Post by High Priestess on Sept 24, 2015 1:43:28 GMT
Note that you can access this forum via any of these two URL addresses:
www.globalhosting.freeforums.net
www.globalhostingforum.com
Many of us have a lot of experience on the Airbnb forums. But those have been very basic, and not had many features to use which make forums more fun. There are trade-offs though --- some like the dialogue style of the Airbnb forums, where you could just go to one place and find all the posts. This was not a good setup though for someone wanting to find certain information as you would have to scroll down and down to find old posts. Here, posts are more organized. BUt with the organization comes the drawback that not all the activity is in one place. Yet, there are features of this forum that make it relatively easy to find all the new threads, posts as well as any updates to threads you have participated in.
Due to continual problems with spammers, I am unfortunately no longer able to allow guests to post to the forum, and I may require new members to privately share with site administrators a URL of their short term rental or other property rental listing to show they are hosts. Sadly, many spammers seem to join forums simply to post advertisements for services or content totally unrelated to the forum content. Anyone posting spam on this forum will be immediately removed and banned from the forum.
Some features of this forum not found on Airbnb forums:
(1) There is more privacy and anonymity avaiable here than on the Airbnb groups, not only because you need not use your real name or photo of yourself (though we encourage that as we feel this helps build community) but also because your profile here on this forum is not linked with your AIrbnb listings or any other personal info, unless you want it to be. You can link your website, Facebook, Airbnb listing to your account, which is particularly helpful for those wanting feedback on their listing, because then other forum members can find it easily. Also, you can send private messages to other forum users without having to reveal your email address to them.
(2) You can post website links here without numbers in them getting censored out by the Airbnb autocensor, that dratted "phone number hidden" result.
(3) You can post phone numbers and email addresses in your post and they won't get censored out.
(4) You can post images "grabbed" from the internet (with a URL, you click on the "insert image" icon on your message forum, and then fill in the URL of the image) or you can post photos or any other document from your computer, not only on your original post but on any reply to a post. (You may need to resize photos from a digital camera that are over 1MB in size...use www.tinypic.com to do that...I will describe how in a post below.) Additionally, as far as images go, you can set up your own photo gallery on the Forum Members Photo Gallery board, for instance of photos of a vacation.
(5) You can edit/delete not only your original post, but all your replies to any post. Also, moderators are able to edit posts in boards they moderate, so there's much less need to delete any entire post.
(6) Additionally, if threads are started on the wrong board, or fit well on more than one board, moderators can move the threads to another board, and members can cross-post threads on more than one board or post links to threads on other boards.
(7) Posts can be organized by subject so that you can easily find other posts dealing with your same topic, and do research on that topic by reading posts about it. You dont' have to scroll down interminably to find old posts. IN fact we intend to make use of this to create a helpful "library" of old posts that newbies or anyone interested can look up by topic.
(8) There is a working search function on this forum, actually quite a detailed search function, allowing you to search under a variety of filters: keywords, phrases, posts by certain members, etc.
(9) You can look up all the posts made by a certain forum member, by going to their profile and clicking on "view this member's recent posts/threads".
(10) You can find the most recent threads and most recent posts by clicking on those buttons in the top menu bar of this forum. Additionally, you can find which threads you have participated in have updates, by clicking on the "participated" button in the upper right corner of the forum page.
(11) THere is more sophistication possible in the text and formatting of your post, than on existing Airbnb forums. You can use different paragraph formatting, font styles and sized, colored fonts, and you can add tables and charts, bullet points. YOu can insert quotes, (including quotes from other member's posts that will show a small image of that member within the post) and as stated above insert photos with URL addresses, or add videos or attach photos or files from your computer. You can add happy faces, and you can add polls. You can even set your account so that all your posts show up with a background photo in them. ( Though there is a "bug" with the background photo option -- if you set up a background photo you may not be able to go back to having a background w/o photo. BUt if you mess up that's okay because you can just set up another account if you like. We don't limit you to one account here) You can bookmark posts for ease of reference. I hope the more artistic among us will be delighted by these greater possibilities of artistically setting up your posts.
(12) You can post blogs on this forum, in the blogs board. We currently have three members signed up with blog boards, Carolyn, Celeste, and myself. whose blogs can be found below under the "Blogs, Webinars, Consultation and Meetups" category. It would be great to get others as well who want to do blogs,and if you are interested let me know and I can set up a separate blog board just for you. In addition to posting your blog here you can create a blogpage at www.wordpress.com and link us to your external blog site.
(13) There are more possibilities with the private message function here. You can send a private message to any number of other members at once, and those messages will be stored on your message box, instead of disappearing into cyber space as they do on Airbnb. Also, for those who have something to say that they worry will be critical of Airbnb, that feels awkward to say on an Airbnb forum, you may feel more comfortable saying that here.
(14) This forum can be used by those who are hosts or interested in hosting, but who are not Airbnb users and dont have an Airbnb account. Users of other short term rental platforms such as VRBO, Homeaway, Flipkey, Roomarama, Wimdu, and more can participate here, though as homesharers we are somewhat more oriented to those who are hosting in the same home that they themselves live in, than those who rent out additional properties that they own.
(15) Eventually, we hope that on this forum you'll be able to find a lot of news all in one place, which you wouldn't be able to find on the AIrbnb forums without joining numerous regional forums. We as your moderators will be working to pull news from various host communities around the world and posting it here, so if nothing else you'll be able to come here to read the "New York Times" of Airbnb hosting around the world. This is the "library" that we want to develop.
