I decided to share with everyone some of the things currently going on in the background, and where the community may be headed in the future.


Link to Item

If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

Thats excellent news! Its always nice to see someone reap the benefits of an interest that had humble beginnings.

I am sorry to hear about your health though but you do have capable staff members here so delegate delegate delegate. :-)

Just remember that the community is behind you on this one so do tap into this support when you hit rough patches. I've seen (in other communities) how sites can really flourish with strong support from their members.

Good luck and congratualtions Jim. Its great to see your hard work and dedication is starting to pay off!
Our reward, is a site that always has the highest of standards and basically is a "home from home". Long may it last!

Hi Staff_Jim!

Thanks for sharing these information with us... I think all of us were aware something important was going on, so this lights things up
Armorama is growing at a very fast speed! I've checked the member directory and saw there were about 1000 new registrations in the past 30 days! At this rate the Armorama "population" will get from 10000 to 20000 within less than a year! It took four years to get from 0 to 10000! Freaky... :-)
I wish, Armorama could be a good full time job for you, you would deserve it!
I have one comment about the dedicated sites for Warships, Aircraft and Figures though... I think what makes Armorama so special is that it gets modelers together that build very different subjects... this is something that, I'm afraid, would get lost with dedicated sites... the interaction should remain easy...

I wish you (and all Staff members) good luck... et une bonne santé!

Jean-Luc

Jim thank you for all the hard work you do to keep us all together.

I have no model building club, just my Armorama Family to share my work with and learn. In the time I have been a member I have grown in leaps and bounds. I used to just build armor and rarely weathered it. Now with each build I try more new things learned here.

Campaigns have gotten me to try different subjects that interest me but I had never tried. Armorama is a great place to grow and that is all due to your vision. We are all here and will stick with you because ....... This is the best site on the web for all modellers.

As someone who is very involved in the 'day to day' of the site, I can, to a certain extent , understand that some people may be a little nervous as to the site going in new directions. That said, the reality is that the current format is (or certainly in the future will be) becoming a little too 'unwieldy'. The reality is that with the new servers, we will have an ENORMOUS capacity for creating satellite sites covering all aspects of modelling. Personally, my greatest interest is in the creation of specialized 'zones' where we can actually allow areas such as resources and research to flourish. These are two areas which will need careful consideration and a great deal of work...Jim

Jim,

I notice you joined 15 Dec, 2001. That will be four years ago in a few days.
I can't fly over for the anniversary celebration cocktail party, but I'll toast to your health and the next five years of big A.

Ciao

Uncle Jan

You should see the lovely card Jim sent me..... :-) :-) :-) we really do need the rolling on the floor dude..... :-) :-)

Uncle Jan..... always good to see you, and looking forward to you finishing the house, so you can spend more quality time with the family........

Looks and sounds good Jim, great job. When you taking the company public?

I noticed the A-Guard wasn't mentioned, was that just an oversight?

Hard to believe it's been four years since the site started. I tried to get some ideas going for the fifth year anniversary last month but my efforts were met with mostly whimsical comments so I just abandoned the idea.

The main benefit to this site is the fact that even though we are primarily an armor modeling site, this site had a place for other genres like aircraft, warships, sci-fi, dioramas, figures and so forth. Another benefit was the ability to store photographs on site and post them into messages.

At the time Armorama began, the only other site that offered multiple genres was Kithobbyist.com. That site didn't succeed because it was not interactive and basically withered on the vine. Before that, there were car sites, armor sites, aircraft sites, etc. Nothing really catered to the modeler with wide ranging tastes.

If the site splits off non-armor modeling forums, we do stand the chance of slipping back into the old days where you have to go to one site for armor, another for aircraft, cars, sci-fi, etc. Even if they are all housed under the Armorama.net banner, it will still not be the one-stop shopping it is today. Many of our fringe genres are not strong enough to carry on outside the armor umbrella. I believe that the car, ship and sci-fi segments would just find another home in the more focused sites catering to those genres.

Armorama was really built upon the community created through the modeling forums. Yes, we all know that the forums have become just one of the many moving pieces that make up Armorama like the gallery, reviews, features, articles, etc. Most of those items mentioned were created by the rank and file. We didn’t have the well known “modeling elite” that other sites had. Everyone was welcomed regardless of skill level.

This was another major draw. Several of my friends mentioned that they tried to get their models on display at other armor modeling sites, but were either ignored or told that their models were not good enough. Here they had the opportunity to upload the photos themselves and post links back to their galleries or submit the completed works as features or for display.

Currently, our only competition in the cross-modeling arena is Fine Scale Modeler’s website. We have leads in many areas over that site. First of all, our forums are more established. We also provide a gallery and manage group builds (FSM’s members conduct GB very haphazardly without any direction or control from that site). Their new forum system seems to have stumbled and taken a lot of steam out of their momentum.

We also have greater depth in content. They tend to have online versions of articles found in their current and past newsstand issues. The vast majority of our content can only be found here on this site.

As a couple of commenters have stated, a split may not be the best direction to go, but only time will tell.

Greetings and salutations, Jim...
After reading your News story, and thinking about what you have said, I can only say that I can see a very bright future for Armorama, the best site around by far, and the site is growing in a positive direction, only getting better all the while. It's very encouraging to hear that the site is now an actual entity in the business world, and can support itself much better in this way. Thanks for sharing this great news with us, sir, and as I have said to you before, Jim, if you need a volunteer to help with any site operations, please feel free to give me a shout...would truly be my pleasure.
Sincerely
Mark

Hi Jim,
Good to hear you are feeling better...
and great news about the site !!
congratulations!
Nick

Hi Jim, I'm not sure I understand that statement.

