If you are in the position right now to find a piece of software to start Your online
community, it is more than likely that you are frustrated because
some software don’t measure up and some simply cost too
much...
Because like you, we all do a lot of research, wanting to find the best piece of
software that suit our needs.
The “best” could mean the most feature-rich, the most
user-friendly, or the best performing piece of
software, and we prefer not to spend too much on it.
Regrettfully, the research process was not always as smooth as it should have been.
It is usually more like a trial and error process...
Why is this the case? Seriously,
What are the Common Mistakes people make
choosing a forum / community platform?
The main source of bad software experience usually comes from the
following misconceptions:
Unfortunately, the Truth about Free software is…
They are really NOT free at all!
- People neglect the fact that it usually takes a great amount of time and knowledge
to set up and run free software on their servers because of poor documentation
and poorly designed setup process that usually are part of the "free"
experience!
- People neglect the fact that designing online software takes a lot of energy, expertise,
and artistry, and it is almost a guarantee that free software never receives the
attentions that are required for quality assurance, and therefore are usually
bug-ridden and full of security holes!
- People neglect the fact that supporting online software takes a lot of time and
dedication as well, and the fact that the authors did not get anything in return
guarantees there will be little to none customer support when You need it the
most!
And, premium software really are just TOO expensive…
Be Aware of the Shortcomings they bring along!
- People neglect the fact that extensive advertising online can get expensive too,
and if You pay a lot for any piece of software it usually means You are paying
for their advertising!
- Many people believe that if a BIG NAME company is using certain piece of software,
then that software must be good for them as well so it is justifiable to pay a lot!
People neglect the fact that the nature of their sites / businesses in most cases
are very different from the BIG NAME companies, so they end up wasting a lot
of money just to mimic those BIG NAME’s.
Don’t be the Last to find out…
The more features a software has,
the WORSE it could be for You!
“Loaded with features” is a common trait shared by free software and
overly expensive software. They lead You to believe the more features they have,
the better the software will serve you. This concept is by itself not a problem,
however..
- In the case of free software, features are usually thrown in for
the sake of being comprehensive WITHOUT a careful design process. Poorly
designed features can only lead to a host of problems for You when
they are being used by your members. Did I mention endless BUGS
and SECURITY HOLES and NO SUPPORT?
- In the case of expensive software, they want You to justify for the cost
so they just try their best to include all the bells and whistles
they can find into the software, without seriously considering the consequences
of software being a RESOURCE HOG to Your site.
People forget the fact that online community software are software that could potentially
be used concurrently by thousands of users on a server with
limited resources.
And thus, Performance & Stability should be the TOP FOCUSES for
software designed for online uses!
Sadly, both aspects never receive the attention they deserve during the product
development cycle. You just don’t see this practice nowadays because software
authors are conditioned to only look to expand the Features List, instead of
the Benefits List for their software.
A Feature only becomes a Benefit when it works and performs perfectly!
It is just so hard to find a software that was not
only carefully designed and tested, but also fully and vigorously supported!
It does sound a little disappointing, and knowing that there are software out there
charging thousands of dollars up front does not help at all.
During our 8 years in this business, almost all our original competitors in the
same market either went out of business or
completely stopped their software development…
and there were also new comers who never tried to change the situation for you...
Coming from this background, we decided to create a software to fullfil the needs
8 years ago, and now the software is at its 3rd major revision, complete with
advanced Web 2.0 User Interface, trusted by small to very large online
communities world-wide, and works even on shared hosting solutions:
ASPPlayground.NET Forum Software Version 3,
built on top of Microsoft’s
ASP.NET AJAX Framework and SQL Server Database
The software runs on almost any hosting solution (dedicated or
shared) that has ASP.NET 3.5 sp1 installed with SQL 2005 / 2008 backend ( details).
And now,
How can ASPPlayground.NET forum software help YOU with Your goal of
establishing a vibrant online community?
This software was built from the ground up with the following top feature design
focuses:
- This forum software must have features that encourages users to participate, thus
help YOU grow YOUR community.
- This forum software must be user-friendly, that is, easy to use
for Your members.
- This forum software must have a comprehensive control panel, complete
with context-sensitive help file, allowing You to easily manage Your community.
- This software must also come with a Photo Gallery Application so
that users can not only share information in words, they can also do so with pictures.
- This forum software must be highly customizable so that it
can fit Your site design, while giving users the freedom to choose their
preferred looks (skin-able).
