Hi everyone,
The hamfest forum is up and running at http://www.sbhamfest.org. The forum is double opt-in, i.e., you will receive an email after registering that will allow you to post to most of the forums. As a guest, you should be able to read everything but the Organizers Forum (Private for the oganizers.)
Since everything is still in a state of flux, things will most likely change. But at least we are started!
FYI, we are using phpbb for the open source forum software, the domains sbhamfest.org and sbhamfest.com were registered with godaddy.com, and they are being hosted at hostgater.com. The sbhamfest.org domain is still dormant until I transfer it to hostgater and have it automatically forward to the .com site. I registered both sites more as a hedge against someone else getting the .org domain.
Setting up the forum was *evenutally* a piece of cake. Hostgater has something called fantastico that took care of the software installation. Still left to do is to make sure the site is optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) although exactly what keywords I'll be using is still up in the air right now. Finally, I am checking out Google adwords PPC advertising to see if the ROI is sufficient to justify running an adwords campaign.
As things evolve, the URL will open onto a conventional website with a link to the forums from the main website. Additionally, I will probably start a blog there where I will talk about how the hamfest is developing along with anything else I might think is important to talk about.
Thanks!
Marvin, KE6HTS