ebikes.com or endless-sphere.com

[larsb]

To me the endless sphere name has a good ring to it. The login click on the logo to get in has confused me also, the first page looks like a blind page today, this could be improved.
I also agree that ”forum” should be added somewhere. Noobs seem to find it already today but SEO could always be better i guess.

I have one comment on a general thing i see here in all comments and that is the referral to growth and business. One of the key things for me has been the ES focus on tech without business strings attached. I write a bit at efoil.builders these days and that’s business and ad driven. I hate it and i’d write here if the right folks were here.

I’d rather keep the noise out, there is off course money that could be made of ES but in my view it will lose the key factor of ES being so great!!

 

[markz]

They are pretty clear about not having ads.

ES doesnt publish anything so nothing to write about for ES, just a forum to post on.
Unlike other california based business that has a forum and news website.

 

[larsb]

Isn’t the challenge another then? Fix SEO and some minor flaws, migrate to an easier architecture but keep most of the existing setup

If you do that neptronix, i can wire you some foamy beverage coverage as a thanks for the efforts :thumb:

 

[markz]

^Or some krona

Damn what a day in age, not a leap to korona = corona

 

[larsb]

It’s actually kronor in multiples. A single krona doesn’t give you a lot of foamy beverage with our alcohol taxes

 

[kauaicycler]

Me and Justin haven't came to a full conclusion on the name yet.

However we have decided that whatever our name, this is should ultimately remain a forum for hacking on electric vehicles. Other forums do discussions of prebuilt things better than we could ever. But what we want is the kind of hardcore geek audience we had in 2010. We want to specialize in this niche even further and do everything possible to be the #1 source for that.

I came here for ebikes but I love all of the EV stuff. I also think the domain name should be EV related and not bike specific. I have the domain name "electrictailwinds.com" for a future blog but I also have "etw.bike" for email and as a redirect to "electrictailwinds.com". Maybe we could use this technique to have multiple, easy to remember domain names that point to the main domain name. As an example if we had a domain name like "magneticmomentum.com" we could have aliases like "mm.bike" and "mm.scooter" lot's of cool TLD's to choose from to make short urls.

 

[neptronix]

Although I do not estimate myself as an officially accredited hardcore geek (yet), nonetheless that is one of the formidable goals I aspire to, and rigorously studying the copious information generously shared on this forum should help me attain my goal of hardcore geekdom.

That's what it's for too. Learning and teaching.

When i came here, i spent 9 months reading before i built anything. There was so much to learn. Things were less organized and clear back then. I only knew the basics on working on bikes and my electronics knowledge was limited to circuit bending synthesizers and installing modchips. The amount of information and skills i've gleaned from this forum works out to at least half of an engineering degree. The value of that is immeasurable.

I hope future generations have the same experience i did... and you too!

I have one comment on a general thing i see here in all comments and that is the referral to growth and business. One of the key things for me has been the ES focus on tech without business strings attached. I write a bit at efoil.builders these days and that’s business and ad driven. I hate it and i’d write here if the right folks were here.

I’d rather keep the noise out, there is off course money that could be made of ES but in my view it will lose the key factor of ES being so great!!

I would like to have a funding structure or some means to pay people to do valuable work like that, funded by our members.
This was part of my plan for magnetic motion, the successor to ES when we had a forum takeover by Trevor.
I'm not super attached to the idea, but floated it a few times and it seems to take.

 

[nicobie]

Why not meet in the middle?

Endless Ebikes

:wink:

 

[amberwolf]

EEV: Endless Electric Vehicles :lol:

 

[thorlancaster328]

Do we even have to make the choice?

If the DNS on ebikes.com and endless-sphere.com both pointed to this forum, then people could access the exact same forum from either URL.

Might be some confusion about the name of the forum but I think it might be a good compromise.

 

[neptronix]

Neither are a good choice and supporting lots of content through 2 domains will handicap us as far as SEO goes.

ebikes.com doesn't fit because while we may have a focus on ebikes, we're far from exclusively being an ebike forum.
endless-sphere.com is the name of a defunct web hosting company and was never intended to be a name for a forum.

We need to be intentional in our branding and show the world that this place is important enough to give it a name that reflects the content and vibe of the community.

 

[RunForTheHills]

I don't mind Endless-Sphere, but it is not intuitive. I don't know if these are available, but here are some ideas:
ElectricGarage
eGarage
ElectricShop
eTalk
ElectricTalk
eBuilds
ElectricBuilds
ElectricHobbies
eVehicles
ElectricVehicles
BatteryBuilds
BatteryHobbies
BatteryTalk
BatteryGarage
BatteryShop

 

[caleb7]

I'm not an old member enough to comment, but I'd rather try to keep "unique" name on any domain. That being said, I see many points on this post are right.

Anyway at least for some time, having descriptive domain name isn't necessarily good thing.

Would it be better if google become search.com, or even g.com? Twitter becoming msg.com, or Instagram as photo.com? Even Facebook is not something descriptive. Cnn redirects to edition.cnn.com, probably they want to keep "something" there, by not going shorter.

