Poet

1 minute ago, KhunMorris said:

By call it a day, I meant fly home to Norway to take care if his health.

Flying home to Norway might be what you meant but it is by no means the most obvious interpretation of what you wrote:
 

30 minutes ago, KhunMorris said:

He's clearly chosen and prioritised cheap woman and sex over his health. Perhaps it's time to call it a day.

Following such an uncharitable interpretation of why he might be living in Pattaya (whose wider area is the largest destination outside Spain for retiring Scandinavians, and where he is the secretary of a society for Scandinavian expats), the obvious interpretation is that you think he should "call it a day" by topping himself.

If that is not the case, perhaps there's hope for you yet. It would not hurt, however, to express yourself more clearly when slurring other expats.

16 minutes ago, KhunMorris said:

He's clearly chosen and prioritised cheap woman and sex over his health. Perhaps it's time to call it a day.

Says an ex-bar owner who had no problem profiting from his customers.
 

17 minutes ago, KhunMorris said:

Perhaps it's time to call it a day.

What an astonishing thing to say to another human being.

You are quite a piece of work.
 

13 hours ago, Thailand said:

AseanNow are relatively fortunate to have little competition but not a good move imho.

Chance of someone/company new/existing to jump in and fill the "Thailand" forum void perhaps?

Actually, on a recent suspension from ThaiVisa, I took the time to check out the competing forums and was pleased to find that there are now some fine options.

ThaiVisa has the advantage of having been dominant for so long, and size does matter when it comes to forums, but a recently emerged competitor is showing signs of being active enough while also being a far more pleasant experience. 

Talking of branding, your username is terrific ????

Frankly, this is somewhat unfair on Thailand. Few nationalities tip as much as Americans.

2 hours ago, Thailand said:

One more hyphenated  .com in addition to the primary domain and again it was a question, is it beneficial? If not why not?

It is in no way beneficial.

If your primary domain has a hyphen, people will forget the hyphen, losing you traffic and emails to the owner of the unhyphenated version of your domain.

If your primary domain does not have a hyphen, no one is going to misremember it as having a hyphen.

When choosing a domain for an actual business, always pick a .com and avoid hyphens, numbers, international characters, and any unobvious spellings. Pick a name that you would not need to spell out if verbally discussing it with a friend - that is one of the reasons why the name change to ASEANNow is such a bad idea. ASEAN is not a word that most people are familiar with, most will mishear or misremember it as "AsianNow".

ASEANNow is also a good example of why your domain should be something that will still make sense in 10 or 20 years time - it is highly unlikely that the successor organisation to ASEAN, in a few years time, will still be called ASEAN. The predecessors to today's EU changed name about five times.

Also, it is possible that some countries that are currently members may leave ASEAN, particularly as China continues to flex its muscles in the region. As a political entity, ASEAN is far less cohesive and stable than the EEC was in the 80's and early 90's.

Never compromise on your domain name. Obviously, everyone wants to save money, especially when starting a business, but if you launch with a problematic domain it will end up costing a lot more money in terms of lost traffic, misdirected emails, lower credibility, and less effective marketing. It is also one of those things that cannot really be changed later. Only an utter chump would change the domain of an established website.

 

27 minutes ago, mrmicbkktxl said:

How much would be the costs to do so?How much would be the monthly costs if you start without advertisers?

The main cost in setting up a new forum is time. Servers are now essentially free and excellent forum software is also free.

Starting from scratch, you would have the advantage of being able to use more modern, more cleverly designed forum software such as Discourse. It allows your contributors to build their reputation in an enjoyable, gamified way, and has a lot of small features that make it easier for them to add content and encourage engagement on your forum

Discourse is free if you install and manage it on your own server.

Cloud servers start at €2.49 per month for a cloud server with 2 GB of RAM but you would be better off starting at €4.90 for 4 GB of RAM, to give you more headroom. Increase the RAM as you gain more users, but it will be a while before you need to do that.

You can also rent a managed version of Discourse for around $100 per month with they run for you on their server, you simply login with your admin username and password. Personally I think that is wildly overpriced, but it might be worth it if you are uncomfortable with the technical stuff and just want to focus on building your community.

There are, of course, many other types of software forum. The point is to find one that will make it as easy as possible for your users to become engaged. The really old types of forum software, such as vBulletin or the IPB sofware used by ThaiVisa, have been updated over the decades but, at heart, they are dinosaurs. They only survive because big forums don't have much choice apart from sticking with the software they started with.

Just now, Neeranam said:

because they are new

There have been occassionally active sections for at least Cambodia, Vietnam and the Philippines. They shouldn't be starting from zero.

6 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

It's very different. This character is doing personal background checks before approving people to "his" group. 

So, screw that guy. He and his select few buddies will have a lovely time together.

There are hundreds of other farang groups, both public and private. The main reason why the big groups get big is because the moderators value their users. Egos are a competive disadvantage.

3 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

Personally I detest Facebook and I can't be the only one.

2 minutes ago, Salerno said:

You're not.

I have no love for Zuckerberg but, thanks to their sheer variety and healthy competition between them, Thailand expat Facebook groups tend to be far better than the forums. You can almost always find a group whose tone suits you and, in general, the moderators tend to be less ego-driven, leading to far more interesting discussions.

