Scoobynet now has a new Administrator / Webmaster
 

Thanks for your attention everyone, i will try not to keep you too long but this post will cover a leaving party, scooby related issues and the birth of a new Administrator, so best you power up that kettle...

Before i hand you over to the new Administrator, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Simon De Banke and Shonky Shaun for their time and assistance with Scoobynet related matters since the acquisition a year ago.

They have dedicated a lot of time and effort into helping us understand the way things work on the beast that is ScoobyNet and we can see the amount of time and effort that has been put in behind the scenes, time and effort that end users like yourself would never see in order to appreciate, so Simon, Shaun thanks very much, I hope you both enjoy your retirement. :notworthy

For those of you who haven't been invited to the leaving party, there are details here:

Ok, onto SN related issues:
As i have personally mentioned elsewhere, for one reason and another ScoobyNet has not received the attention that it so deserved from IB since we acquired the site a year or so ago. We could make excuses about staff leaving and crossed wires etc, but we wont, all I will do is apologise on behalf of internet brands and tell you that now we are back on the ball things are going to change so lets not waste too much time dwelling on the past and instead embrace the future as we are going to need your help to turn it around. On that note, over the past 24 hours i have, with the help of our webteam implemented a few repairs and changes.

1) The search is back online.
2) The Forum time is repaired.
3) E-mail reports are verified as working again.
4) The moderators are now able to review infractions in order to help out.
5) The web team is now under review.
6) The infraction system is under review.
7) A new administrator has been appointed.
8) various misc tweaks have been performed.

Not bad in one day, and for a list of other work pending, please visit the big bad jobs to do sticky here:

So hopefully you can see from the postings above that I, your moderators and indeed all my colleagues at Internet Brands inc are committed to getting ScoobyNet back to how you want it to be. We admit that its taken longer than perhaps it should have, but aside from other issues, getting someone to administrate this place has proved a complex task as the mere suggestion strikes fear into most webmasters you ask, so your reputation seems to precede you. lol :lol1:

On that note all that remains to do is hand you over to your new Administrator / Webmaster. He will unlock this topic when he has made his introductory post very soon.

Well hello again everyone. :D

I expect many of you will have guessed over the past 24 hours that the new administrator was going to be me, but i wanted to get started on a high note and actually put some repairs in place before i made myself known. :)

I have used ScoobyNet on and off for many years now and whilst not a regular poster by any means i have been around in one form or another and seen the site going through various stages of change. Some good, some not so good. I would realy like to help you bring ScoobyNet up to the level that i know it has the capacity to achieve under Internet Brands ownership but I need you all to help me to do that.

I would like to say a few words about Internet Brands if I may as many of you wont know much about them and I accept that they haven't painted the rosiest of pictures to you so far. :( Please rest assured that IMO they are one of the most eligible companies on the planet to bring ScoobyNet bank to fruition as they have the knowledge, resources and manpower to do so and as webmaster I will be harnessing those resources to achieve our common goals. You may wonder how I know so much about them and indeed came to work for them?

Well, around a year ago they acquired a rather large forum from me too. That forum is PassionFord and i started it personally as a joint venture with a friend and grew it over the space of 5 years up to its current 42,000 members and over 3.8 million page views a month. Like Scoobynet its growth was phenomenal and it needed a strong company to take it over and let it flourish under their command.

I love forum communities and helping them to grow, in fact i love it so much that IB asked me to stay on and keep doing what i do best and I have proved that i can still do it by increasing forum traffic by a substantial margin every month since. IB have been instrumental with software upgrades (They own VB for starters), forum hardware upgrades and even server host changes if the companies don't walk the walk they talked. So I have had great experiences as part of their team on one busy site and I cant see any problem with doing it again. Anyone who wants to know more about IB feel free to ask, i am here to help.

As well as the Administrator I am also a current advertiser so i am ideally placed to deal with and understand advertisers issues when they crop up. I am sure plenty of you have seen one of the recent new web banners up there for evolution chips well that is one of my companies, and aside from that and working for IB I also have my own 3000 word monthly technical column in one of the UK car tuning magazines. So as you can see, my credentials to Administrate your forum for you are as follows:

1) I have run a site of this current traffic successfully for many years.
2) I am a bona fide petrol head.
3) I am an IB advertiser so can see both sides of your coins.
4) I write my own technical column and thus may even be able to advise as well as infract.
Imagine that?! :lol:

So there you have it, theres not much more i can say other than I hope you will accept me into your community and help me to build it into the community you want it to be. Please bear in mind my posting style may be a little unusual to some of the admins you have come across on web forums as I like nothing more than indulging in witty banter with like minded individuals.
Some see that as something an admin should never do, but it works for me and if i cant enjoy the Admin job i will call it a day. I am firm but fair so play the game with me and we can tweak the rules for the communities benefit as we go along and i get a feel for you as a community, I have a dark side too of course, its part of being an Administrator of a community, but i see no need to even look in that direction a this stage... the longer it stays hidden the happier we all are.. :norty:

To finalise, i am looking for new members to add to the web team. If your interested... click me but before you do, id like to say a big thank you to your current team of moderators. They are the unsung hero's of the forum and work real hard to keep on top of things so you can enjoy them.

