I like the bio that Antares wrote and since there have been no other submissions I think it would be a great replacement for the current one on the homepage.

I think that since the blonde phase didn't last long, and isn't really representative of her normal appearance, that the photo we choose should be of her with dark hair. Chances are that if someone stumbles upon her and the forum, they had come searching because they saw a brune Alizée somewhere. Not that this is so important.

I think a montage of photos from several different eras would be nice.

I agree with the monatage!

I agree! Perhaps this one will do for the Blonde era? I'd hate to leave it unused after Pep's re-coloring efforts, and it's just so lovely :wub:
http://i566.photobucket.com/albums/s...psmd9dq5jc.jpg

I think we should hurry up a little bit with these ideas and updating the homepage because just see what is now the last entry there:

June 28th 2012 saw the release of "A cause de l'automne", the first single from Alizée's upcoming fifth studio album.

If any newcomer to these forums see this, and especially if he is a newbie in the world of Alizee and still knows nothing about Alizee, he may think that the last thing she's done in her career was A cause de l'automne, ... and that would be ... ... somewhat ... :phehe:

::bump::

I would like to keep this conversation going and maybe make some decisions as a group, but in the end people will have to put in some work to get the end product finished. I will do what I can.

What was my first impression when I came to this site initially? I didn't know what the disco ball represented and her face shot wasn't representative of what I had been used to. Apologies to who had put that picture up, but I'll just be honest about that. For somebody who might have just seen a handful of her videos and know nothing about her dancing but are looking for a fan site, they might think they landed on the wrong site unless they read the bio.

I like the montage idea. In fact, I think the montage should be very large with pictures from every phase of her career. A visitor might relate to just one or two looks that she had and would recognize her.

The Bio should be scratched. Most people who search for Alizee know who she is. A button or link saying "Learn About Alizee" could take them to her Wiki page.

I would like to see a more structured look to the landing page using web parts, if this is even possible. Can have a section titled Alizee Talk with a list of discussions like we have now. Other sections can have her IG, FaceBook, Twitter feeds, etc. Sign Up and Log In might be better on the landing page.

Madonna.com has a very clean look.

This might be a pipe dream without a major overhaul taking many hours of work and money, but maybe a few of these things can be done without much effort?

I'll try and express some thoughts on this and other things that have been discussed in the past few days later, if I hopefully have a slow night at work.

Yesterday and today have been way to busy for me.

To throw out another idea, first off, do we offer members anything other than a forum to talk about Alizee? Since it looks like we don't anymore, this site can be replaced by a vBulletin type forum hosted in the cloud. A skin and theme can be designed to brand the site with Alizee America information. Because of our low traffic (currently), we are talking about $20/mo (or more with add-on features or increased bandwidth).

It would have all the bells and whistles of modern forums and upgrades would be done automatically and be part of the monthly cost. Chat box option would be available and administration tools would be modernized.

The only up front cost I would foresee would be migrating current forum contents, but most of the hosts should be able to do that.

The day you move off the web page is the day I disappear.

As we discussed a couple of days ago in chat, I've noticed many times when a lot of different conversations go on in almost a daily basis in chat when there's nothing going on in the forum and the problem with that is visitors who aren't registered can't see those conversations in chat..

Now a lot of times these conversations are in no way related to Alizée. That doesn't matter. We have young members who come along who are in school and I think they might be very interested in conversations about school or playstations or about the weather or for visitors who work, conversations about jobs.

I feel we need to make this forum a more interesting place to attract new members. Two members have been carrying the financial load for a long time. Lefty will always be a fan of hers I'm sure, but it seems he has moved on from the forum. Even if he still makes an occasional post, it's not fair to him keep carrying the financial load.

Now I'm not looking for any donations at this point, but I would like to make changes here that would make the 'open' forum a little more interesting to visitors. I'd like to have a chat that is available to all. Of course we still need a private chat for obvious reasons.

Many members aren't in a good position to donate. It is my hope that we can bring in more members. The more people we bring in, the more likely more members will come along who can contribute.

I'd like to see some changes made to the forum. Maybe the only way we can make the changes I feel many of us feel need to be made is to buy the server from Ben. I am willing to do that if Ben is willing to sell it.

One thing I'd like to do on our home page is to have a different picture every week. There are so many beautiful pictures of her from many different years, that it's a shame to have the same one up for months.

I think the bio takes up too much room. I'd like to have something that starts the first few lines of a bio, but then have what a lot of web pages have where it will say "more' at the bottom and clicking on that will take you to a page that gives you a full bio.

I'd like to have other pictures from different parts of her career, such as some of her most memorable performances such as Moi Lolita in Amsterdam, J'en ai marre pour Laurette, ACC. Other pictures of En Concert and the two Stars A Domicile shows, SAGA, DALS, Les Enfoires and there are several other shows she was in, so there would be something by those pictures, probably "more' again where it would take you to a page with a story about that event along with links to Youtube videos about these events.

Again to make these kind of changes, I think we'd have to buy the server. If that happens, Lefty is making his payments to Ben, so I think we'd lose his $25 a month then. Somehow, I think we'll find a way to make that up.

For the short term, I'd like to create a thread in the open forum where people could chat and this thread would have a lot more leeway than threads used to have. In the past, we needed members to stick to the topic. The main reason being if in the future, you wanted to looks something up, if what you're looking up wasn't related to the thread, it would be very difficult to find.

But time are changing. There are times when I want to post something, I'm not sure which thread to put it in and today I think we need to make it easier to post. Plus I've seen some interesting conversations in a thread broken up because they went off topic. Sure I want us to still post in a related thread if possible, but if somebody posts in the 'open chat' thread.....so be it.

So like I said, I'm not looking for donations now. I'm just looking for members to do their share to make this forum a more interesting place for visitors to draw in new members. The more members we have, the more likely we are to get members who are in a good position to donate and the more members we get who are willing to donate, the more we can do with this forum.

Rev, I have no personal agenda associated with my ideas, but rather just throwing things out there based on my extensive experience with software updates that might attract a new audience, promote Alizee better, and ensure this site continues to operate years down the road.

If my ideas promote conversation - great. If my idea(s) get nixed - that's fine too. The last thing I wanted was to sow any kind of discord where a current member leaves or would threaten to leave. I apologize if they brought you to that point.