[Typhon]

Originally Posted by joeychgo

Personally....

I wouldnt merge these forums together.

You have 5 large and active forums. (except # 5 -- maybe merge that into another one, maybe not. I would have to see it.)


Why wouldnt I merge? Simple. Advertising.

You can sell ads on all 5 forums for more then you can sell ads on 1. You have 5 times the banner ad space and those ads can be better targetted.

Another reason, right now, you could sell one of the 5 forums. Cant do that after the merge.

I would suggest you really think this through and err on the side of caution.

Very valid points ... and I have thought about this. I plan on keeping the sites cosmetically separate using the styles system built into vB. That being said, they will each have their own advertising capabilities because they will have a unique header and footer (where my ads are). The selling point is something I have never considered ... since I have no intention of selling them off one by one. I've spent a lot of time branding my communities (and have my company brand tattooed on my back). If I were ever to entertain an offer ... if would be for all communities combined, which is why I don't think that point applies to me.

I'm mainly looking for a performance issue ... will things run better, worse ... the same? I keep thinking that searching larger tables mean longer load times, but is that going to be negligible with proper indexing? I doubt scanning a 1 million post table versus scanning a 5 million post table is 5 times faster ... or is it?