I look forward to getting to know them all better as we drive SN forward. :)

P.S: For the record I was born and still live in Blackpool.
Worth mentioning as you may naturally assume that I am American.

The King is dead Long Live the King

Nice one Stu. Id have preferred someone from the right side of the Pennines though... :(

The best/worst kept secret on SN :)

Welcome Stu, know you from Passionford so have seen your style of posting across there :)

It is great to see that we have a new admin team in place and that IB are once again concentrating on getting ScoobyNet back on track. :thumb:

Hope you enjoy the ride :)

Good to see and looking forward to a rosy future :)

Welcome Stu!

Stu - Best of luck mate!!! :)

I was not aware I was "shonky".... but then you will be "shonky" after 8yrs of ScoobyNet! :D

Great news Stu I was hoping that you were going to be taking over and I did suspect it was going to be you :) I think if anyone can sort out this forum it's you after seeing how you run passionford :)

Keep up the good work :)

Paul

This is good news for Scoobynet I think and the very best of luck to you.

Welcome Stu, it all sounds very promising and I like the bit about witty banter!

Les :)

Welcome :cool:

Its been a quite a long time since I felt this at ease about posting here. Thats a good thing, I never completely realised I had this stigma until a few days ago!


Hail to the Webmaster!

http://carlnet.no-ip.org/worship-king-smilie.gif

(I actually quite fancy being a mod :eek: )

Great news Stu, welcome aboard. :thumb:
If you can get SN to where we all hope it should be, I for one look forward to becoming a paying member.

Not too sure it's a good time to get into banking :D

Welcome Stu :thumb:

Allan

Welcome Stu, this is fantastic news for us at Scoobynet, looking forward to getting all the little niggles sorted, you know the ones, like a nice different picture of a scoob on the home page, now that would be brill. The one there is a lovely one but a change is nice too :norty:

Welcome Sir may the headaches begin :thumb: :norty:

Welcome Stu - good to see you introducing yourself as Administrator, a suitably left-field method sure to enamour yourself to the more individual... individuals here ;)

For the record: unlike others around here (you know who you are) *I* don't think that people from Blackpool are a bunch of inbred, banjo playing rednecks.

My Mum was born and grew up there and she's lovely!! Of course, she's also my sister, my aunt and bizarrely my grandfather.

Welcome Stu. You've obviously got all the right credentials and have made a good start by getting some urgent housekeeping done already. Bin user power to give infractions and then you've got it made. :)

Also the pointless post rating. As you can see, from the megged post above, it serves no purpose.

Welcome to the party Stu, albeit you have been around for quite a while.

change is mostly looked upon as a bad thing, but as said above

"The King is dead long live the King"

looking forward to much of the same and maybe just a litlle bit better.

respect

Mick and the WYIOC Team

I agree,nice car but it would be better to see different one's up there.
Might make folk log in more to see if theirs is the featured car...better for advertisers if people log in more offen.So welcome mate and hope its for the better of the site.:luxhello:

Welcome Stu.

I hope that as a whole community lead by you and the new moderators we can make this forum thrive again, like it used to many moons ago.

Great news and glad to hear we are moving forward, i'm quite sure i'll be speaking you and your team very soon, for now, keep up the good work :)

Lynz @ WYIOC

The king is dead
long live the King
:luxhello:

Would echo the above comments, its been a long time coming! Welcome Stu.:luxhello: :D

Welcome Stu. Very nice introduction. I can see you're going to be liked on here...

Welcome, and I must say it takes a brave person to stick there head above the parapet! Here's looking forward to the future growth of SN, and a move away from the current bad feelings and negative atmosphere and a return to a more cheerful, busy, fun, helpful forum.:thumb:

Thanks for the warm welcome. Please see this topic for important news:

Who gave Kieran power? Jeez, be afraid (women), be very afraid ;)













:lol1: (Only joking!) ;) Well done. Now where's mine?

All part of my cunning plan ;) they've not noticed yet :D