Tammy, you are right, there is a cornucopia of information here now. I just set up the website and forum framework, it's all the members from around the world that make it great.
The reason for CFO's existence is:
- I wanted to build a website on something as I liked computer programming way back in college.
- When I chance googled "Cheese Forum" to find some info on a cheese, I couldn't find anything decent. (I did find a couple of older style chat systems on cheese where you get emailed the discussion but I don't find those very user friendly).
- Someone said to me that in China, if you are 1 in 10,000, there are still another million like you.
So I put all 3 together and thought that there must be a bunch of cheese lovers out there who have no where to go and chat.
Thus I built a basic website in January 2008 (steep organic learning curve as I had no one to ask how) and plugged in this forum's software and made a few posts. But no one came as no-one knew this website existed because when I googled "Cheese Forum" it didn't show up as google search ranking algorithm is complicated but basically is not based on website name. So I left a few cheese crumbs on other forums and Amazon book reviews and a few people did sign on and make a few posts, but to my surprise they were mostly about making cheese, not about cheese. So I bought a book (now 3 and growing) and also started making cheese and posting my results, which drew more people and basically it snowballed such that we just passed 7500 posts and CFO is #1 result when you google "Cheese Forum". And yes I now have the Cheese Making bug and am on my 36th cheese making this morning. If the current post rate stays unchanged, we will have 45,000 posts in Feb 2010
, so I occassionaly re-organize the boards to better cater for topic popularity and for our future growth.
Also, like I said
on the homepage, this is an "independent global website as it does not promote any store or vendor's merchandise and try to use metric and standard imperial units", which I think helps. Also also, I have made the forum almost completely open format so that people can post links to pictures and videos they post on other sites etc which I other members appreciate.
Lastly, my copy of US based Ricki Carroll's book says it has sold over 170,000 copies, so I am surprised that there are not more members, maybe it's just a question of people not knowing this site exists.
Any ideas to better this website, please PM or email me.
Housework? Today's Saturday!