Here is a brief list of the
Main Features and Benefits You get with the software:
User-friendly, Web 2.0 UI that makes
navigating through Your community easy!
With our ASP.NET forum software, you get…
- Less cluttered UI with DHTML menu – simplifies and
avoids scattered links everywhere on the page, distracting the message viewing experience.
- Minimal amount of page refreshes with AJAX operations – Your
members can enjoy more responsive pages without watching page loading
and reloading!
- Tabbed interface in the User Control Panel – no longer
suffer lengthy scroll downs on pages with long lists of options!
- No popup windows, but DHTML windows for various features in the
software that play nicely with internet security software –
users don't have to leave the current page and can minimize, maximize, and move
these windows just like regular popup’s!
- User can turn on / off many options on the forum, giving
full control to the users – e.g. allowing users to hand pick relevant
forums to show on the page, hide other people's signatures and avatars from the
message, disable private message notifications, etc.
Configure the software without having to touch any code,
and enjoy total control over user / forum permissions!
Within the Admin Control Panel of the forum software, you can…
- Easily turning features on / off through the control panel without
resorting to code hacks!
- Setting up site-wide / forum / gallery specific Announcements
- Complete control over Server messages (e.g. registration notification,
email notification, etc.) using fully documented symbols to customize each message
to fit your community.
- Setting up User Groups for organizing users and granting
different feature privileges for each group. e.g. you can have different
Private Message storage limit and different file upload limit for different groups.
- Custom Registration Fields –allowing you to collect
additional data on the registration form to really get to know your
members!
- Forum management with extensive group based permission - giving
you ability to fine-tune permissions for different groups of users on your forums.
This feature has been totally refined to support Permission Inheritance which
greatly simplifies the process by allowing sub forums to inherit settings
directly from the parent forums.
- Bad Words / User Name / Email Domain filters – allowing You
to prevent malicious users from entering inappropriate words into
their messages, and block certain user names/emails from entering
Your membership system.
- Forum Statistic / Reporting - giving you freedom to design
and gather statistics on Your forum usage. You have unlimited possibilities
with this feature and You can even schedule stats to run periodically!
Fully Integrated Web Photo Gallery -
sharing photos among members is fun and easy!
We bundled a complete gallery application with our ASP.NET forum software, giving
users the freedom to share and organize their photos with the community!
- Each Member can set up own albums to easily share and organize
photos!
- Members can upload multiple photos at once to save time!
- AJAX photo loading w/ transition effect - provide for superior
photo viewing experience for your users!
- Photos are automatically resized to adapt to different screen sizes!
- You can easily browse through the entire album with the built-in Slideshow
capability!
- Members can post comments, add photos to favorites,
and search photos based on title and description!
- As the community owner, You have the freedom to set different permissions
for each gallery and for each user group.
- This is a full-featured, standalone photo application integrated
fully with our powerful message board software to add tremendous value to Your community!
Complete “Look and Feel” Customizability
–
Easily Transform this online community into YOUR community!
Our ASP.NET forum software supports the following customizable elements…
- Theme and Skin capability – giving You total control over
CSS and Images for Your forum to easily match Your web site’s
Look and Feel! You can also set up multiple themes for users to choose
from!
- Master Page (common HTML code container) – fit your site
design by adding common elements to the forum easily, like
company logo, website header/footer, disclaimer,
etc. to a single file without modifying the software code!
- Templates – Part of the UI system is a template-driven engine,
which means You can change the way messages and forums are presented
(like removing a column or two from the display). This template system is ASP.NET
User Control based which means You can easily leverage your
existing programming knowledge without having to learn a proprietary
framework!
- Built-in Support for International Languages – allowing You
to easily change the user interface to French, for example, without having to
touch the code. If You desire, You can even set up multiple language
files for Your users to choose from in order to accommodate a broader
range of visitors.
- Complete source code for all pages, user controls, and their code
behind files (*.aspx; *.ascx; *.aspx.vb; *.ascx.vb files)
PLUS all database stored procedures – you have
full control over the logic and flow to modify the software behavior!
Let’s see what others have to say about how our software
helps them save precious time, money and frustration
…
 ...
I would like to thank you for putting together an excellent product, and most importantly,
providing incredibly responsive support.
Stephen Rushmore
Roadfood.com
I
just wanted to thank You for helping us to get "The Best of the Web"
again this year from Forbes.Com.
Greg Wright, CEO
Sober24.com
From
the purchase to the installation to the customizing - this forum software ROCKS!
