For those of you who didn't manage to find us on the EZBoard set up by Jonno, you may wish to try it - it seems pretty good and rather reminiscent of the old Communicata format. It certainly looks a good standby, and one to test out in case we continue losing service from Greenspun, which seems to be increasingly unreliable.

One initial downside is the registration prcess that some of us had major problems with. The basic problem is an ambiguous registration page and lack of any 'help' screens.

You can go through a "global" registration which enables you to go to any EZ subject board - the downside for many was the inability to use their pre-existing monicas that were already allocated. For those only interested in matters NUFC, you can do a "local" registration that seems to give greater choice of monica.

I took the latter route, and if I remember correctly, the key matters relate to the password entries. There are two passwords to enter. There are two side-by-side boxes where you should enter your personal choice of log-in password. Below that is a single password box where you enter the standard Greenspun NUFC bbs password (small case, remember to use the zero, rather than O).

Hopefully, that should get you through the morass. Bon voyage.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2002

Answers

I set the EZboard up as an experiment last time Greenspun crashed at the beginning of March. I told a few people about it so that I could get feedback on what they thought and as a potential discussion point as a replacement for Greenspun, should that be required. As it happened, the downtime on Greenspun last time was quite short and so I did not advance the debate any further as Greenspun is where we live at present and presumably we won't be simply switched off without some advance warning.

The EZboard was set up as a 7-day trial after which we had to pay. This trial period has long expired but the board remains where it is with the annoying pop-up ads (which can be blocked by downloading a pop-up blocker from www.panicware.com). Of course, as the trial is over presumably the people at EZboard could remove our BBS if it's not paid for, whenever they saw fit. I don't see a problem with us paying for it. I can set up a "community chest" feature on the front page which would allow posters to pay cash direct to EZboard which would be used to pay for the facility. I think the cost is $80 per year which we would quickly accumulate with a modest £2 or so from 20 or 30 people here. None of us would handle any cash at all.

But that's looking ahead - we are still on Greenspun and likely to remain so for at least a while. In the meantime, EZboard is an excellent back-up arrangement when this place suffers downtime like it did for the Everton game. So do, by all means get over there, register and bookmark it as a place to go if Greenspun isn't working. I'll do some more research on it and see if I can improve anything with regard to login procedures etc.

EZboard, similar to Greenspun, has many forums run by by groups like our own. EZ provides the facility to chose a GLOBAL login which enables the contributor to use any EZboard. The only downside there is that your existing name on here may well be already taken. To retain the name you have here you could instead choose a LOCAL login which just enables you to post to our BBS.

If any of you do get over there and try the place out, do give me any feedback on your experience, suggestions for improvement etc etc. Depending on how Greenspun treats us over the coming weeks we may wish to open a debate on our future home, but whatever, the EZboard is a very useful backup for when Greenspun misbehaves.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2002

Probably easier to stay on Greenspun while it's still alive, but I've become a huge fan of ezboard over recent weeks. I've been lurking on 2 very busy boards and not noticed any problems(as well as sampled a number of other less busy boards), rather find it far easier to navigate and love the date/time tags. Also anyone can read any board without registering for ezboard at all. So 'new blood' can look before they leap, so to speak. In my case, I only found this community on ye olde Communicata because of that transparency. I never would have signed up if I couldn't get a sense of the kind of posts on the bbs first.

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2002

Excellent overview Jonno. And thanks for setting it up!

-- Anonymous, March 30, 2002