Now, for help on how to get registered to be a forum member, how to set up your account, and how to post photos on your profile and posts, go here:
globalhosting.freeforums.net/thread/77/set-account-forum-post-photos
www.globalhosting.freeforums.net
www.globalhostingforum.com
Many of us have a lot of experience on the Airbnb forums. But those have been very basic, and not had many features to use which make forums more fun. There are trade-offs though --- some like the dialogue style of the Airbnb forums, where you could just go to one place and find all the posts. This was not a good setup though for someone wanting to find certain information as you would have to scroll down and down to find old posts. Here, posts are more organized. BUt with the organization comes the drawback that not all the activity is in one place. Yet, there are features of this forum that make it relatively easy to find all the new threads, posts as well as any updates to threads you have participated in.
Due to continual problems with spammers, I am unfortunately no longer able to allow guests to post to the forum, and I may require new members to privately share with site administrators a URL of their short term rental or other property rental listing to show they are hosts. Sadly, many spammers seem to join forums simply to post advertisements for services or content totally unrelated to the forum content. Anyone posting spam on this forum will be immediately removed and banned from the forum.
Some features of this forum not found on Airbnb forums:
(1) There is more privacy and anonymity avaiable here than on the Airbnb groups, not only because you need not use your real name or photo of yourself (though we encourage that as we feel this helps build community) but also because your profile here on this forum is not linked with your AIrbnb listings or any other personal info, unless you want it to be. You can link your website, Facebook, Airbnb listing to your account, which is particularly helpful for those wanting feedback on their listing, because then other forum members can find it easily. Also, you can send private messages to other forum users without having to reveal your email address to them.
(2) You can post website links here without numbers in them getting censored out by the Airbnb autocensor, that dratted "phone number hidden" result.
(3) You can post phone numbers and email addresses in your post and they won't get censored out.
(4) You can post images "grabbed" from the internet (with a URL, you click on the "insert image" icon on your message forum, and then fill in the URL of the image) or you can post photos or any other document from your computer, not only on your original post but on any reply to a post. (You may need to resize photos from a digital camera that are over 1MB in size...use www.tinypic.com to do that...I will describe how in a post below.) Additionally, as far as images go, you can set up your own photo gallery on the Forum Members Photo Gallery board, for instance of photos of a vacation.
(5) You can edit/delete not only your original post, but all your replies to any post. Also, moderators are able to edit posts in boards they moderate, so there's much less need to delete any entire post.
(6) Additionally, if threads are started on the wrong board, or fit well on more than one board, moderators can move the threads to another board, and members can cross-post threads on more than one board or post links to threads on other boards.
(7) Posts can be organized by subject so that you can easily find other posts dealing with your same topic, and do research on that topic by reading posts about it. You dont' have to scroll down interminably to find old posts. IN fact we intend to make use of this to create a helpful "library" of old posts that newbies or anyone interested can look up by topic.
(8) There is a working search function on this forum, actually quite a detailed search function, allowing you to search under a variety of filters: keywords, phrases, posts by certain members, etc.
(9) You can look up all the posts made by a certain forum member, by going to their profile and clicking on "view this member's recent posts/threads".
(10) You can find the most recent threads and most recent posts by clicking on those buttons in the top menu bar of this forum. Additionally, you can find which threads you have participated in have updates, by clicking on the "participated" button in the upper right corner of the forum page.
(11) THere is more sophistication possible in the text and formatting of your post, than on existing Airbnb forums. You can use different paragraph formatting, font styles and sized, colored fonts, and you can add tables and charts, bullet points. YOu can insert quotes, (including quotes from other member's posts that will show a small image of that member within the post) and as stated above insert photos with URL addresses, or add videos or attach photos or files from your computer. You can add happy faces, and you can add polls. You can even set your account so that all your posts show up with a background photo in them. ( Though there is a "bug" with the background photo option -- if you set up a background photo you may not be able to go back to having a background w/o photo. BUt if you mess up that's okay because you can just set up another account if you like. We don't limit you to one account here) You can bookmark posts for ease of reference. I hope the more artistic among us will be delighted by these greater possibilities of artistically setting up your posts.
(12) You can post blogs on this forum, in the blogs board. We currently have three members signed up with blog boards, Carolyn, Celeste, and myself. whose blogs can be found below under the "Blogs, Webinars, Consultation and Meetups" category. It would be great to get others as well who want to do blogs,and if you are interested let me know and I can set up a separate blog board just for you. In addition to posting your blog here you can create a blogpage at www.wordpress.com and link us to your external blog site.
(13) There are more possibilities with the private message function here. You can send a private message to any number of other members at once, and those messages will be stored on your message box, instead of disappearing into cyber space as they do on Airbnb. Also, for those who have something to say that they worry will be critical of Airbnb, that feels awkward to say on an Airbnb forum, you may feel more comfortable saying that here.
(14) This forum can be used by those who are hosts or interested in hosting, but who are not Airbnb users and dont have an Airbnb account. Users of other short term rental platforms such as VRBO, Homeaway, Flipkey, Roomarama, Wimdu, and more can participate here, though as homesharers we are somewhat more oriented to those who are hosting in the same home that they themselves live in, than those who rent out additional properties that they own.
(15) Eventually, we hope that on this forum you'll be able to find a lot of news all in one place, which you wouldn't be able to find on the AIrbnb forums without joining numerous regional forums. We as your moderators will be working to pull news from various host communities around the world and posting it here, so if nothing else you'll be able to come here to read the "New York Times" of Airbnb hosting around the world. This is the "library" that we want to develop.
Now, for help on how to get registered to be a forum member, how to set up your account, and how to post photos on your profile and posts, go here:
globalhosting.freeforums.net/thread/77/set-account-forum-post-photos