Hello everyone!
Just thought I'd introduce myself. This seems like a happier and friendlier forum than certain other places so far.
I've been building websites as a hobby since I was in college in the 90s. Started with geocities fan sites for my favorite band "Live" at the time. Then, since I was in film school, I built a website that showcased student films. My coding knowledge then was (and still pretty much is still) just basic HTML. I charged people a small hosting fee and they mailed me tapes and I uploaded them and recoded the static html webpages to add them to the site. Eventually a friend of mine who was a programmer helped me build a dynamic version of the site with a database so I didn't have to write all new html when people rated or added films. My webdesign was amazing./s
Funny looking back on those way back images.
That site added a forum in 2000 and I used a service called infopop and it got extremely active and became one of the main focuses and active parts of the site.
Eventually a certain site called YouTube became the website of choice for hosting films (and it was a pain in the but for me to digitize people's films) and my site switched to forum only around 2009 (infopop was now eve) and I had people post links to their films in YouTube. The forums were the main focus of the site back then anyways. I remember when YouTube was just starting and they reached out to me about something. Can't remember now. Anyways my forums became very popular (to me anyways - activity has never really compared to the big sites) and the site soldiered on.
Infopop/eve/whatever (they literally changed their name ALL the time) eventually became a pain and expensive so I looked into hosting my own forum software. Eventually I settled on xenforo around 2013.
Eventually it seemed forum activity was dropping since it's heydey in 2006. I noticed that mostly everyone on the site was really talking about applying to film school so in 2014 I purchased the domain filmschool.org (which seemed static and unused) and moved the film school forums over there. The original studentfilms.com site still exists now but is pretty much dead activity wise. Now I'm leaving it up mainly for nostalgia and the backlinks.
I purchased the new domain for way too much money. Think cheap entry level new automobile. (Someone wanted $1mil for the .com so I settled for the .org - .net people never got back to me) Talk about an expensive hobby. (The site has since made back over 3x what I paid for it but it's been a long ride). Sometimes I think about trying to buy the .com again for a reasonable amount but I've since learned from this whole debacle that the domain name really doesn't fully matter. Or it matters a little but not as much as one would think. I naively thought I'd race to the top of the google searches for the term as it was more common - it's been a long road up the google search pages. It's all about content content content and backlinks. Also the competitition for first page results for that keyword is EXTREMELY competitive.
Anyways, back to the story.... I had someone design a really cool logo for the site and worked on building the new domain.
After trying to add a film school review section with the defunct XenReviews, I eventually added a film school database and review section via Bob's awesome Showcase (which I eventually moved over to RMS once that was available). Then I added articles and blogs with AMS and UBS. I also started hiring writers to write extensive articles.
Our members started using Google Sheets to track application statuses to film schools and it was a little unwieldy and it had the problem of users completely messing up the entire Google sheet. I then decided to convert the then unused Showcase addon (film school reviews were being handled by RMS) into a film school application database.
I also completely dropped ads (which stunk and didn't pay well) and became a completely member supported community. In order to see exclusive articles and application database data and statistics you need to be a supporting member. This has more than 3x paid for the cost of the original domain and is the only reason I'm really able to keep the site going. I haven't really seen any of the money that gets brought in though as it all goes back to hiring writers or developers for custom features. It's a fun yet pricey hobby - although thankfully I haven't had to put any more of my own money into it for at least 2 or 3 years now.
But long story short the site has slowly continued to be very active (to me) and high on the google searches for my niche. The articles and exclusive features are a big reason for this.
So long story short here's a link to the current version of the site:
www.filmschool.org
Anyways - that was a fun trip down memory lane for me. For my real job I'm an editor for TV and film (mostly TV now) in Los Angeles and you've probably seen shows or heard of shows I've edited.
Just thought I'd introduce myself. This seems like a happier and friendlier forum than certain other places so far.
I've been building websites as a hobby since I was in college in the 90s. Started with geocities fan sites for my favorite band "Live" at the time. Then, since I was in film school, I built a website that showcased student films. My coding knowledge then was (and still pretty much is still) just basic HTML. I charged people a small hosting fee and they mailed me tapes and I uploaded them and recoded the static html webpages to add them to the site. Eventually a friend of mine who was a programmer helped me build a dynamic version of the site with a database so I didn't have to write all new html when people rated or added films. My webdesign was amazing./s
Funny looking back on those way back images.That site added a forum in 2000 and I used a service called infopop and it got extremely active and became one of the main focuses and active parts of the site.
Eventually a certain site called YouTube became the website of choice for hosting films (and it was a pain in the but for me to digitize people's films) and my site switched to forum only around 2009 (infopop was now eve) and I had people post links to their films in YouTube. The forums were the main focus of the site back then anyways. I remember when YouTube was just starting and they reached out to me about something. Can't remember now. Anyways my forums became very popular (to me anyways - activity has never really compared to the big sites) and the site soldiered on.
Infopop/eve/whatever (they literally changed their name ALL the time) eventually became a pain and expensive so I looked into hosting my own forum software. Eventually I settled on xenforo around 2013.
Eventually it seemed forum activity was dropping since it's heydey in 2006. I noticed that mostly everyone on the site was really talking about applying to film school so in 2014 I purchased the domain filmschool.org (which seemed static and unused) and moved the film school forums over there. The original studentfilms.com site still exists now but is pretty much dead activity wise. Now I'm leaving it up mainly for nostalgia and the backlinks.
I purchased the new domain for way too much money. Think cheap entry level new automobile. (Someone wanted $1mil for the .com so I settled for the .org - .net people never got back to me) Talk about an expensive hobby. (The site has since made back over 3x what I paid for it but it's been a long ride). Sometimes I think about trying to buy the .com again for a reasonable amount but I've since learned from this whole debacle that the domain name really doesn't fully matter. Or it matters a little but not as much as one would think. I naively thought I'd race to the top of the google searches for the term as it was more common - it's been a long road up the google search pages. It's all about content content content and backlinks. Also the competitition for first page results for that keyword is EXTREMELY competitive.
Anyways, back to the story.... I had someone design a really cool logo for the site and worked on building the new domain.
After trying to add a film school review section with the defunct XenReviews, I eventually added a film school database and review section via Bob's awesome Showcase (which I eventually moved over to RMS once that was available). Then I added articles and blogs with AMS and UBS. I also started hiring writers to write extensive articles.
Our members started using Google Sheets to track application statuses to film schools and it was a little unwieldy and it had the problem of users completely messing up the entire Google sheet. I then decided to convert the then unused Showcase addon (film school reviews were being handled by RMS) into a film school application database.
I also completely dropped ads (which stunk and didn't pay well) and became a completely member supported community. In order to see exclusive articles and application database data and statistics you need to be a supporting member. This has more than 3x paid for the cost of the original domain and is the only reason I'm really able to keep the site going. I haven't really seen any of the money that gets brought in though as it all goes back to hiring writers or developers for custom features. It's a fun yet pricey hobby - although thankfully I haven't had to put any more of my own money into it for at least 2 or 3 years now.
But long story short the site has slowly continued to be very active (to me) and high on the google searches for my niche. The articles and exclusive features are a big reason for this.
So long story short here's a link to the current version of the site:
Film School Reviews, Forums, & Admit Data
Film school reviews, admissions advice, film school forums, and film school acceptance statistics calculated from our database of thousands of applications.
www.filmschool.org
Anyways - that was a fun trip down memory lane for me. For my real job I'm an editor for TV and film (mostly TV now) in Los Angeles and you've probably seen shows or heard of shows I've edited.
