Either way we had a one week birthday recently and it has been a good week+

[orion_joel]

It has been a good week, i think that i have been more active in the last week on this forum then at any point on the old forum, not quite sure why at all though.

[Steve B]

Me too Joel.

I think I feel some sort of comittment to making this work. We need lots of posts to keep it interesting for people so they keep coming back. The three admins. are obviously posting their little hearts out in order to keep things fresh and I want to help them out. I think VG is averaging over 50 per day - that has got to be eating into his normal duties!

As we grow the membership it will be even better as we get new perspectives on things.

[Leatherneck]

Congrats folks, In some ways it seems like a long time ago because so many of the members where on the old forum several years ago when it was a good community of people.

[Aaron Hats]

Congrats on a great first week. By the way, did the last person out of the old forum remember to shut the lights off?