 

[neptronix]

Well, i let magneticmotion.org and magneticmotion.net lapse because neither justin nor the community seem to overwhelmingly support the name change.

I'm still against using the name of the former owner's defunct hosting company as the name of this community though. But we're going to live with it.

Using ebikes.com is still a no-go.

 

[kauaicycler]

My solution to our useless domain name. I keep this on my phone so when I meet someone that wants more information on DIY ebikes I just show them this. They just point a smartphone camera at it and it will load the URL, no apps needed. Eliminates typos and hard to type domain names. I used this site to make this https://www.qr-code-generator.org/, many types of qr codes can be created here for urls, wifi, vcards etc.

 

[neptronix]

Good solution for now. ^_^

 

[nicobie]

I don't know about you, but I think it's all turned out fine.

 

[neptronix]

Oh yeah, i have an update for this situation.

Justin wanted us to become ebikes.com, and i said allright, so that's what we're going to do in the future.
Eventually we will be ebikes.com/sphere

No other major changes planned at this time.
Waiting for the dust to settle with our new platform a bit before we go making more changes.

 

[nicobie]

Probably a good business decision. But the end of a era, kinda

 

[neptronix]

The end of an era for being branded as some guy's web hosting company is a good thing.

Then we get to start the era where our forum's name has some relation to it's content.
It's also a lot easier to say 'oh yeah, i heard about that on ebikes.com'

I can tell you that Justin didn't make the reason in favor of his business, anyone else would have had ebikes.com as a redirect to their company.

 

[amberwolf]

What, no more Endless Fear?

 

[eMark]

Probably a good business decision. But the end of a era, kinda

What is Endless Sphere and How Do I Use It?

www.ebikeschool.com

 

[E-HP]

I like the old name, regardless of its origin. Looking at the various sub forums, ebike are only one slice of the site, albeit the most active part, but not by much judging by the recent posts page that makes that more apparent.

 

[Slowchris11]

If you want to make your member numbers explode, make it ebikes. com.
Later you can judge whether this made the competence level rise just as well.
endless-square.com does not attract any granny with a battery bike, so maybe it's insider, hard core members might feel a little more at home.
There is a German HIFI forum, which started quite nice, as a source of knowledge. Today, with .8 million members,it is the largest of it's type in German language, but if you post a well thought out answer, you can be sure to get 5 replies insulting you for knowing any facts. Knowledge has been replaced by bullying, showmanship and Know-it-all's. Any useful thread is instantly found by troll's and led into idleness. The knowing, well mannered specialists have vanished. Some of the moderators are the worst trolls.
Exactly the same has happened with a German car forum. 2.8 million members. The stupidity level has reached astronomic heights.


IMO the "no adds" policy at endless-sphere is very noble, but not realistic in the long run. This forum is work and should generate a reasonable return for that, not need donations. Otherwise it will suddenly disappear or be sold. Adds can be a part of it without disturbing anyone. I would not mind if maybe 1/8 of the left or right side where non animated adds. In fact I use adds sometimes if they are theme related in the broadest sense. Maybe no gambling, Alibaba and porn?

 

[neptronix]

If you want to make your member numbers explode, make it ebikes. com.
Later you can judge whether this made the competence level rise just as well.
endless-square.com does not attract any granny with a battery bike, so maybe it's insider, hard core members might feel a little more at home.

This is my largest concern and something i want to design against as we move to ebikes.com.
We are interested in growing this forum but not in that direction.

There is a German HIFI forum, which started quite nice, as a source of knowledge. Today, with .8 million members,it is the largest of it's type in German language, but if you post a well thought out answer, you can be sure to get 5 replies insulting you for knowing any facts. Knowledge has been replaced by bullying, showmanship and Know-it-all's. Any useful thread is instantly found by troll's and led into idleness. The knowing, well mannered specialists have vanished. Some of the moderators are the worst trolls.
Exactly the same has happened with a German car forum. 2.8 million members. The stupidity level has reached astronomic heights.

All too common in internet communities.. the larger the scale, the better you need to manage it. Fail to do that and your community culture will eventually self destruct once it hits a certain scale, making the whole place useless.

Either that or you introduce commercial influence and destroy it that way.

IMO the "no adds" policy at endless-sphere is very noble, but not realistic in the long run. This forum is work and should generate a reasonable return for that, not need donations. Otherwise it will suddenly disappear or be sold. Adds can be a part of it without disturbing anyone. I would not mind if maybe 1/8 of the left or right side where non animated adds. In fact I use adds sometimes if they are theme related in the broadest sense. Maybe no gambling, Alibaba and porn?

Ebikes.ca has been supporting the forum financially for over a decade yet has kept their hands-off approach the entire time.
It is the best situation a forum could ever ask for, we have both the funding and the autonomy. Few internet forums can say that.

Best to not disturb it and allow Justin to continue accumulating Karma.

As long as me, justin, and several key members are around, there's no possibility of 'running out of money' and having to move to a situation where advertisers are a primary source of funding.