Web Forum Reader
Forums used to be huge back in the day. They where a vital source of knowledge for anyone getting into any field, and particularly areas like SEO and programming. They allowed people to share their knowledge, learn from those with superior skills and help beginners.
Over the last decade however with the rise of blogs, forums have lost a little of their popularity. Many people realized the knowledge they where sharing for free could still be provided via blogs, but monetized at the same time and help in building up their own personal brand.
Bulletin boards are still around however, and always will be which I'm sure of. Web Forum Reader is a application designed to help you monitor and track the forums you frequent on a regular basis.
It fairly similar to a RSS reader so if you use one of those on a regular basis you'll have a pretty good idea how it works.
It's incredibly easy to add forums to the program, a wizard will take you through the different stages to add them in. It’s very customizable and you can choose exactly what components you would like to insert, for example the last person to post, number of replies etc.
It should work on just about any Internet forum, old and new and really is a must have for anyone who spends a lot of time in bulletin boards. It’s also great for saving bandwidth and speeding up your browsing as you are no longer downloading each page as you go.
Update: Web Forum Reader has not been updated for some time, to be precise since November 2010, which suggests that the project has been put on ice by its developers. It is also likely that you will encounter issues with the program when trying to download and view forums, as it may be incompatible with latest forum versions.
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I thought this was a great idea when I tried an earlier release months ago. However, it didn’t work consistently with all forums and in some cases, was complex to get an exact view of the forum reliably displayed. Updating was also sometimes sporadic.
Perhaps it is working better now.
Concerning file downloads there are two things I just cannot stand anymore ; one is the version of the file not being displayed, the other is the lack of — or the difficulty to find — information concerning the differences between lite (freeware) version and shareware version.
Web Forum Reader’s homepage does not display the differences between the two versions they propose, or they hide it well. They’ve lost my concern, I intend no more to spend 20 minutes searching for information which should be obvious and immediately accessible.
In what languages does it work?
it won’t work for many forums due to password related content
Yeah, Transcontinental – That was a problem that I caught also. Disappointing that they still have rectified it.
Tried it few months ago… In my opinion it tries to do what RSS already does better.
But since I am the “making-own-software-cause-avaible-sucks-for-my-needs” stage of RSS fondness – other people might like subject more.
Dude, did you actually try this program? It’s a complete pile of s**t. Bugs galore, looks and feels like it was coded by a 5 year old. Do not bother folks.
comparion to forumpilot.com/ this software is really crap))
Over the last decade however with the rise of blogs Forums have lost a little of their popularity. Many people realised the knowledge they where sharing for free could still be provided via blogs, but monetized at the same time and help in building up their own ersonal brand.
In early 2007 I wrote article about forums and blogs. Blogs are good for “broadcasting knowledge”, but forums is good for collaboration, collective building of knowledge, discussing topics or ways to help some poor guy who ran in problems.
Also blogs is more time-dependent: you can write to year-old forum topic and lift it up to re-discussing, but you can’t do this on blog: you have to write a new post.
So, I think that forums don’t going to disappear :)
@Matt. Yes I did, and I actually had no problems with the forums I frequent, although yes I’m not a huge forum user so I may not have tried it with as many as you. It worked fine for me though.
@Roman. Yes that’s very true, i dont think they will either. However in my experience lifting up a year old forum topic, (even a month old) isnt usually too popular.
Good Day
Just wanted to share my new experience.
If your system denies to run due to an error corresponding to missing HAL.DLL, invalid Boot.ini or any other important system boot files you can fix this by using the XP installation CD. Just boot from your XP Setup CD and enter the Recovery Console. Then run “attrib -H -R -S” on the C:\Boot.ini file and remove it. Run “Bootcfg /Rebuild” and then Fixboot
Regards,
Carl
Hi Folks!
Just wanted to share my new experience.
If your system denies to run due to an error corresponding to missing HAL.DLL, invalid Boot.ini or any other critical system boot files you can repair this by using the XP installation CD. Simply boot from your XP Setup CD and enter the Recovery Console. Then run “attrib -H -R -S” on the C:\Boot.ini file and remove it. Launch “Bootcfg /Rebuild” and then Fixboot
Regards,
Carl