Anyway I do hope the site doesn't become fragmented into seperate communities. I do love to browse all the forums even if I don't participate in that particular aspect of the hobby.

Now that Armorama is a company, we need to talk about our sick days and Christmas bonus. Also, do we have a dress code? Seriously, congratatulaions on how your small family has grown. This site is without a doubt, the friendliest site on the internet. Godd luck in the planned changes.

Patrick

Hi Jim

There's a lot of exciting news buried in there - and some sad; I'm really sorry to hear that your health problems have dogged you so long - but it's great that you're feeling more like your "old" self - no ageism allowed here! :-)

As I'd expect you'd guess - I'm really keen to see Aircraft move forward... but I fully take on board the points raised about breaking up the Site. "If it ain't broke..." is probably the moral here; rather, I think the aim has to be to let every member define for themselves the mix that they want to see of Armorama...

Is that too tall an order? I don't know! But it's really an extension of the Focuses we already have. I'd like to see each focus more self-sufficient, but never moving out from under the umbrella of Armorama as a whole; anything that endangers the unique spirit of community you've established must be resisted.

After all that waffle, I just want to say thank you - what you've achieved here is amazing!

Rowan

PS - As for the name business... yes, Armorama has been a "problem" in the past. Let's not beat about the bush - it's sounds like we're an Armour-only site - and also American-dominated. Both points, of course, are obviously not true to anyone who's visited the site!

But! - if the name has been an obstacle in the past - I think this will be less so now that we're an established brand. And we ARE a brand now. Don't change it! Armorama has already grown to mean more to people than its armour :-) origins.

Is there a way we can contribute to the site, via paypal, for example?

Murdo, you can join the A-Guard, and contribute, using Paypal, that way. A-Guard

Vinnie

Jim
Good to hear you are feeling and doing better To me tgis site will always be the best I am not sure about the changes that you are proposing But time will tell

Besides,you know more about running a site than I will ever know I hope that this site stays around for a long time

I like how informal and laid back the site is That's why I think it's the best modeling site around

Thanks for all the work you and the moderators do

Glad to see Big A doing so well

Jim cudos to you and another large step forward. Congrats..Keeping things brief..what has kept me coming back and enjoying this site is the "one stop shopping"..If this site were armor only..I would still be here..yet would never know the vast amount of talent that is out there. I would never have done a google search for figures..here I was introduced to them..I,m even contemplating a contest in regards to building a figure from scratch..May even try my first warship

Jim

Sir I want to thank you, and all who make this site go. I joined in the fall of 03. I was just getting back into the hobby after some pretty nasty personal /health problems. I have no dought, and its even been confirmed by my Doctor that this site, and this hobby have been a major part of my recovery. I owe you guys, Thanks

Harry.

Jim:

First, thanks for Armorama !!!

I will piggyback on many of Sabot's comments.

I am not comfortable with separate sites. The primary reason is that all the "non-modeling forums" will eventually duplicate & many of us simply don't have time to look at Junk Drawer on Armor & Aircraft & Warships & etc sites. And that tends to destroy the community. If you go down in the History Forum, you'll see guys in same thread who hang in different modeling forums -- we loose that interaction.

My recommendation would be to keep the single site.

Note that ARC is making noises that they will soon become ARC Aviation & ARC Armor. There is a lot of competition for our online time & only a finite amount that can be spent online before the hobby becomes online-interaction & not modelling.

Frankly, if Aircraft & Warships split from Armorama, then they'll probably loose me. My main aircraft time is spent on ARC & WW1-Models -- two pretty good communities -- I lurk & sometimes participate in the Aircraft forum here because it is Armorama & I run into the same guys I run into in Armor & Ships & in the general discussion forums.

Same, sorta, with Warships, although I like the Warship community here better than SteelNavy or ModelWarships.

PS my comments about not following the fragments apply equally to the ARC Armor endeavor -- I get more than enough Armor community here to wander off ...

John

As a brand new member but someone who has been enjoying this site for about a year, I thank you and all of the other staff members for your hard work and dedication. This site and community as a whole is a wonderful place for newbies and old salts alike to learn and share comraderie in our hobby.

As someone who makes his living in computers I must say Armorama is a very well built site that has a wealth of information that is easy to find and is very user friendly. Although I also make my rounds of the other big sites of our great hobby this one is by far my favorite and most enjoyable.

Again I thank all of Armorama's staff members and wish you the best of luck in your endeavors to make this site and future sites the best they can be.

And Happy Birthday.

Just a thought,Jim,
Has the idea of leaving the "forums" page alone,and making hotlinks out of the Warships and other categories been looked at.
The forum page here could look the same,but clicking on "Warships" could send a person to the Home page of the new Warhips-arama.com.
And for cross pollination,in any of the other sites,a hotlink back to The Big "A".
Just a thought.
Good luck with any changes you implement.
(++) (++)

Hi Jim, Really good to hear of the improvements to the site, though i have developed a tic re the split Idea, I hope it does not break up the community. Im basiclly a Armour modeller but I diversified into aircraft just recently and needed help, now all the wingy thing guys all knew me and were very helpful just hope we dont lose that magic.