If you do come across a power-crazed moderator, simply follow other members to a better group. It is a much better experience overall.

2 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

Retired. Too lazy. What people mostly use there are very localized Facebook expat groups. Personally I detest Facebook and I can't be the only one. I know of a specific example there of one such local group where the controller of the group doesn't allow members on that have certain views on American politics that he doesn't like, 

How is that different from ThaiVisa?!!

 

The siren song that might currently be luring them onto the rocks of going too broad might be the idea that, if you can make a forum big enough, it can attract the interest of a whole new level of potential buyer.
 

For example, this programming forum sold for $1.8 billion last month:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/stack-overflow-sold-to-tech-investor-prosus-for-1-8-billion/

There is currently an extraordinary amount of US dollars swirling around the system, valuations are exploding, but you must have scale to be a worthwhile asset.

 

1 minute ago, Greenside said:

I believe that using the old domain (OK, I said URL) as a redirect site was what I said, wasn't it?

No. You said:
 

13 minutes ago, Greenside said:

I suspect they'll simply maintain the original URL as a redirect or possibly sell it to any one of the Visa agents who are doubtless, even now, queuing up with wads of cash to take it over.

They would have to chose one or the other: keep the domain as a redirect or sell it someone else who will then gain any Google juice and organic link traffic.
 

Just now, Jingthing said:

Asean Now accurately defines their scope and that clarity does have value. 

Their hoped for scope. Some but not all of the ten country sections will reach a viable level of activity. Therefore, unless they are very lucky, the brand will never accurately reflect what they actually offer.

 

Just now, Jingthing said:

Do you think they should have covered Japan, China, and India, etc.? I don't. 

A brand is just a brand. You are not legally obliged to cover every territory that it could conceivably refer to.
 

You want your brand to amplify your efforts. Even if they were only covering 3 countries, a cool brand like AsiaNow would amplify their efforts in those 3 countries.

AsiaNow would also remain relevant after ASEAN is replaced by a successor agreement. What is today known as the EU was renamed something like five times.

1 minute ago, Greenside said:

I suspect they'll simply maintain the original URL as a redirect or possibly sell it to any one of the Visa agents who are doubtless, even now, queuing up with wads of cash to take it over.

No, if they do that they will lose ALL their Google rankings and any organic traffic they receive through old links.

The old domain will just have to sit there, forever, redirecting traffic to the new domain.

 

2 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

If they had called it Asia Now, it would need to include East and South Asia and I think wisely, it does not. 

They would not have been able to afford the AsiaNow.com domain, it's asking price is €22,500.

AsiaNow is, actually, a viable brand name, but still not as good as the two-decade established ThaiVisa brand.

1 minute ago, Jingthing said:

I think the vast majority of expats living in Asean know what Asean means compared to Asia.

They might understand both terms but the human memory is far more fallible than most people realize. You might say ASEAN to me, and I might fully understand what you said at the time, but might very easily later remember it as Asia.

You will also have noticed that sometimes, when typing, you write the wrong word and later wonder how you did that, because you were clear, in your mind, on which word you meant as you typed.

Then you also have the problem that, in conversation, people often don't hear what is said correctly.

I own a few thousand .com domains that are mostly unused but I always set them up with a "catchall" for email. It is astonishing how many people type the wrong domains for email addresses, and none of my domains are what you would describe as typos (i.e. deliberately similar to other domains). Even intelligent professionals send sensitive documents to entirely the wrong domains.

 

1 minute ago, Thailand said:

Word of mouth is likely to be Asia Now, not Asean Now.

Oooooohhhh, very good point!

They just handed a massive gift to the domain speculator who owns AsiaNow.com

Just now, Jingthing said:

Yep. It could have been worse. We could have ALL been permanently banned! Those of us that find great value in this forum, whatever it's called, should perhaps not take it's existence for granted.

Being banned just means you can't post, you can still read the forum.

If they did that, why would you want to continue creating free content for them?

 

20 minutes ago, Puccini said:

Very interesting. Does ASEAN NOW now have to start from scratch building up its search engine ranking?

No. If they have set up the forwarding properly, all previously ranked pages will be relisted with the new URL, it will just take some time, probably a few weeks.

In theory, each page will end up with roughly the same rankings but, in reality, you always experience some loss. Google is suspicious of things changing and, in the case of such a big forum, their algorithm could well take the opportunity to lower or delist certain pages (for instant, from certain long past date ranges).

There have certainly been cases where sites have ended with far lower search traffic despite forwarding correctly. Unfortunately, there is no one you can call at Google if your business is impacted.

So, ThaiVisa should be okay, but it is a fundamental change and it sure won't improve their rankings.

In their shoes, I would be more worried about how it affects their word-of-mouth publicity. Expats often recommend forums to other expats they meet, and "ThaiVisa" was in the lucky position of having the highest name recognition among Thai expat forums despite not being among the best -similar to how some people in the UK refer to all vacuum cleaners as hoovers, despite Hoover making terrible vacuum cleaners.

Now, in conversation, most people are going to struggle to remember "AseanNow". Not easy to remember, not immediatly clear how you should pronounce the "Asean" part, and the "Now" part is something you would associate more with some sort of low-grade, tourist resort cable TV station featuring 65% Russian content.