"Forum Project" Update

[KUJustin]

Well, the site is live though I'm not going to start promoting widely until tomorrow most likely.

www.dailyprojections.com

I'll give a quick overview of how I got from here to where I am now. Hopefully I can come back to this when I have more time and really elaborate for you guys.

Domain Name
I went with dailyprojections.com. I would've liked to have something more "brand" than "bland" but this is exactly describes what I want to do and it's easy. I was surprised the name was even out there, so I had to go for it.

Got it from www.godaddy.com. I don't think it really matters who you register with.. hopefully.
Cost: $8.95 for 1 year

Hosting
The theme here is "good enough for now." I wanted to get this site up as quick as I could so I just guessed in most spots. If I tried to get each piece perfect it would've taken forever. Sometimes the best way to learn what you need to do is by jumping in and trying something.

I chose hostgator because it's cheap and I don't need 99.999% uptime (yet). It had some handy script to install phpBB and Wordpress (though I didn't use it for Wordpress) saving me who knows how long.
Cost: $.01 for 1 month with coupon code

Site Design
I bought a template from www.luckymarbletemplates.com. I don't like the cookie-cutter approach but the options were:
1. Spend weeks/months learning how to make a website less attractive than this one
2. Spend several hundred dollars paying someone to make it for me. Spend days/weeks finding someone and days/weeks having it made.
3. Buy a template.

Overall I think it's looks pretty good (not great). The template was easy to modify relatively speaking. If you have no web design savvy at all it will challenge you. The help section of that site is EXCELLENT. Step-by-step instructions for everything and videos, too.
Cost: $69.95

Forum
Any 2p2er should be able to see that forums can be the real backbone. I considered Vanilla 1.1.2 (or something), but it basically lost out do to the auto-install script for phpBB offered by hostgator. I found a quick reply and a WYSIWYG post editor for phpBB with some googling and installed those myself.
Cost: free, open source

Blog
Went with Wordpress by default basically. They have a service where non-commercial sites can have someone install their blog for free. I don't know if I'm non-commercial but with no intent to monetize for almost a year I didn't feel too guilty. Found out later hostgator will do this automatically. I don't have much to say about the blog except so far, so good. I'm sure many others know far more than I about this.
Cost: free

Content
I spent a lot of time before this process started brainstorming what content I would want and how to seed discussion threads. I put up a couple of blog posts that I think demonstrate what I'm about and give some decent value to my target reader.

I'll be posting daily updates of stats for fantasysportslive.com because they currently offer none. And standings for rotohog.com because theirs are essentially broken. This should help me build a base of users that return every single day.

The forum has some seed content and a lot of potential. FSL.com has no msg boards and rotohog has a VERY bare bones offering.

Overview
I'm writing this at about 70wpm without stopping so I'm sure I left out a lot I'd like to say.

I'm working 9-5 every day and spending at least 2 hours/day on my fantasy games and I was able to get this site up in ~10-12 days. I hope this will inspire some people. Spend some time really considering what content you have to offer the world and what value you can create and then get out and do it. It's not as hard as we sometimes think. Figure out making money off of it later. If you're smart and thinking and creating value you will be able to monetize.

Umm.. I guess that's it. Feel free to ask questions. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but don't get too brutal; I've been working my butt off on this and I'm kind of stressed, but do be honest.

PS - At the risk of offending some I'm not above asking you guys to refer any friends to my site if this is their kind of thing.