General: I have attempted to create a 3 in 1 site which incorporates a Blog, Message Board and Website all in one, and at the same time keep it plain and simple. In the past when I have had boards most of my time was spent creating different skins and doing coding which took up so much of my time. This time I wanted to set something up just as I want it and then leave it alone so that I can simply spend my time posting, joining in and chatting.

The Blog Section: For this I have taken advantage of the feature on this system of being able to choose the forum to either be in the normal message board style or to set them up in a more blog post style where a preview of the post shows as viewers enter that forum and then clicking the title of the post allows the reader to continue reading. As those forums are a replacement for blogging categories they are set for members to read and post only, but not able to start new topics.

Message Board Section: As this site is very new, for the time being I have only added the one forum. This is because I don’t want to fill up a new message board with many forums to start with until there are enough general type posts that include posts that could have a forum to themselves. So the Message board section will slowly build up with more forums as needed if this site grows with members and posts.

The Website Section: The third section of this attempt at a 3 in 1 site is the website, or rather the webpages, I have created these using the html pages feature, in other words, simple webpages. At the moment I have created only 2 webpages, 3 if you count the Member Help & Faq page. I will add others at a slow pace if there is a need for them. Future pages, as with my Blog Section, will be more personal to me, just as any website is personal is to the owner, rather than be related to the Message Board. Hopefully though, they will be of interest to any visitors and members.

In Conclusion: What I am attempting to do is 1) Create a personal website for myself that includes blogging and 2) An inclusive zone for visitors and members to join in and post. Normally to do this would mean creating all three areas on three different systems, with three different urls, and having to link them all together.

Further Information: Once I have 5 regular posting members I will be removing the adverts from this site to make for a more comfortable viewing for them. I feel like 5 is a reasonable number to warrant the cost.