Upcoming Improvements in 2014

[Nima 978]

First of all, I want to thank all of your for being such awesome members. I love our community and hopefully can make it better for everyone.

In 2014 I'm putting most of my focus on improving our community. Here are some of the upcoming changes in the coming months:

• May: New bad ass rating system to rate shisha flavor.
  
• June - July: Moving to a new forum platform that will give us a lot more social features and flexibility (user picture galleries, user blogs, chat, and more). The app will stay the same and continue to work as before.
  
• August: iPhone app will be released no later than end of August
  
• September - October: Improvements to our design to make it more responsive and modern.
  
• November - December: Adding minor improvements after the new features have been running for couple months.
  

and Paul will continue adding awesome articles and videos to our blog throughout the whole year.

[TheEightyFour 1,199]

this sounds fantastic Nima. keep up the good work. if you need help with anything, many of us on this board are developers in some extent. Feel free to reach out at any time.

[WolfDen 58]

Rating system sounds awesome, and well so does everything else! Nima I vote you one of the best forum owner/controller people ever (and trust me I have been on a lot of forums in my life)!!!! Thank you for working to make this better than it already is. I know a lot of people would be discourage by the small size and I love that you and everyone else here thinks the small size is what makes this forum enjoyable.

[Nima 978]

this sounds fantastic Nima. keep up the good work. if you need help with anything, many of us on this board are developers in some extent. Feel free to reach out at any time.

Will definitely do. Thanks

Rating system sounds awesome, and well so does everything else! Nima I vote you one of the best forum owner/controller people ever (and trust me I have been on a lot of forums in my life)!!!! Thank you for working to make this better than it already is. I know a lot of people would be discourage by the small size and I love that you and everyone else here thinks the small size is what makes this forum enjoyable.

Thanks. I've been running this site for a long time and definitely have a personal interest in watching it be awesome.

I think a small active and friendly community is better than a large, not active, and annoying one. We might end up having large traffic from search engines but after the upcoming changes, I plan to put a cap on the number of members on the forum. Haven't decided exactly how we are going to manage it but it would be something like "membership by invitation only", "inactive accounts will be closed after 2 years", "only X # of new members accepted every month", etc.

[WolfDen 58]

You might be able to do a questionnaire thing before people could join. Just a few simple questions like when did you smoke hookah for the first time? Do you smoke mostly at a lounge or at home with friends? What are your favorite brands / flavors of tobacco? Just something to see if one they actually know what hookah is and two if they take the time to fill that out they may be more likely to actually take the time to post.

Just an idea. I’m sure you will come up with something better when you get to that point.

[dd0723 1,970]

First of all, I want to thank all of your for being such awesome members. I love our community and hopefully can make it better for everyone.

In 2014 I'm putting most of my focus on improving our community. Here are some of the upcoming changes in the coming months:

• May: New bad ass rating system to rate shisha flavor.
  
• June - July: Moving to a new forum platform that will give us a lot more social features and flexibility (user picture galleries, user blogs, chat, and more). The app will stay the same and continue to work as before.
  
• August: iPhone app will be released no later than end of August
  
• September - October: Improvements to our design to make it more responsive and modern.
  
• November - December: Adding minor improvements after the new features have been running for couple months.
  

and Paul will continue adding awesome articles and videos to our blog throughout the whole year.

OH WOW!!!! these are awesome changes coming in 2014!!!! Nima you ROCK!

[dd0723 1,970]

this sounds fantastic Nima. keep up the good work. if you need help with anything, many of us on this board are developers in some extent. Feel free to reach out at any time.

I second that.

[dd0723 1,970]

You might be able to do a questionnaire thing before people could join. Just a few simple questions like when did you smoke hookah for the first time? Do you smoke mostly at a lounge or at home with friends? What are your favorite brands / flavors of tobacco? Just something to see if one they actually know what hookah is and two if they take the time to fill that out they may be more likely to actually take the time to post.

Just an idea. I’m sure you will come up with something better when you get to that point.

I agree with wolfden. To some extent having a questionnaire will deter the deadbeats from the people that really want to join and participlate and learn about this awesome albeit expensive passtime.

[HookahHooligan 999]

All of those sound awesome. And putting a cap makes sense, but hopefully no one is offended that they can't join when it comes to that point.

[chernobyl 1,136]

These look like great improvements.

Nima and I briefly talked about this in another thread. I mentioned if the accounts are inactive for so long they should be deleted. I think it should be a year instead of two, long enough to warrant deletion but not too long which can be seen as keeping members list artificially high. A questionnaire would be a good way for weeding out the good from the bad. I would like the invitational forum but sadly that could hurt us because it could be hard to find people who want to join.

Sent from my XT1060 using Hookah.org mobile app

[Nima 978]

Yes, the first step will be deleting all users with invalid email addresses

[Nima 978]

I was looking at this list and am happy to say that almost all of them are done.

The only thing left is the iPhone app which is still under review at Apple. 

[TheEightyFour 1,199]

Oh sweet, I'd love a dedicated iPhone app.

[Nima 978]

Oh sweet, I'd love a dedicated iPhone app.

 

I've submitted it. Its been going back and forth between Rejected and Under Review for the past twenty some days - for b.s. reasons like "how does a user report a questionable content"...

[TheEightyFour 1,199]

yeah... that's apple for ya. in all fairness it's good they check the quality of things, but it can be a bit of a process.

[Nima 978]

yeah... that's apple for ya. in all fairness it's good they check the quality of things, but it can be a bit of a process.

 

Yes, I just wish the give all the issues in one round and then accept it when I fix then. Every time they come up with a new reason to send it back rejected.

 

And its Tapatalk. Its not like I'm writing a brand new app myself. 

[chernobyl 1,136]

The stupid thing is that I have seen some bizarre or stupid apps in that app store, some which barely work, and they obviously got through the approval. Yet our simple app is taking this long.