It has everything built in that I used to have to load separate software for.
It's woth twice the price!
Bill Koenig
…
ASPPlayground is easy to install and easy to run. If I don't understand
something I use the support forum where experienced users and the support team are
happy to explain in an understandable way.
Roger
Antique-Bottles.Net
Here are a few more...
I
must say You have done an excellent job with the forum software and I have found
it to be one of the most easily configurable "pre-packaged" applications
which I have used. Even the SQL setup was a breeze!
Best Regards
JP
Digital Juice.com
Overall:
Very happy with the forums. Great job!!! Tylor
ColdSteel.com
Our
group loves those forums! Our community grows fast after we switched to this platform.
Congrats on a great software package! Gary
Locogringo.com
….
Also their support is outstanding and the development team is always
welcome to Your suggestions.
Mike G.
TheSouthTown.com
Other than the features shown above, here are the REAL reasons why people
place their Trust in our software ...
- The software is Features-rich, without useless “bells and whistles”,
and is able to cover the needs of a growing community!
- The software PERFORMS. A community software is meant to serve A
LOT OF USERS CONCURRENTLY without seeing any sign of stress.
- This software is built from the ground up to be very secure, to
keep your community away from SPAM, HACKING, and ABUSE.
- The software is backed by high standard customer support service,
which, which equals to peace of mind for you as the user
The following software features will help you down the road
when your community starts rolling!
- You can set up “Trial period” for your community - e.g. giving
new members access to certain private forums for 30 days, allowing You to increase
the incentives for them to become paid members OR simply as a tool
to set up subscription in order to continue to participate in the community.
- You can post events on the Integrated Community Calendar - letting
you members know what events are going on, and they can discuss specific events
on the forum!
- Utilize the Built-in Poll system - Members can attach a poll to
their messages, and start collecting opinions in the most convenient way! Admins
will have control to see who voted and set end date for a poll.
- We have built-in support for Integration with Your own membership database
- You can easily integrate your own membership database (ASP.NET Membership
Provider model) with the software seamlessly, so Your existing members
do not have to register again for using the forum, and with this built in capability,
You DO NOT NEED TO WRITE A LINE OF CODE AT ALL either!
- Single-Sign-On support - in addition to the integration with existing
membership database, You can also achieve single-sign-on easily, that is, Your
users only need to sign in once anywhere on your site, and they will
be recognized throughout Your entire site!
- Search Engine Optimized URL – improve Your SE rankings with
content relevant URLs for Your forums and messages, and thus drive in more
traffic from the search engines!
- Threaded interface and Printable interface for
messages - your members can view messages with parent-child hierarchy listings
instead of just the traditional flat layout, and can also utilize a special page
to facilitate printing messages!
- Message Rating system - allowing Your members to rate messages
and give the message author certain “scores” for his quality information.
- Dispute resolution center - dedicated ticketing system w/ instant
notification to resolve issues among users. Sometimes discussion goes out of hand
and this special system is designed so that moderators (forum level admins) can
resolve disputes professionally with your members without using
the forum and the private messaging system.
Smooth and responsive page under high traffic load:
allowing you to focus on Growing your community instead of worrying about technical
difficulties!
We invested more time and energy in PERFORMANCE and Scalability than anything else
when designing this forum software…
- Over the years, we have been proven to be one of the best performing forum
software right out of the box on the net, without extra code modification
or expensive hardware.
- We spend a lot of time working closely and extensively with clients
to account for all possible situations that may become performance bottle necks.
The result is very assuring; making our software the best choice even on shared
hosting solutions!
- There are several special technology we used to improve in this area – namely
selective caching, refined stored procedures,
fine-tuned software logic + data access layer,
and we tested the software extensively using third party software
for memory leaks (You just don’t see this level of refinement
anywhere else)!
Here are a few feedbacks we received about performance:
We
do about 4000 posts per day and receive enormous traffic. Our backend dual xeon
proc DB barely breaks a sweat.
I'm not sure what sort of processor usage we would see on them running the entire
application and db on one server but overall the scalability of aspg is better than
VB IMHO. We have 150,000 registered members at RCU and grow about 6000+ per month.
( ~5000 active users, 4.5 million+ posts 2 years ago, now 10000+ active users with
8.6 million posts, avg. 1 post every 26 seconds)
Marc
RCUniverse.com
We
do have more than 17,000+ posts per day and roughly 0.25 million pages a day. We
do see 1250 different ip's in last 20 min and more than 1 thousand connections/sec.
