The new look at FNForum.net

We have revamped our site at www.FNforum.NET - It's not totally complete yet, but still, quite a facelift.

If you are interested in the FNP semi auto handgun, Five-seveN hangun, PS90 or FS2000, FN bolt action guns and shotguns, or any other FN product - come check us out. We're always very friendly.

We also have an active General Gun Discussion section, 2nd Amendment Section, Off Topic Forum and a Black Rifle Room.

We've grown tremendously this year and have almost 3000 members and numerous great sponsors.

That fluctuates back and forth, depending on the amount of lurkers and a few other factors. Right now it is turned on. It will probably be turned off next month.

Well, as for the Karma - we are adding a lot of features that our members ask for. Sorry - We have a lot of long time members. Adding lots of new feautures to the site.

As for the color - we've experimented with a lot of different colors on that same background - actually, this is the most legible. We want to keep the grey. But, things are still changing and nothing is finalized, so, we'll see. We've only had 2-3 complaints about the colors, and 99% of the folks, when asked, said the color was fine. We were going to change that a while back, but once we asked about it and almost everyone was satisfied, we kept it as is.

Please free to come join and participate. If you are not interested, that's okay too.. I'm just letting you folks know about the forum. If you have any critiques, please PM me.

Oh well, S&W MP here I come.

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If that's all that makes you change your mind... Sorry...

Anyway, we just added 2 new forums - a Tactics Corner and an Outdoor Forum.

Well, php doesn't support as many features as Vbulletin (your issue with the colors). We were going to switch to Vbulletin, but when we made that change at Handgun Forum, it was done early on in the life of the site - so when a lot of posts had to be corrected, it was something that only took a few days to fix. We have way more posts in the database at the Fn Forum now, and the transition, if it goes the same as it did at Handgun Forum, would be horrendous. So, we're stuck with php for now.

As for the registration - there are several sites that require it. Many of our active members LIKE this fact. But, eventually, we may open it up for good. If that is the one thing that is stopping you from coming to the site, I'm sorry.

Mandatory registration is fine, but having to wait for approval by an admin is silly.

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Actually not - I just approved U, and unless I am asleep - people generally get approved immediately... And hour at most...

There is a reason for it, and many sites do it... U may not realize what a SPAMbot is. But my site, and tons of other sites get hit with spambots all day long. Automated programs that register as fake members and then post sex messages. I MUST approve everyone one by one. 1/2 the applied membership everyday are spambots. I have been making some progress in making it harder for them to register (I was getting 40-50+ spambots a day - there are less now).

But, if I didn't make approval mandatory - my entire site would be sex messages. One of two still slip thru every once in a while, and I have to deal with it after the fact. Even with e-mail confirmations, they were getting thru - as there were valid email addresses the Spambots were using. I approve people manually so I can ferrit out the Spambots thru ways I won't get into, to play my hand.

Locking the forum also helps a bit - with the forum open, spam programs can scan the site and monitor traffic better, and hit us worse. Also, we started locking the site on and off when we had 20,000 unique visitors a month but only 400 members. In practice, there can be TOO many lurkers.

There are lots of issues here that U do not always realize until you actually run a site. Trust me - we've looked at all sides of these issues. And, we are not doing these things just to be contrary or to make things difficult, or for no reason. There are actually even more reasons involved - I've just mentioned a few. So, everything is being done for a reasonable purpose.

I only hope you join if you are interested. And, I posted this thread to let FN fans know about is - not to argue the merits of technical aspects of the site.

fivesevenforum has free reg and all the FN stuff you can shake a stick at. color scheme is, sadly, nearly the same.

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They had mandatory registration too, until a few weeks ago. We turn ours on and off on a regular basis for now.

Nope - many sites have that "picture" - they (spambots) STILL successfully join. I really have no idea how they manage it - but that image doesn't stop them.

I know several admins on other sites, and they ahve the same problem, despite the "picture." So, our use of it has no affect.

If you switch to vBulletin, look at the NoSpam! hack. I use it on BS and I think I've only had two spammers since I installed it.

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Well, as I mentioned above - we're too big to convert now. At Handgun Forum - when we converted to VBulletin, EVERY post with a photo in it got messed up - the image tags didn't transfer right. There were some other problems as well. The site is too big to go thru that now.

As for the schemes, yea, I saw that option to switch. But right now, we're having a problem getting the scheme to even take out changes. We're TRYING to change either the background or text color, and it doesn't wanna take.