A Yaz! Update
It’s the weekend here in Canada so I allowed myself to indulge in a hobby site I’m working on called Yaz! which is an Australian student community and trading site. I’m calling the site a hobby because a) I don’t intend to make any money from it and b) I don’t want to distract myself away from business projects too much. I love running these community forum style sites but sometimes I can pour so much time and energy into them that I forget that I do have to work sometimes on business, BetterEdit.com.
So far things are growing nice and steadily over at Yaz!. We had our first columnist sign up to write articles on a weekly basis which really goes a long way to legitimise the site as an entertainment source. Unfortunately at this stage most of the users are lurkers or one time sales posters, listing their textbook for sale (etc.) and then running away. Hopefully we can establish a few regulars soon so the place will be a bit more lively.
In the meantime, drawing on my experiences growing MTGParadise, I’m adding new content whenever possible so the place doesn’t die down. Yaz! has started to get enough members that it’s starting to look like it might make it to critical mass but for the moment we are still in that precarious point of having a very quiet looking forum.
I spent some time yesterday expanding the main content pages to a larger width. I originally launched the site with a 640 resolution so it would fit in even the oldest and smallest monitors however I always had intentions to expand it to an 800 pixel size. Having the extra space allowed me to increase the amount of content included on the front page and the site is really starting to take shape as a media content portal for students. I also changed some of the code to utlise PHP includes rather than SSI since PHP runs more efficiently. Load times are significantly quicker on the front page now.
I often lament my inability to code software as I surf around and see a lot of web software features, such as ratemyprofessor.com, that would be perfect for Yaz. Also more dedicated textbook exchange tools, tutoring databases and trading software could all enhance the usability of Yaz!.
A friend pointed out a project called php college exchange which looks like a PHPNuke style open source content management portal site. It looks very promising but it’s a work in progress. A lot of the features I’d like are not yet developed. I contacted the lead developer about perhaps doing some custom work for me but he was a student too busy at school.
I then went on a typical entrepreneur style idea trip, taking the college portal concept and turning it into a start-up business. I went even as far as thinking about getting venture funding and hiring a team of software developers, marketing the software to universities and schools and establishing it as the pre-eminent college portal software. After going for a walk however I thought some more over it and while I think it’s a good idea and there is a need for it, I’m in no position to chase it as a start-up business AND more importantly I reminded myself that the same challenges that I face now with Yaz! (growing user numbers and content) I would still face regardless of how feature rich the software was.
So I decided to write the idea down in my little textpad with all the other ideas I have for possible future implementation. I reminded myself that Yaz! can take off just using the forum software as the means for trade. It doesn’t need the bells and whistles, it needs users. When Yaz! gets large enough then I can consider adding the software and have a thriving community to help develop the features they want, rather than me guess what they want.
By the way, we have some interesting sex, dating and relationships topics over at Yaz! Forum which you might be interested in. Feel free to register and participate 
Yaro Starak
Yaz! Community Leader