Search is the key feature of this forum. You can find every word in more than 2
million post below a second. (6.5 million posts 3 years ago, and now 31
million posts w/ 4500 active users)
Gun
Donanim Haber.com
Performance,
performance, performance!
This app ROCKS in performance due to the smart design .. Our boards now deliver
pages in less than a second.
… It's also "pretty", and the support is great. I'd be willing
to bet You'd be hard pressed to find a better one, regardless of platform, period.
Someone aptly said this forum is the "KING" -- it really is, YOU just
don't know it yet... check it out!
Gene Grant
CEO, Ovusoft, LLC
I
converted over to ASPPG. We have 42138 users and over 230000 posts. Everything went
smooth as glass.
… after the switch to ASPPG I have not seen the CPU usage go above 20%. It
is like going from a bicycle to Porsche!
I was able to integrate right into my current membership system and everything!
I still can’t get over how fast it is running.
Thanks again.
Lance Ramsay
Webmaster
Hunting.Net
Numerous security measures in place -
Keeping you members safe from spam and
your community safe from malicious attacks!
Security is one of the top criteria when we designed the forum software, and we
offer you…
And It Is NEVER JUST ABOUT FEATURES;
You also get Dedicated Customer Support behind the software!
A software package does not count at all if the support behind it is lousy. We dedicate
as much energy and time into supporting our customers as we designing the software.
We never leave bug reports unattended, and we deal with issues
directly on our forum with frequent hot fixes or code modifications,
so that customers are always on top of reported issues and never have to ask
more than once for help.
As a community owner, you have access to the following resources:
- Free E-mail Support for general forum issues
- Free Forum Support for general forum issues and bug fixes
- Free Knowledge Base and Tutorials Forum access
with code samples and FAQ’s
Here is what our users have to say about our support service:
"I
wish to strongly commend ASPPlayground, and in particular, Samuel Chou, for his
tremendous level of support… the level of service has been nothing short
of outstanding.
… I will strongly recommend both this person and company based on these initial
experiences and only wish more companies had the same ethic."
Ross Goldberg
Threshold Trading
Samuel,
You rule! You are literally the best supported software I've ever used and the most
responsive to good feature requests. That is unfortunately a rare thing these days.
If You ever need a glowing reference. Send them to me. Seriously.
Marc
RCUniverse.com
Your
support is top notch, I wish more software companies gave this level
of support.
Michael Brown
MikePortnoy.com
Here are a few more...
(Your
support) is timely and helpful, and I like the forum alot.
Ahnalira
OurLaughingPlace.com
Once
again thanks for Your dedication and support. I made the right decision to go
with ASPPlayground.net!
Derek Mitchell
DEVBUZZ.COM, Inc.
....
I do want to underline what a great support that was for our community and I
want to thank again Samuel and Aspplayground.net for such a great service.
Top quality, absolutely. I can really say AspPlayground.net is worth every single
penny You spend on it. I would buy it again without any doubt.
Claudio Marinangeli
ilquen.it
It is just Wise to pick a software that has been
carefully designed by a company that understands your needs!
Here is a recap of what you get with our software:
- User-friendly and feature-rich online Forum +
Gallery
- A Stable and Secure online community foundation,
- High quality customer service and continual development efforts
from someone who understand your needs,
- Affordable software, typically 5-10 times less expensive than current
competitions, that doesn’t require expensive hardware to run – ROI GUARANTEED!
- No HIDDEN fees – no matter how many members you have
or how many forums you create in the control panel, you never need to worry
about hidden fees or “extra” charges to your credit card.
You can get started right away with this software for only $297
$237 USD (20% off with coupon – limited
time offer)! This is the price point I believe that is accessible to anyone serious
enough to start an online community, and sufficient for us to support and continue
the development effort behind such high quality software.
If for some reason what you have seen so far
still doesn't represent enough value to you,
For a limited time, You will also receive the following
3 FREE Software (total value = $315):
Free Software #1: Membership and Role Providers
($149 value)
We have briefly touched upon integration with existing membership database, but
what if you are just starting up with a new web site and want to utilize the
forum’s membership database as the backend for your entire site?
Now you can do so easily with our own Membership + Role Providers!
It is no-brainer to set up (full instructions included), and You do not have
to know anything about our database structure at all to begin utilizing
the membership store!
With this bonus, you can easily do the following on your own site:
- add / delete users from the forum database,
- perform user authentication (login),
- reset passwords,
- add / delete User Groups,
- add / remove users from User Groups, and
- list all members as well as members from a specific User Group.
