Some of the regular users may have noticed that some forums have been moved or consolidated. Actually I forgot to turn off the moderator PM when your thread was changed (moved, sticky'ed, opened, etc.) so I apologize for forgetting and the PM spam I sent some of you. We were getting a little crazy with the forums and had some redundancy.
Some crazy examples:
We had two "The Master Professor" forums!
We had two forums for "Life of an ex-Pat"!
We had forums for a single thread!
The progress is good but there is more to do. I have made some changes and came up with some ideas with Jimmy to make things better.
One way is through the use of Thread Prefixes. The nice thing about Thread Prefixes is you can sort/filter with them, just go to the bottom of the page where "Thread Display Options" is and select the appropriate Thread Prefix.
In Medellin sections there are now Thread Prefixes for the barrios of Medellin, so you can choose "Laureles" if you are talking about a hotel in Laureles Medellin. We didn't need 10 sub-forums for the different areas of Medellin.
Another major cleanup is the individual country sections. I originally wanted continuity so I made the same sub-forums for each country, the problem is many of them are empty or contain less than 10 threads. It's confusing and wasteful. So I added another set of Thread Prefixes and now there will be only 2 sections for basic countries.
My plan for other countries is as follows. If the country contains less than 300 threads it will be as follows:
- Country - Topics
- Country - Trip Reports & Pictures
Exception: If the country has specific cities people write about (e.g. Bankok & Pattaya, Thailand) it will be as follows:
- Country - Topics
- Country - Trip Reports & Pictures
- City 1 - Topics
- City 2 - Topics
- Other Cities - Topics
If the country has more than 300 threads, has specific cities, or is a HOT Topic with a board member running it (e.g. Philippines) it will be given it's own section outside of "Other Countries" but still following the rules above. As of right now this will be for the following countries; the DR, Colombia, Philippines, & Thailand. I am considering adding Brazil and/or Cuba to the list, if you have input let me know.
The Thread Prefixes are as follows, I added a description in brackets just for this thread. The Thread Prefix drops the wording in the parentheses and makes the prefix Bold.
(e.g. Customs & Immigration My Thread about immigration at the airport)
- (Info) Customs & Immigration [Obvious]
- (Info) Daily Living [Living there or wanting to move there]
- (Info) FAQs/Info [Obvious]
- (Info) General Question [Obvious]
- (Info) History [Obvious]
- (Info) Places of Interest [Obvious]
- (Info) Maps [Obvious]
- (Info) News [Obvious]
- (Info) Roll Call [Obvious]
- (Info) Safety [Obvious]
- (Info) Weather [Obvious]
- (Transport) Airlines [Airline and airfare discussion]
- (Transport) Car Rental [Obvious]
- (Transport) Public Transportation [Obvious]
- (Transport) Taxis [Obvious]
- (Businesses) Other Services [Laundry, haircuts, etc.]
- (Businesses) Recreation [Obvious]
- (Businesses) Restaurant [Obvious]
- (Businesses) Shopping [Obvious]
- (Money) Budget & Costs [Obvious]
- (Money) Money Exchange [Obvious]
- (Hotel) Condos/Apt [Obvious]
- (Hotel) Hotel [Obvious]
- (Entertainment) Chicas [Chicas in general, escort sites, or a specific chica]
- (Entertainment) Festivals [Obvious]
- (Entertainment) Music [Obvious]
- (Entertainment) Regular Club [Obvious]
- (Entertainment) Sex Club [Obvious]
- (Investing) Investing [Obvious]
- (Investing) Real Estate [Obvious]
- Mixed Topic [A thread with some/all of the above topics]
- Trip Report [Obvious]
If anyone has a suggestion for more/different Thread Prefixes let me know but I added them first based on the sub-forums we had before (e.g. Airlines, Chicas, Music, etc.) and then added some more as I went through each post to add a prefix.
Currently I am about a third of the way through the Other Countries and cleaning up Thailand at the same time. I hope to complete this by the end of the week. We will reduce the number of sub-forums by over a 100 which will make things cleaner.
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