Can you give us a brief background on yourself?

My name is Shawn, I'm 30 years old and grew up in San Diego, California (is that brief enough? heh)


What gave you the idea to start the Digital Point forums?

Primarily I needed a place to support our existing userbase for our billing software and webmaster tools. Some of the marketing related stuff crept in shortly after when a webmaster/SEO forum that I was a moderator on was going down a road I didn't agree with. Rather than complain about it, I decided to see if I could do it better myself.


What were your goals, if any, when you started Digital Point and were they met?

There really weren't any goals other than having a place to support our existing userbase. That was the primary focus (at least in the beginning).


What was your initial budget when you started Digital Point?

There wasn't really a budget, we already had our own servers colocated, so I guess I spent $160 on a vBulletin license.


Do you have a particular routine when you log into Digital Point?

Primarily just making sure new threads were started in the correct categories. I probably move at least 100 or so new threads each day.


You seem to have a very "lax" approach to moderating posts in your forums as compared to most other forum administrators and moderators. Why is this? Is it a matter of the members deserving more freedom, or does it have something to do with you and your staff spending time elsewhere in the forums?

It's mostly just wanting giving users freedom to say whatever they want. Having a forum where people can't speak their minds (even if it goes against what the moderators/admins think) is rather pointless, because you might as well just have a conversation with yourself.


How do you select your staff?

All staff members are hand picked based on existing users who we feel have the attributes to make a great moderator. Those member(s) are invited to become a staff member, and if they accept then that's it.


Do you own or administer any other sites, and if so, what are they?

Nothing worth mentioning (nothing that takes more than an hour per year).


Do you have a job outside of Digital Point, or is that your full time job?

Digital Point Solutions has been my full time job for about 12 years now.


Digital Point does not have very many "just for fun" modifications, although you have installed a "listening to" music mod. Are you a music junkie? What made you decide to make this modification?

I didn't "install" it, I came up with the idea and developed it. I don't mind "fun" stuff, but I'll never install fun stuff if it puts any overhead or clutter to the system or slows it down at all. If something adds a SQL query to an existing page, I wouldn't run it. I'm an efficiency freak and people are here for the content, not for eye candy.


What do you do to relax, or "get away" from Digital Point?

Normal stuff I guess... Golf, travel, frisbee golf, poker, etc.


What is your biggest pet peeve regarding members in your forums?

Hit and run spammers. 1,000+ members banned because of it, although I do have some custom backend stuff I did that will trap spammers when they signup and not let them even post once. I'm all about solving problems programmatically when possible.


You have developed your own SEO tools for webmasters, but you also seem to be somewhat anti-SEO for forums. Is this true, and if so, what makes you think that SEO is unimportant for forums?

Search engines are smart enough these days that you don't really need to do any SEO in my opinion. Some would argue that of course, but we seem to be fine without doing anything major. Just design for the end user.


Have you ever wanted to give up on Digital Point, and if so, what kept you going?

Nope... never, it's my baby.


When did everything seem to "click", or in other words, when did you know that Digital Point had succeeded?

I'll assume you are talking just about the forum... to be honest, there never was a doubt in my mind it wouldn't succeed. We already had a HUGE existing userbase, and that's all you really need to be successful with a forum.


What was the biggest contributing factor to this success?

Our existing userbase using our products/tools. We had 50,000+ existing users to draw upon the day we opened the forum which makes it rather easy.


How much bandwidth does Digital Point use and what kind of server(s) is it on?

Currently the forum is running on 2 Apple Xserves running Mac OS X Server, but as soon as MySQL 5.0.23 is out (hopefully any day now), the forum is going to be moved to our new cluster of blade servers running SuSE Linux Enterprise: http://www.digitalpoint.com/~shawn/2...look-like.html


What is your biggest regret or mistake at DigitalPoint?

My only regret is not starting a forum on a topic that would appeal to supermodels. Now I'm stuck with 18-35 year old males. (hehe j/k)


What does the future hold for Digital Point?

Who knows... I only heard the term SEO for the first time a few years ago, so as soon as I find something else interesting enough, I'll do that.


What is the most common mistake you see other forum owners making?

Starting a forum without an existing user base. Having an unnecessary number of moderators and too many categories that go unused.


Firefox or Internet Explorer?

Safari. Firefox when I'm on Linux or Windows.


Tell us something interesting that we don't already know about you.

My right thumb is double jointed.


Thanks again Shawn - we couldn't have asked for a faster turnaround time!



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