In addition, these membership providers work directly with ASP.NET’s built-in
membership controls, for example, the login control and registration
control that build user interface automatically for you.
Therefore, with this time-limited bonus, you do NOT even have to worry about
building the User Interface before setting up a fully functional login
/ registration form on your web site!
We also provide a full working demo with this bonus to give you
a very detailed walkthrough on how everything works when it is put together.
Free Software #2: Web Based Database Manager
($99 value)
Sooner or later you will find that you need to work with the database directly,
like modifying a stored procedure to change the way data are sorted,
or batch updating certain data outside the forum software. As I
can’t possibly account for all potential uses of the data, it is impossible
to build UI ahead of time for every possible task.
And when it comes to working with data directly, WITHOUT this bonus Database Manager,
You will have to fire up the bulky SQL Management Studio (don't
forget to install it first) on your own computer, login to the server, connect to
the database, start the Query interface, and finally get to work with the data.
Notice before you even start doing anything meaningful, there are lots of things
to remember and several steps to go through!
And it has come to our attention that more and more hosting companies are now
restricting connection to the database directly outside their company
(e.g. your home), so even if you have the expertise to use the SQL Management Studio,
YOU CAN’T do anything at all because your host does not allow it!
You see there is really a lot of troubles to go through just to
do something with YOUR DATA!
Let’s see what you can do with this bonus Web Based Database Manager:
- modify stored procedures,
- batch update database records,
- test run multiple SQL queries to see the results and roll back
(full transaction support),
- execute long running queries by setting long time out value,
- upload and execute script files against Your database (write once,
run multiple times),
- and basically EVERTYTHING else that your host grant you permission for,
WITHOUT You having to worry about manually making the connection!
Free Software #3: Forum Message Extractor
($67 value)
With your community growing and collecting valuable user inputs every day, it is
very likely that you will want to hand pick good articles from
the forum and show them on your site so that they can be seen by any
visitor.
Or, you may simply want to list a few topics on the side column on your web site
to lure visitors to click and view your community.
Imagine how time wasting this task would be for you if you need
to do all these manually with cumbersome copy / paste and have to remember to update
the list...
With our message extractor bonus, you can
- Grab a list of topics from any forum and show them on your site
- Display selected messages with complete formatting on your site
- There are countless other uses of this capability, e.g., build an article
repository separately, listing newest messages, build a site wide RSS
feed based on forum content, etc.
It's Time to take action and claim the 3 free software
If You have decided not to waste any more time and money searching for the best
choice that simply doesn’t exist anywhere else, You can order this software
and get all its features and benefits, performance and support, PLUS claiming the
3 FREE Software worth $315 RIGHT NOW for:
$297 USD – 20% (w/ time limited coupon) =
$237
P.S. – If you are still unsure if this is the software to
go with, let me reiterate the benefits you will get from the platform:
With our software installed, you basically cover all the essentials
for a successful online forum community, including:
- A User-friendly and Feature-rich platform that
you and the users will enjoy.
- A Secure and Efficient foundation a growing community
can rely on.
- A fully supported and continually developed system
you can depend on as future needs unfold.
Also realize that the software’s normal price is $297 USD, already about 5-10
times more affordable than similar platforms in this market.
Click here get started right away!
Minimum Server Requirements:
- Web Server
- Windows Server 2003 / 2008 with IIS 6 / 7 (both 32 bit and 64 bit are supported)
- ASP.NET Framework 3.5 sp1 installed (forum v3.3 or earlier requires only ASP.NET
3.5)
- ASP.NET Session and Viewstate (default setting)
- 50MB free hard drive space on the server
- 'Network Service' account w/ NTFS Modify permission on one sub folder (so that you
can upload and delete files from this particular folder)
- Medium Trust environment and IIS 7 Integrated Pipeline Mode are supported
- Database Server
- An Empty database on MS SQL Server 2005/2008 (Express edition with Advanced
Services for both 2005 and 2008 are supported)
- Turkish server collation is not currently supported (due to the many different variations
of the "i" character).
- However, you can still use a case insensitive collation (e.g. English) to support
the Turkish langauge.
- Full-Text index required for message searching (almost a guarantee if you have a
db on SQL 2005 +)
- Stored Procedure Create / Execute permission (default setting)
- Minimum SQL Server User Privileges: db_datareader and db_datawriter (default setting)
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