The new site concept is about a network of sites sharing a common set of discussion forums. The business premise is to see if it's possible to make it profitable using advertising, which I'm arranging to appear on every message to take advantage of the sheer quantity of messages that can build up on an active board.

The support for advertising will be configurable site-by-site, so don't worry, I intend to continue to honor my promise that ads will never deface the Zone.

But it does mean that I'm concentrating more on making the forums accessible to search engines, which are an integral part of ad networks like Google AdSense, than worrying about blocking their access. Google's ads rely on their being able to look in their cache and see what words appear on the same page as the ad, and choosing an ad to match the words. It won't work if I don't make sure that Google and other spiders can get to every message.

The first of the new sites is pretty generic, discussion forums for people here in the Bay Area, probably with categories like state and regional and county and city politics, real estate, local schools, local sports, etc. Other sites in the series will have specialties like the legal or mortgage professions. I admit that the focus is thoroughly commercial, but I still find the prospect of building more online communities to be satisfying at a deeper level.

I already have a prototype of the new site online, but it's too rough even to solicit private feedback. I'm working on a newer version here on my office server that I wouldn't be embarrassed to show off, and in a week or so I'll have it ready to upload to the public server. I'll post a message here then, asking for guinea pigs to check it out. Stay tuned...